Regionals is the best Tournament

            Teams use results of games against Elite teams to measure the quality of their season.  They often brag about playing close against some great team or taking half or getting more breaks against them than any other team at the tournament.

            Goose used to laugh when he heard us Illinois guys talk about how we came close to a quarterfinals team or how, if our Oline didn’t collapse for 3 points, we would have beaten a semifinals team.  The thread uniting all those games was when they happened.  The regular season is a time when teams aren’t focused or in kill mode.  Elite teams don’t get stoked to play some second team from a big city, but those second teams are out there to prove themselves against the big dogs and respectable results happen.      

Good teams always have another gear.  They can always raise it when their season is on the line and when they are willing to ball hard enough to make that season last longer.  At 2010 Natties Austin predicted that Oregon would choke.  His reasoning, Oregon had been playing at a super high level all season and come Nationals their competition was going to rise to the occasion and they wouldn’t have any room to go up.

            Let’s pick on an elite team named SuperStrongFastGuys and a second tier team named NormalGuys.  During the regular season they face several times and the score differential is usually about 3-4 points.  NormalGuys are pumped, they think they are right there, they think they can put up respectable numbers every day.  The difference is that SuperStrongFastGuys aren’t focused, they aren’t even trying against the NormalGuys and they are still winning by 3 or 4.

            Then one morning its Regionals and the SuperStrongFastGuys aren’t fucking around and they whoop the poop out of the NormalGuys; the NormalGuys have to spend an hour at Taco Bell just so that they can poop again before the end of the month.

            A few times in recent past Illinois conveniently woke up on Regionals championship Sunday and decided to rage as hard as they could, the result was a ticket to Nationals.  If you fancy yourself a great team you had better be able to prove it in the big ones or every meaningful game throughout the season loses its !.