This past week, the NCAA men's basketball tournament came to a conclusion. This was the 75^th anniversary of the college basketball tournament. Being that it was the diamond anniversary for the event, there was a lot of talk about the all-time best moments, games, players, coaches and teams. In the polls, the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers were selected as the best single-season team in the tournament's 75 years. It was selected because it was the last team to have an undefeated season - beating all comers in the regular season and the tournament. What was so amazing about that team was their resolve to be undefeated - they didn't just fall into it. They prepared to vanquish every foe on the basketball court. Now you might be saying, "every team prepares to beat all of their opponents." You would be right in thinking this way. However, the 1976 IU team had something that most other teams do not. They had a perfect regular season the year before, in 1974-75. They had entered the tournament as the favorites to win it all, and then they lost, bounced from the tournament by the University of Kentucky in the regional finals by two points. They came so close to a perfect season, but that loss became the impetus for the preparations for perfection in 1976. 

It seems to me that we have given losing a very bad name. We teach children that they are all winners, because telling them that only a few of them are winners and the rest of them are losers might damage their self-esteem and cause them to derail into a lifetime of dysfunction. So we have created a bubble where nothing bad is ever said about them and if it does, the speaker will have to take sensitivity training. I recently heard the current basketball coach at IU, Tom Crean, speak. He was talking about the world we have created for the student-athletes he coaches. He said that so many of the boys they recruit have lived in that bubble world - where everyone has told them they are the very best - and no one has ever criticized them (also known as telling them the truth) and that it is a challenge for them to handle the emotion of being a role player. Yet, role playing is what life is about. He urged those of us in attendance to find a young person and get involved in their life. But he also stressed that if we did, we needed to be brutally honest with the young man or woman. The last thing they needed was another adult who told them they would win everything they ever tried, because that is not reality.

We have lost the value of losing. Ask anyone who has been successful and they will tell you about the times they tried and failed. Prod them to give you tips to success and I will bet you they will tell you about a lot of painful moments that taught them something about success by way of failure. The problem with taking the short cuts around the painful moments is that we never learn a thing. When you don't experience a loss, you never try to change. And when you don't try to change, you have the tendency to think that everything is alright with the way you act, think and go about your business. When something does go wrong, the finger of blame is always pointed at someone else, but never back at ourselves.

So if you want to be successful in what you do, I would make the following suggestions. One, don't be afraid of failure. Use it to learn what not to do the next time around. If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are bound to repeat them again and again. Two, find someone who will keep you on track by telling you the truth. If you have surrounded yourself with a bunch of back-slappers, change your circle of friends. You need someone who is not afraid to stand up to you and tell you when you are going astray.

Bob Knight, the coach of the 1976 championship team, recently was involved in a discussion with the team members about which team was the best: the 74-75 team that had the one loss or the 75-76 team which went undefeated. "(The 1976) team was better…They were a year older and they had gone through something that was very close to a tremendous success.¹" There is something to be learned in losing, that is, if you can admit that there is something you need to change and you put in the hard work to make it happen.