Re: Toughness. I was just surfing around and caught the last few minutes of the women's team blowing out Houston. My middle daughter is playing hoop and is really starting to get into it enough to understand it and learn by watching, so I called her in to watch the end of the game, and I became interested when the announcers starting discussing how hard Geno's practices are.
One of the announcers was apparently a former player of ours named Megan, and I have to admit I have no idea who she is, but she was describing some pretty interesting tactics--she said the games were much easier than the practices. I had heard that they practice against men, but she said that Geno makes it seven or eight men versus five women. She explained that his point in this and other drills was to put you in situations where it was impossible to succeed; not that he expected you to overcome it, but that you would play through it and have the experience so that you keep your head when you are faced with adversity in game situations. And the entire point is to make the games be easier than the practices.
I only caught the end of the conversation, but it looked like they were previewing an upcoming episode of Geno's show where they show some more insight into his practices. I'm going to tape that for my daughter, but I'm actually curious to watch it myself now.
I'm generally among the most reluctant to entertain any discussion that suggests that the men's team could learn from the women, and that's still the case. This isn't about the women's game; it's about making tough competitors who can thrive in adversity, and designing practices to accomplish that result.
I don't know what JC did in practice, but I know that toughness was rarely a quality lacking in his teams. I agree with Bilas that toughness is lacking in this team, and that has to change if we are going to get back on track.
