Here’s Charlie’s latest projection through games as of Feb. 21.  Scroll over a team name for more analysis. Records reflect Division I competition only.

Automatic bids are in CAPS.

This is the absolute best time of the year for talking basketball with everyone.

Bids by Conference is going to make some people edgy…

• Big 12 (8)
• ACC (7)
• Big East (7)
• SEC (6)
• Big Ten (3)
• Atlantic 10 (3)
• Pac-10 (3)
• America East (2)
• Sun Belt (2)
• Colonial (2)

I love the ACC, was part of it for 4 years.  It is arguably one of the Top 2 Conferences in the country year after year… but, 7 bids is high!  I say 5.  UNC and Maryland are all questions and NC State is on the cusp.  Each of those teams are currently 5-7 or 6-6 in the ACC.  If you allow all of them in, how then do you say no to Wake Forest and maybe Boston College?  Both are either 5-7 or 6-6 and Wake Forest is a head of UNC and Maryland in the ACC standings.  don’t go to the RPI and Strength of Schedule… it’s all comparable.

Why not give the Atlantic 10, Colonial or Mountain West a 4th, 3rd or 2nd team in, respectively.   Maybe give one or two of the MAAC, MAC, America East or Missouri Valley and 2nd team in.

Everyone screams for more parity in Women’s Basketball.  You can’t have parity if the Top 5 Conferences hold 31 of the 64 spots in the NCAA tournament every year.  Those coaches will never be able to consistently convince (recruit) top prospects to play in conferences where only one team goes to the NCAA’s year in and year out.

We’ll see…

Van Chancellor

This article on LSU and Coach Chancellor’s displeasure with his team’s turnovers made me think of a simple yet effective addition to all of your drills and practice.  Coach Chancellor wants less turnovers and for players to value the ball… funny, don’t we all.

Joe Logan

Joe Logan (now Head Coach at Loyola College in Baltimore, MD) was as assistant at St. Joe’s in Philadelphia, PA. and told me about this one.   I went to practice some years ago and this is what they did to help their team gain some value for taking care of the ball.

The ball rack was rolled out for the start of practice.  It contained 15 balls.  As practice was going on, each time the team turned the ball over – a manager would remove a ball from the rack and set it “gently” in the stands.  No one yelled, no one screamed, no one said anything.  Coach Chancellor may not like this part.

As they moved through practice, this continued until there were no balls left on the rack.  At that point, Cindy Griffin (Head Coach at St. Joe’s) blew the whistle, calmly put everyone on the baseline and they began to run down and backs.  Not all out sprints, but not jogging either.  Just down and back, down and back.

Cindy Griffin

There was approximately one hour left in practice when this occurred.  The team ran.  They ran for the remainder of the practice time.  About a twenty minutes to a half an hour into the run, Coach Griffin stopped them – put a player on the line for a 1-and-1.  If she made both, the team got a (one) ball back and they could resume practice.  Is she missed the front end or the back end – no ball and the resume running.  About ten minutes later Coach Griffin did it again – pressure free throw shooting and an opportunity to get back into practice.

The team earned one ball back and resumed the drill or segment where they left off.  Shortly after that, a turnover occurred and they were out of balls and back running up and down the court.

Once practice was over they huddled up and Coach Griffin calmly explained the value of taking care of the ball better.

After practice I sat with Joe and asked him how that all came about.  He explained, the Hawks were about 3 games into the season and they were averaging over 30 turnovers!  They had to figure something out.  They were screaming about turnovers in every drill, every day – it was counter productive.  This simple yet very effective addition to every drill or segment they did really helped them cut there turnovers down.

The next summer we used it in training camp with the New York Liberty and it was effective there as well.

