By Ryan Scott
D3sports.com

The thing about expectations is that they’re usually immediate, especially in sports. We expect our teams to win titles, but we also expect them to look like title-winning teams the whole way through. No one expects an underdog performance and we don’t expect perennial winners to have to scrap and learn and develop over time.

We think practice is for getting better and games are for winning.

Many coaches will tell you a team learns more from a loss, but none of them would rather lose than win. Still, the losses come. I wonder, though, if the cost of meeting long-term expectations, is some immediate disappointment. After all, no one cares if you lost eight games, so long as you win the last one.

“We only care about late February and March,” says UT-Dallas women’s coach Polly Thomason, whose team started the season No. 12 and lost three close games to good teams, losing nearly all their Top 25 votes. “Our only focus, what our whole program is built around, is being ready to compete and win at the end of the year.”

If there’s anyone who understands the problems of expectations, it’s UW-Oshkosh men’s basketball head coach Matt Lewis. In his first official year as head coach, he literally cannot improve upon the national title his team won last season, when he was the interim coach.

“We set the bar really high – other coaches told me I should just retire and go out on top – but if the only thing we’re doing is trying to win a national championship, we’re going about it the wrong way,” Lewis said. “While chasing [the title] we’re about more than that – it’s about having high character kids who want to succeed on and off the court.”

Thomason echoes those thoughts as well, “The most exciting thing as a coach is to see your players develop and grow. That’s why we do this.”

Ruth Sinn, head women’s basketball coach at St. Thomas says: “One of the great joys of coaching is witnessing an ‘a-ha’ moment. All of a sudden you see things click and it just makes sense to them.”

There will likely be a lot of those moments for Sinn this season. Her Tommies have been perennial contenders of late, heavily ladened with senior leadership. This year, not only does the team lack any seniors, but All-American Kaia Porter went down with injury, leaving perhaps the most inexperienced squad of her tenure to live up to Top Ten expectations.

None of Sinn’s players had ever lost a MIAC game in their careers, but have now lost two before Christmas. “Winning and losing is all about maturity,” says Sinn. “If you need to lose a game, then you’re not mature and you don’t have the right approach.”

This is about as close as you’ll ever get to a coach saying losing is good. It’s not that the Tommies want to lose games, but Sinn knows her young team is building foundational experiences, lessons they’ll draw on in the future at pivotal moments to help focus and win games.

Thomason has all of her major on-court contributors back, but it’s taken much longer than expected for the team to settle in and play up to their lofty expectations.

She says, “I was surprised at just how important our seniors were last year. They weren’t All-Americans or all-conference performers, but I was surprised by the big hole they left. We’ve had a harder time filling their spots with inexperienced players, even if they’re more talented.”

Every coach will tell you every team is different, even when the players are the same. Oshkosh lost a super-talented, super-experienced backcourt, but they bring back 85% of a team that’s been to two consecutive national title games. While that experience may help keep the players calm in moments of tremendous pressure, it doesn’t help reserve guards learn how to be starters.

Ben Boots knew how to be the starting point guard on a national championship team because he’d been the starting point guard on a national runner-up squad the year before. No one on the current Titan roster is playing the same role they did last season. Even Jack Flynn, who is being asked to do very similar things on the court, has never before been asked to do them with this level of scrutiny or expectation.

“Losing games to good teams early is not going to define our season,” says Lewis, “We have to learn and move forward and get better so they don’t [define our season]. Our guys are talented guys and we believe strongly in them; it’s just a matter of continuing to grow into and expand our roles.”

What these three teams have in common, at least this season, are sky-high expectations and some unexpected losses early. Maybe those expectations are a little unfair, given the realities of each team, but these squads also share a reputation for excellence. The programs have built reputations that invite such expectations and you don’t build programs like these by ignoring expectations.

“When the wins come, everybody buys in,” says Sinn, “When the losses come, that’s when the culture can go astray. We call it BCD behavior – blame, complain, defend – you really have to guard your process-based approach. We treat wins and losses very much the same way. We emphasize standards over feelings – even if you’re not feeling confident, there’s an accountability to keep meeting the expectations of the team.”

The other element at play is trust in the process.

“Oshkosh has not always had this reputation,” says Lewis. “We worked hard to be the kind of program people expect great things from. Our players have seen the investment required to succeed; there is a confidence and a belief that we’ll be where we want to be when it counts if we’re getting better every day.”

Says Thomason, “The hardest thing to learn and the hardest thing to teach is how roles change from year to year. This season our games have been more learning opportunities than I would like, it took longer than I was hoping to find a rhythm and the right subbing patterns, but we’re starting to see glimpses of who we are and who we have been. We’re moving in the right direction.”

This should all be good news for fans of Oshkosh, St. Thomas, and UT-Dallas, but hopefully it’s also good news even if your team isn’t expected to compete for titles. We want to root for teams that are maximizing their potential, playing consistent basketball and consistently improving. It’s very easy to focus on what’s wrong without seeing all the time and effort that’s put in to getting better.

This is the constant struggle for Top 25 voters. Do we rank teams based on how they’re playing now or on what we expect them to look like in February and March? Do we give Oshkosh or UT-Dallas the benefit of the doubt now, because they’ve proven they know how to finish a season strong or do we put our weight behind a team playing at the top of their ability in November and December, hoping they can continue that excellence into the spring?

It all comes back to expectations and it’s all a reminder that no matter how much we know, how many games we watch, how much data we break down, there are only so many things a team can control and wins are not one of them.

“We could schedule to be undefeated,” says Thomason, “We’re good enough to do that, but it wouldn’t help us in February.” Lewis adds, “Yeah, it can hurt your chances to be 4-7 in the non-conference, but those games are good for your team and they’re just more fun to play.” Sinn sums it up. “If you want to improve, you’ve got to play the best.”

In the end, we’ve got 450 schools playing Division III basketball and only one comes out on top. If winning is your only expectation, you’re in for a lot of disappointment. A core part of the Division III ethos is that winning is not the only thing that matters (even if it’s very important and a whole lot of fun). Keep those expectations high, but let’s keep them broad and deep, too. Remember why we’re all a part of this in the first place.