She Doesn't Know the Mascots. She Doesn't Care. And She's Still Beating Me.

Every March, without fail, my wife sits down with her ESPN Bracket Challenge app in hand and proceeds to dismantle any remaining credibility I have as someone who has spent his entire life around the game of basketball.

I played college basketball. I have coached for years. I watch games all season. I follow recruiting and the transfer portal. I know the rosters, the coaches, the conference standings, the injury reports. I have opinions about seeding that nobody asked for. And yet, when the bracket is filled out and the games tip off, my wife beats me. She has beaten me every year but one in our entire relationship. More than a decade of this. I’ve only beaten her once. One year. One.

Her process, if you can call it that, is something I still cannot fully explain. She does not watch college basketball. She does not know who the coaches are. She cannot tell you who the leading scorer is on any team. She sometimes has to ask me what the mascot is before she decides. And then she just... picks. Pure gut. Vibes. Zero analysis. She fills out that bracket in about 15 minutes while I've been agonizing over mine for three days.

And when you look at the Sweet 16 a few days later…somehow she's right.

What makes it better, if better is even the right word, is that she keeps a running record in her head. She knows exactly where we stand. Every year around Selection Sunday she gets this look, the kind of look that tells me she's already looking forward to adding another tally to her side. She reminds me of the record. She reminds me that she's looking forward to doing it again. And she says all of this with complete sincerity and zero mercy.

I have made my peace with the fact that expertise may be overrated in March. The bracket does not care how many hours of tape you've watched. It does not reward the person who can explain ball screen defensive rotations or break down a press. It rewards whoever happened to feel good about a 10 seed on a Tuesday afternoon, and that person, in my house, is never me.

I should also mention that my wife reads this newsletter. Right now, she’s probably sitting at her desk at work with a little evil grin on her face, basking in the glory of beating me.

But here's the thing. It is genuinely one of my favorite parts of the month. It's competitive in a way that has nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with making a marriage fun. She looks forward to it. I look forward to it. And every year, even if I lose, I enjoy it.

If you want to get in on the madness, I have a group bracket challenge set up for subscribers to the Game Shots Newsletter through ESPN and I'd love for you to join. I’ll make sure my wife’s bracket is blocked from entering!

Click here to enter

Why the Upset Happens (And What You Can Do About It)

Every March, somebody loses a game they had no business losing. A team that spent the entire season destroying opponents walks off the floor in stunned silence while the other team's bench clears onto the court. The “bracket busters” light up social media. And coaches everywhere watching at home think the same thing: how does THAT happen?

It keeps happening because basketball is played by human beings, and human beings are bad at sustaining focus when the conditions around a game shift dramatically from what they're used to.

Let's start with the favorite, because that's where most upsets are actually lost.

When you've been really good all year, there's a psychological tax that comes with it. Your players have heard all season how talented they are. The school is buzzing. The national media has done a feature. Nobody in your program is thinking about losing because it genuinely seems like it won’t happen. “We’re going to get beat by Furman? Pshh, yeah right”. Most players on the higher seeded teams probably couldn’t point out the opposing school on a map. And that's the problem. Preparation requires taking your opponent seriously, and it is very hard to take seriously a team you've beaten by 30 in your own head before the game even tips off.

Coaches call it overlooking an opponent. But that's a surface-level description of something more complicated. What's really happening is that the favorite stops playing the game in front of them and starts managing a result they've already assumed. They're not competing, they're protecting. And the moment a team switches from competing to protecting, they become beatable.

Add the tournament format to this and the pressure compounds quickly. In a one-and-done situation the stakes become finite. There's no next week. There's no adjusting over a 7-game series. You get one game at a time, and if it goes sideways, you spend the entire offseason thinking about it. For a high-seed, that weight is real. The expectation isn't just to win, it's to look dominant, to justify the ranking.

Now flip it.

The underdog walks in with almost nothing to lose and everything to gain. There's a freedom in that. When nobody believes you can win, you stop worrying about winning. You start playing. There's psychological research on this, but you don't need a PhD to understand it: when the pressure of expectation is removed, athletes tend to perform closer to their ceiling. The underdog isn't managing anything. They're just playing basketball.

There's also a focus element that gets underestimated. A team that knows they're outmatched on paper tends to prepare with a level of specificity that the favorite rarely matches. They've watched film all week. They know the favorite's tendencies, their sets, where their best players want the ball. They have a game plan built, because they know they can't beat you playing your game. Meanwhile, the favorite's preparation is often more general, more about executing their stuff than attacking yours.

That mismatch in preparation intensity is where a lot of upsets begin.

And then the game starts, and the underdog gets a stop, or hits an early shot, and the crowd reacts, and suddenly something shifts. The energy is contagious. The underdog starts to believe. The favorite starts to think. And thinking too much in the middle of a basketball game is a fast road to disaster.

So what do you do with all of this?

If you're the favorite:

Be specific in your preparation. Make your opponent real. Show your players the opponent’s best film. Treat it as if you were preparing to play the #1 team in the tournament. Show the tendencies that will beat you if you ignore them. Respect the game or the game will find a way to introduce you to karma.

And talk about the format honestly. Don't pretend the pressure isn't there. Your players know it's there. The coaches who handle high-pressure games best are usually the ones who name the moment directly rather than trying to minimize it or over-hype it. Something as simple as "this game is hard, the format is hard, and that's exactly why it matters" does more for your team than any motivational speech.

If you're the underdog:

Your job is to protect the belief in your locker room and attack doubt.

That means your messaging all week has to be built around your identity, not your ranking. What do you do well? What does your game look like when it's at its best? Start there. Don't let your players spend the week reading about how they're supposed to lose. You control what gets your attention.

On the tactical side, simplicity is your friend. Find two or three things you can execute at a high level and build your game plan around them. Make the game ugly if you have to. Slow it down. Take away their best stuff. Force them to beat you in ways they haven't had to beat anyone all year.

The game is long and has a bunch of ups and downs. Don't let momentum carry your players into chaotic basketball. Use that timeout to remind them of the plan, to let the moment breathe, and then send them back out there locked in.

The upset isn't a miracle. It's a combination of preparation, psychology, and competitive discipline that the other team wasn't ready to match. The week before tip-off usually determines which way it goes.

Question for you: Have you ever been a part of an upset? If you were the underdog, what went right? If you were the favorite, what would you change looking back?

The Scouting Report is your weekly dose of resources that can help your coaching. Plays of the Week, videos, drills, etc. What’s the old joke? The best coaches are just the best thieves?

Elevator Rip Lob - Miami Heat

SLOB ISO - Maryland

Shared Resources: Iowa State Defense

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That’s a wrap on Episode 35 of Game Shots. Thank you for subscribing.

My mission has always been, and will always be, to support coaches around the world who love the game and want to keep getting better.