1. Connecticut

2. Stanford

3. North Carolina

3. Ohio State

5. Notre Dame

6. Duke

7. Baylor

8. Tennessee

9. Xavier

10. Michigan State

11. Oklahoma

12. Virginia

14. Arizona State

15. Rutgers

16. Florida State

17. LSU

18. DePaul

19. Georgia Tech

20. Texas

21. Vanderbilt

22. Middle Tennessee

23. San Diego State

24. South Dakota State

25. Florida

*Details – Continue

1. Connecticut: 39 consecutive wins.   A fifth perfect season.  Two questions:  How long will the streak last?, who can possibly beat the Huskies?   78 in a row and another National Championship?  Never say never.  Point guard Renee Montgomery is gone.  Don’t forget, this season’s WNBA MVP Diana Taurasi won two titles after Sue Bird graduated.  Maya Moore has a chance to do the same.

2. Stanford: Back-to-Back trips to the Final Four with only Jillian Harmon missing from the regular rotation. Jayne Appel is a versatile force and may have something to say about who is voted the Nation’s best player when it is all said and done.  Stanford – UConn final?

3. North Carolina: Italee Lucas, Cetera DeGraffenreid and Jessica Breland will be surrounded by the Nation’s #2 recruiting class.  That should make the Tar Heels the preseason favorite in the ACC and in contention for the National title.  Athletically they have the best chance to hang with UConn.

3. Ohio State: Jantel Lavender and Samantha Prahalis will have a year of experience together.   Add two-time Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Shavelle Little to the mix and you have one of the Nation’s best teams.

5. Notre Dame: The Fighting Irish have a chance to be very, very good.  How does Skylar Diggins fit into the mix is the first big priority.  Returning from injuries are Devereaux Peters and Brittany Mallory.  Staying injury free is a key.  This is a well-established roster; chemistry early on will be something to watch.

6. Duke: Jasmine Thomas, Krystal Thomas and Karima Christmas are the unquestionable leaders of a team.  This might be the first full season where the personnel are most indicative of  Coach Joanne P. McCallie’s system.  Jasmine Thomas has really evolved into a lead guard who can play like a point, but score like a wing.

7. Baylor: Is there anyone who doesn’t know who 6-foot-8 freshman Brittney Griner is?  Coach Kim Mulkey returns a very good roster, which includes Danielle Wilson (if her knee recovers) and Morghan Medlock. That core will play a larger role in keeping the Lady Bears among the Nation’s best teams.

8. Tennessee: For nearly any other school the ’08-’09 season would have been a good year.  In Knoxville, it was one of the worst ever.  If Coach Summit’s freshmen learned some lessons, then Tennessee could be back to its usual position with the elite of women’s college basketball.

9. Xavier: Amber Harris is healthy.  Combined with Ta’Shia Phillips, they might form the best frontcourt tandem this side of UConn’s Tina Charles and Maya Moore.  If XU’s guard play excels, look for the Musketeers to be playing in very late March.

10. Michigan State: The 2008 – 09 Spartans were within one shot of the Elite Eight.   From that team only Mia Johnson is not on the roster.  They weren’t consistent last year, but those lessons learned should pay dividends in 2009 – 10.

11. Oklahoma: Coach Sherri Coale will have to do a double take when she takes the floor.  Not having the Paris sisters there will seem very strange.  The Sooners bring back the rest of their Final Four team.  Danielle Robinson and Whitney Hand lead that group and could be one of the best backcourt combinations in the country.

12. Virginia: This is most talented Cavaliers team since Dawn and the Burge twins walked on Grounds.  Monica Wright leads a solid core.  Paulisha Kellum returns after a season-ending knee injury in ’08-’09 to stabilize the backcourt.  The departure of Lyndra Littles, Ashia Mohammed and Kelly Hartig inside will need to be solved quickly.  Potential ACC Rookie of the Year China Crosby, returning PTG Arianna Moorer and wing Lexie Gerson will play a huge role in the backcourt.

14. Arizona State: Coach Turner-Thorne loses plenty, including WNBA back-up extraordinaire Briann January.  The Sun Devils should have a solid nucleolus, led by Dymond Simon and Danielle Orsillo.  Look for the Sun Devils to be back in the hunt for the Pac-10 title.

