Quote Originally Posted by stixof96 View Post
here is what you are missing about the kentucky game in 1992.....when kentucky scored with under 3 seconds left and took the lead, Coach K called a time out.......when the players got to the bench, the FIRST thing Coach K told them was.......WE ARE GOING TO WIN THIS GAME !!!!.......and everybody on that team believed it 100% because they had complete confidence in their will to win
In Gene Wojo's recent book (great read, by the way) about the '92 Kentucky game, he included an interesting comment from Bilas about the "we are going to win" from Coach K. Bilas said (and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the book in front of me) Coach K said this all the time when they had late game huddles when the team was trailing and they won almost none of those games. We romanticize the story when it came out the right way. But they were in the exact same situation in the Wake Forest game earlier that season, I bet Coach K said exactly the same thing in the huddle, they ran exactly the same play, and they lost. Doesn't mean their will to win (or their confidence in their will to win, whatever that means) was any less when they played Wake than it was when they played Kentucky.

Similarly, you mention that Scheyer is emblematic of the type of Duke player who was like those of the past and missing from this team. I love Scheyer, and think he was a great player. But let's also remember that his first three Duke teams lost in the first round (to 11-seeded VCU), the second round (to 7-seeded West Virginia), and in a blowout in the Sweet 16 (to Villanova). Those were three ugly tournament losses. Scheyer's (and Singler's - another player people around here love to refer to as iron-willed) will to win didn't mysteriously materialize after his junior year - it was probably as much there in 2009 as it was in 2010. But the team got a little better, and the ball bounced the right way, and we ended up with a championship.

Psychological projection is probably the greatest fool's errand that we as fans can engage in. We have absolutely no idea what's going on inside these kids' heads. For all I know, Miles Plumlee's will to win is equal to that of Laettner's. But Miles Plumlee the player is nowhere near Christian Laettner the player, and there's only so far that will can get you.