Thoughts on the trip and the loss

First off, I can't believe I get paid to ride with people I like, then watch a basketball game, then write about it, then ride home with the same bunch. What a country.
As for the game: I'll give Central more credit for playing as well as it did for as long as it did than I will blame for falling apart late. A young team gets in trouble in a tough environment, and things start to snowball quickly. In football they say the game "sped up" on a player.
The thing Central must do is learn from this. When you have so many young players, it takes time for them to realize that they can in fact stop the bleeding. There were a couple of times in the first half when UMass went up 5 and Central came back to take the lead. The key is to get back in the game quickly. It's much easier to get a five-point hole back to even than it is an 11-point hole.
The second thing a young team needs a game like this to discover is the need to work a big deficit slowly, assuming there's time. A couple of times early in the second half Central got back to within seven or so. The Devils never finished closing the gap and paid for it later, but that's what young teams have a tough time adjusting to. Too often they'll try and make up the margin all at once, as though the 25-point basket from the old Rock N' Jock games on MTV is going to drop from the rafters and the lead can be regained in one shot. The fact that Central kept hanging around instead of totally changing its game was encouraging. Once it got out of hand the game changed, but I liked the effort.
That whole long rant simply means this: Central showed it has (or is on the way to having) some poise. It wasn't scared to play in the big building. It didn't wilt early in the second half when it couldn't score and the lead was growing. Only after UMass had delivered about the 11th knockout punch did Central finally fall over.
It was an encouraging night, especially since the team didn't sound mentally defeated afterwards. Even Coach D, as competitive a man as you'll meet, was calm after the game. The Blue Devils got smoked tonight, but they learned something that could pay huge dividends down the road. Remember this night if Central comes from 10 down in the second half of a tournament game... hmmmm a big loss to UMass showing the Blue Devils how to dig out of holes, and the lesson leading to a 10-point rally in March: sound familiar?