15. Rutgers: Coach Vivian Stringer will have to replace starters Kia Vaughn, Heather Zurich and Epiphanny Prince.  The loss of Prince is huge and puts pressure on the freshmen to grow up quickly.  Rutgers will guard the daylights out of you… questions will rise about who will score and who will lead.

16. Florida State: Wade and Wooden watch candidate Jacinta Monroe and Courtney Ward will continue what the Seminoles started in 2008-09, sharing the ACC regular-season title.  An off-season trip to South Africa surely allowed Coach Sue Semrau and her staff an opportunity to fine-tune the next step for the Seminoles.

17. LSU: Everyone returns except Kristen Morris for the Lady Tigers.  This team has improved substantially throughout the 2008-09 season.  Allison Hightower is a legit All-American candidate and they have Coach Van Chancellor.  This could be one of the surprise teams come March.

18. DePaul: Deirdre Naughton and Sam Quigley return to direct Coach Doug Bruno’s offense in Chicago.  How that plays out in the brutal Big East Conference is yet to be seen.  Look for a great deal of runnin’ and gunnin’ by the Blue Demons.

19. Georgia Tech: The Yellow Jackets are perhaps the most physical team in the country.  Few teams guard you like GT.   They need to become a better offensive team and take some of the pressure off that defense.  Coach MaChelle Joseph has nearly everyone back to make it happen.   Iasia Hemingway transferring to Syracuse is a loss, but not one that is insurmountable.

20. Texas: Returning are the Nash sisters, along with Brittainey Raven.  This group will be driven to get the memory of a poor 2008-09 finish out of their mouths.  Talented and hungry, the Longhorns will be a dangerous team.

21. Vanderbilt: Jennifer Risper and Christina Wirth are gone – those are huge loses, but significant talent remains.  Coach Melanie Balcomb has a tremendous ability to teach offense and has always put teams on the floor who over achieve.  Two Sweet Sixteen’s in the last three years and two SEC Championships… we might be looking at #3 of each in 2009 – 10.

22. Middle Tennessee: The Blue Raiders return everyone.  Third team All-American Alysha Clark, the nation’s leading scorer last season, leads a team that went 28-6 and nearly won at Michigan State in the first round of the NCAA tournament.  This team will make noise in March.  The middle of the BCS bunch will be holding their breath on Selection Monday to hope they are NOT playing MTSU.

23. San Diego State: Coach Beth Burns returns four of five starters, including 6-4 center Paris Johnson from a 24-8 team.  Johnson, emerged as one of the best rebounders in the country last year and has SDSU a team to watch in the Mountain West.

24. South Dakota State: Jennifer Warkenthien departs after a tremendous career and devastating loss to Baylor in the NCAA tournament.  Coach Aaron Johnson’s teams transition to full-time Division I status is over – the Jackrabbits are for real and here to stay.

25. Florida: The departure of Sha Brooks and Marshae Dotson is substantial, but Coach Amanda Butler’s cupboard is not bare.  Jennifer Mosser (due back injury), sharpshooters Steffi Sorensen and Jordan Jones (South Carolina’s leading scorer in 2007-08) form a solid backcourt.  The Gators should be in the SEC title hunt right to the end.

On the Bubble: The next six teams you could see cracking the ABR Top 25:

California: The Bears will largely be relying on Alexis Gray-Lawson and a top-five recruiting class to stay near the top of the Pac-10.

Pittsburgh: Can Coach Agnus Berenato maintain Pitt as a top-25 power without Shavonte Zellous?

Texas A&M: Tyra White and Sydney Colson have to step up with Danielle Gant and Takia Starks gone.

Boston College: Stefanie Murphy and Carolyn Swords are back.  This might very well be the ACC’s surprise team.

Kansas: Angel Goodrich hurt her knee it was very difficult for the Jayhawks to make a second straight trip to the NCAA tournament. The WNIT finals run helped them grow and develop.  Is Kansas primed for a better 2009-10?  I think so.

