Why so sluggish at start of second half

We've given away big leads a couple times now as the second half starts.

I'm thinking that it is so ingrained over the years that KU pounds the ball inside for the second half to wear down our opponent and win through our "bread and butter", that our four guard offense comes out - not complacent - but deferential to getting the ball to the post.

That doesn't work this year, so we squander leads before the four guards pick up the pace again. We need a kickstarter mentality to come out in the first five minutes of the second half and blister the other team and kill their hope.

That could be a problem as I have noticed our Hawks trying to force it into the post and not succeeding early in the 2nd half quite a bit.

I think it's a human nature thing.

Example #1: you're going to a game with a team of all stars and the oddsmakers have you winning by a 20 point spread. You're confident...probably over-confident, and you "know" that in 40 minutes you'll have logged another win. You come out and the "weaker" team is motivated and they score first. No biggie...you've got 39 minutes left. You blow your first offensive possession and the "weaker" team scores again. You blow your second offensive possession...and they score again. Now you're down 3 scores (could be as many as 9 points) and you have to play comeback basketball, which at best will take you several minutes before you hopefully tie or move past the other team.

In Example #1, well-deserved confidence morphed into over-confidence which led to complacency which the other team exploited.

Example #2: Ok, you roll into halftime on the end of a big scoring run and you're up 10 at the break. Everything is under control now. You've got nothing to worry about. Here comes that overconfident/complacency monster again. You come out sloppy and they score a quick 3 off of a play they drew up during halftime. You blow your next offensive possession and foul a guy shooting on the return trip and he scores....3 point play. A 10 point lead is now a 4 point game and your "comfortable lead" dissolves.

In both of these examples, I was hoping to illustrate just how quickly things can turn. Theoretically if the other team is scoring 3 pointers and you're not answering, it only takes a VERY few possessions to turn the tides. While I used the opening and halftime examples, this kind of thing can happen at any point in the game as guys mentally "take a possession off".

As I opened with, this is human nature. Behaviors exist based on past experience. In the past, when you're up by 10, you may have (many many times) been able to let your foot off the gas, and coast while maintaining that 10 point lead. It takes negative experiences to "unlearn" this behavior. To make matters worse, most of the guys who have the ability to play at a place like Kansas probably experiences a LOT of this "ability to coast and dominate at the same time" at the high school level where competition wasn't as strong and these guys' exceptional skill set them far above their peers. Once you're at a major D-1 school, however, that skill gap is much smaller and the difference between an All American and a role player isn't nearly as pronounced. That "role player" was probably the best kid on his HS team and maybe in his HS league, so if you don't actively try to stop him he's going to score, and if you bring sloppy offense to his doorstep he's going to prevent YOU from scoring.

Where this gets REALLY scary is the final step where "momentum" kicks in. "Momentum" is kind of the wrong term as it implies some kind of force of physics being involved. What's really happening is that the "weak" team suddenly feels confident and they play loose. Meanwhile the "strong" team starts tightening up and forcing things and effectively hurting themselves.

FOCUS!

Keep doing what you did to get where you are, or else . . .


RC

Thanks. Yep, focus is also accurate.

The key is learned behavior. If you've never suffered consequences from lack of focus, a coach preaching focus will have difficulty. You've "learned" that playing without focus results in winning. Sadly, some "negative consequences" tend to be involved (aka "losses") before behavior is changed. More sadly, those lessons tend to either happen in embarrassing ways (losing to TCU a couple years ago) or at crucial times (i.e. lacked focus but somehow got to the final four or some other "big" game where it the fatal flaw finally takes its toll).

I was hoping that our guys "almost loss" to KSU was enough of a lesson that we wouldn't need more education on the subject. It seems that at times in the Tech game, some of the guys missed school that day.

I still think there is some validity to the idea that we start the second have more concerned with getting the ball inside than getting the best shot. I also think that LL in particular is better after he gets into the flow of the game a bit more. I could be wrong, obviously it would be the first time ever, but that is what I have seen.