Playing with everything to lose.
College basketball’s March Madness, one of my favorite times of the year as both a sports fan and a mental performance coach, is finally here! And needless to say, there has been plenty of madness already as a number of top seeded teams have already been upset by Cinderella story programs!
As a fan these games provide us with an incredible amount of excitement and intrigue as we watch our brackets get busted. We get to see the raw emotion of winning and losing after every game. We get to see teams leave everything on the court and in one shining moment we will get to see a team “win them all” and be crowned National Champions. What more could you want as a fan?!
As a mental performance coach what intrigues me most about the NCAA Tournament is watching the top seeded teams experience the pressure and expectation to win against the lower seeded teams that, on paper, hardly compare in terms of talent, size and skill. The underdogs, who are just happy to make it into the tournament, are playing with nothing to lose. On the other hand, the top teams that are expected to make a deep run at a championship title are playing with everything to lose. That conundrum is responsible for the absolute chaos that ensues during the month of March in college basketball, as well as in championships across all sports.
The NCAA Tournament provides athletes, teams and coaches real life examples of how to, and how not to, play when you have everything to lose. To better understand how to play when you have everything to lose, let’s first take a look at why it’s so much easier to play when you have nothing to lose.
When you’re playing with nothing to lose you have no fear of losing. You’re the underdog, you aren’t supposed to win. Sure, you want to win and you’re going to try to win, but you aren’t expecting to win. Without the expectation of winning, athletes experience more feelings of excitement instead of feelings of doubt, worry and anxiousness. With reduced feelings of stress and anxiety, athletes have less physical tension in their bodies (and fewer thoughts in their heads). Less physical tension leads to increased motor skill performance.. In college basketball that equates to those 12 seeds shooting the lights out against the 5 seeds. They have no fear of losing. They’re simply excited to be there. There are no expectations. They shoot the lights out because they have no fear of missing and that makes them a dangerous team to play against. Everyone wants to play as if they have nothing to lose.
Now let’s chat about why it can be so difficult for teams to play well when they have everything to lose. You won’t be surprised about any of this. When you’re playing with everything to lose there’s an expectation that you should win. This expectation creates doubt, worry, and anxiousness which translates into physical tension. Increased physical tension leads to decreased motor skill performance.. And in college basketball that equates to the #1 seed you picked to make it to the Final Four going ice cold from the field and losing to that #8 seed that is playing with nothing to lose (ruining your bracket as a result).
Now obviously teams that are playing with everything to lose can and still do prevail. Here’s how they do it.
The key to playing well when the stakes are at their highest is to play as if you have nothing to lose. I’m sorry if you were hoping for a better answer, but that’s what it is. It’s something so simple to say, yet not always easy to do. So let’s take that a little further and break down what it looks like to “play with nothing to lose”.
We are playing with nothing to lose when:
We let go of the doubt and worry associated with the outcome of the game. Sure that results matter, but you won’t get the results you’re after by worrying about them. You’ll get the results, by focusing on and executing the little things in your performance that are within your control. Care less about the result and care more about the process of getting the result.
We frame the pressure and expectation to win in a way that actually provides us with some performance value. Instead of looking at the big game as an opportunity to fail, we have to view it as a unique opportunity to “show our stuff” when the lights are the brightest. We have to create some excitement and enjoyment surrounding a pressure filled environment.
We play to win. So many times we see teams that should win a game struggle because they are trying so hard to “not lose”. Focus on what you want to happen, not what you don’t want to happen. Go get what you want!
We stay the course and make simple plays. Many times in big games we think we have to do something extraordinary, but in reality we simply have to make the plays we always do. Extraordinary plays are just normal plays that are executed when it matters most. Stay the course and make the plays you always do.
Even if we have everything to lose in a big game, if we are able to do these things we can play as if we have nothing to lose. The “nothing to lose” mentality is what creates our best performances in games that matter the most. Lastly, remember, if you are in a position where you feel like you have a lot to lose in a game, that means you're in a great position to win. As uncomfortable as it might feel with all that pressure, that’s exactly where you want to be!