Louisville: Coach Jeff Walz will prove he can coach, if anyone wondered, without Angel McCoughtry and Candyce Bingham.  The roster is “sneaky” good, look out.

Let’s realize this… college kids to to parties.  All of them.  Athletes are no different.  Even the most dedicated of athletes still go.  It’s fun, it’s social, it’s their friends, classmates and peers.  Drinking or no drinking, your student-athletes are going to be at parties and potentially in the wrong place at the wrong time at some point during their collegiate career.   Athletes at parties is nothing new.  What is new is the technology.  Technology has put every intoxicated or high athlete on the front page of newspapers and all over the internet.  We all saw Michael Phelps.

As coaches, we are going to need to be prepared to help our student-athletes through this.  Helping them through it is the key, especially with female athletes.  It can not simply be about discipline.  Though discipline, responsibility and accountability are necessary, discipline is after the fact.  Discipline is a reaction.  We need to be proactive, help educate before they are in these situations.  Empower our student-athletes to make better decisions.  Hopefully, avoid as many situations as possible.

One of the best ways to do that is through establishing an acceptable “Standards of Behavior.”  ”Rules” are made to be broken.  ”Standards” are developed to be attained, much like goals.  Athletes are goal oriented.  With standards you tie the group together.  The strength in decision making is in numbers.  When a team has an agreed upon standards of behavior, they support and police each other.  It is a powerful tool to enabling student-athletes to make the right choice.

The catch… even when student-athletes make the right choice, it may look wrong.

Although the news headlines and photo snaps will touch Men’s Basketball and Football more than any other sport, don’t think it doesn’t happen in women’s athletics as well.  Without details, we all KNOW it does.

While shopping recently at RadioShack, Florida quarterback Tim Tebow was approached by a woman with a seemingly innocuous request to take a picture with him. But an instant before her mother snapped the photo with a cellphone camera, the woman tried to take off her shirt.

“It’s happened four or five times,” Tebow said with a sigh. “Most of the time I just dive out of the picture. Some people can just be crazy.”

Tebow is all too familiar with the omnipresent spotlight.

“It really hinders you from going places,” he said. “People will do a lot of things to get you to try and look like you’re not doing something right.”

In the era of Twitter, Facebook, badjocks.com and Deadspin.com, being the big star on campus no longer means only being the life of the party. For all the images of marching bands, cheerleaders and raucous student fans associated with college football and other sports, the romantic notion of a quaint campus life for star quarterbacks like Tebow, Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford and Texas’ Colt McCoy has all but disappeared, killed off by a combination of cloying fans and new technology.

We monitored social networking Web sites all the time.  We collected cellphones on the road.  We have heard that it is common for cellphones to be collected at the door of college parties to try to keep embarrassing or illegal moments off the Internet.

“The latest stuff with the cellphones and digital devices has erased the boundaries between public and private,” Michael Oriard, an Oregon State professor who has written three books about the culture of college football, said in a telephone interview with CBSSports.com. “It’s an enormous jump, as it’s not just ESPN or Fox cameras, but it’s everyone with a cellphone.”

Oriard, a former Notre Dame football captain, said that college athletes, who are unpaid, experience the problems of celebrities like Tom Brady and Paris Hilton without the monetary payoff. “It’s the downside of celebrity without the upside of it,” he said.

Bradford, McCoy and Tebow, the leading vote-getters for the Heisman Trophy last season, are among the most recognizable people in their states, and they receive intense scrutiny.

McCoy said he called the police when a man was screaming outside his apartment in the middle of the night. Tebow said that he could not go on a date because pictures would be on the Internet in 10 minutes. Bradford, who has been sidelined recently with a shoulder sprain, has had contentious encounters with professional autograph seekers. Each of the players passed up a potential multimillion-dollar N.F.L. contract to return to college. While hanging out with their friends and competing for a national title, there are awkward moments.

At a restaurant recently, McCoy said, a woman in an adjacent booth appeared to be talking on her cellphone but was actually using it to record video of him. He said that he was frequently filmed while walking to class and that he was cautious when people asked to have their photographs taken with him.

As Kent Bradford, Sam’s father, said, “You don’t know if you’re actually having that picture made with a known gambler or a known prostitute or a known drug dealer.”

The three quarterbacks, who are on full scholarship and enjoy the adulation they receive, do not bemoan their fate or complain vigorously. But under NCAA rules, they are not allowed to accept any gifts or receive preferential treatment. All the while, they feel the loss of privacy and crave a little space when in public.

Oriard said technology and social networking had caused another great shift in the way athletes are viewed, following ESPN and 24-hour cable news, which transformed them into celebrities.

“You definitely have to have your guard on everywhere you go,” McCoy said.

Compromising photos and videos of athletes often turn up on the Web. The typical path is from a cellphone to a Facebook page to a message board. Then the mainstream news media pick it up.

Perhaps the most popular distributor of athletes’ pictures is Deadspin.com, known for its snide commentary on modern sports. Deadspin’s editor, A. J. Daulerio, said the site feeds the age-old fascination with athletes’ lives off the field.

“Social networking has put a lot of this out there,” he said. “I think people are still under the impression that those sites are like the diary under the bed. They’re not.”

Our student-athletes need to know and understand this.  The party photo’s on Facebook that provide a ton of laughs in 2009 will turn up in a potential employers office during the summer of 2010, 2011, 2012….. Good-Bye internship.

Autograph seekers create another incessant intrusion; eBay has turned them into entrepreneurs. Kent Bradford said he often finds footballs and 8×10 photographs of his son on the doorstep of his Oklahoma City home.

While in New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony last December, Bradford was continually pestered by a professional autograph collector seeking his signature on a photograph, said Kenny Mossman, the senior associate athletic director for communications at Oklahoma. After Bradford declined to sign several times, the collector ripped the photograph and threw the pieces in his face.

“Sometimes it does get frustrating,” Bradford said.

Some autograph requests can also be bizarre: McCoy has signed a young fan’s forehead and babies’ diapers. When a woman asks him to sign the chest of her shirt, he opts for her shoulder.

“It’s just crazy that you run into people like that,” McCoy said.

But even staying at home cannot always protect college athletes from unwanted attention. Last season a man showed up at McCoy’s apartment at 3 a.m. and woke him by beating on the door and screaming.

“He was calling me by my first name,” McCoy said. “He was yelling at me and telling me to come outside and meet him out there in the yard.”

The police were called and they took the man away, McCoy said. Shortly thereafter, McCoy and his roommates moved to a place where his pickup truck would be less visible.

McCoy said the man had been following him home after practices. Since the incident, he said, he has been more cautious about coming and going at the same time every day.

“It was really scary at the time,” McCoy said. “I really had no idea what to do, how to handle it. I was pretty kind of rattled there for a couple of weeks.”

For those that coach female student-athletes; caution, education and communication are vital to protecting their safety.

Eric Musselman

One of my goals this year is to travel to as many different successful schools, professional teams, businesses and organizations to observe and learn from the wide variety of successful philosophies out there.  Successful people are successful people no matter the profession.  Success is bread with a variety of traits and to be able to have the time to invest in discovering these systems, philosophies and traits is a tremendous gift.  We can all learn every day.  Those lessons can be applied to coaching, anything. My time away from the court is going to make me a better person, father, husband and basketball coach.

Below you will find Coach Musselman’s thoughts and the original article by KC Joyner.

Make the game plan specific to the opponent.

Belichick’s play-calling is the epitome of the Tony Dungy saying that I have been so fond of quoting over the years, “70% of NFL games are lost rather than won.” Belichick takes this mind-set to heart by always going after the weakness of an opponent. If it is a schematic weakness such as an offense always blocking a certain type of blitz the same way, he’ll exploit it. If it is a personnel weakness, he’ll target that. This is by far and bar none the centerpiece of the Belichick philosophy of winning games.

Build your team so that it can go after any of these weaknesses.

The Patriots lost the best quarterback in the NFL not even one quarter into the 2008 season, yet they were still able to adjust their offense to attack defenses in any manner needed. Need proof? Try this. The Pats rushed for 257 yards against Denver in Week 7, the most by a New England team in 23 years. They also had a backup quarterback become only the fifth player in NFL history to throw for over 400 passing yards in back-to-back games. They found a way to run or pass with extraordinary effectiveness whenever they needed to.

Combine athletic ability with intelligence as often as possible.

This has two rewards. First, intelligent players are going to be able to adjust to new game plans. Second, because the game plan is based on the opponent, the plan each week is always going to be a fresh one. This approach will appeal to intelligent players and keep their interest levels higher than it would unintelligent ones. Mental stimulation is an extremely effective tool in helping an organization stay focused late in the year.

A team doesn’t need a great running back to win.

A good one will do if you have quality blocking up front (and New England had that in 2008, ranking 2nd in the team POA win percentage run blocking metric). And if all you have are a collection of solid backs, always use the healthiest one. This is why the Patriots drive fantasy football coaches up a wall -– they’ll always go with the healthy back and will never let anyone know who that is until the game starts.

If you can’t go after a specific weakness in your opponent, use every tool in the playbook to put your players into the highest percentage position possible.

The Patriots provided a textbook case of this in the Week 7 game against Denver last year. They repeatedly called plays with pre-snap motion that had the receiver get up to full speed right as he was reaching the tackle or tight end at the edge of the offensive front wall. What this did was prevent the defender from getting a clear view of the receiver. Because of this, he would not know that the man he was due to cover suddenly went from a slow trot to a full sprint and would thus be at a speed disadvantage at the snap. This happened time and again that night and caught Denver defenders slow on multiple occasions.

Don’t ask players to do things they aren’t capable of.

I spoke in the Kansas City section how Matt Cassel had more than a bit of trouble throwing vertical passes. The downfield passing attack was the focal point of the 2007 Patriots, but Cassel wasn’t capable of it, so Belichick altered the game plan to ameliorate his weakness as much as possible.

The team’s psychological state cannot be ignored.

Before the Week 8 game against St. Louis, Belichick showed his team a video of them being solemn and grim and told them no more, he wanted them to loosen up. He expects his players to be professionals who don’t need the constant prodding that a personnel-based coach would give them, but he also knows his role in keeping them on an even keel when they get too serious or too laid back.

Teach players how to do the high percentage things.

The Week 11 game versus the Jets on NFL Network had a stat that illustrates this team’s aptitude in this area. Coming into that contest, the Patriots were the least-penalized team in the league, with 26 penalties in the first nine games. According to the broadcast crew, that was the fewest penalties a team had in the first nine games of the season since the 1962 Steelers.

Teach players that if the defense is giving you anything, take as much of it as you can.

Wes Welker is a master at this when he runs crossing routes. Most receivers will run that route at the same depth no matter how deep the linebackers drop. Welker will base his route depth on where the linebackers are. If they go seven yards off the line of scrimmage, he’ll run it four to five yards downfield. If they drop to ten yards back, he’ll run that same route at a seven to eight yard depth. It is one of the reasons that Randy Moss and Welker ranked #1 and #3 in short pass YPA last year.

Know how to work the clock in very creative ways.

The most famous instance of this was the intentional safety New England took in that Monday Night game against the Broncos a few years ago that helped them to a win, but they did something just as creative against the Bills in Week 10.
The Pats had a first-and-goal at the Buffalo one-yard line up 13-3 with 3:18 left in the 4th quarter. Most teams would have just tried to punch the ball in, but Belichick wanted to run some clock while at the same time not losing yardage. What he ended up doing was having Cassel try a couple of half-hearted quarterback sneaks. Cassel didn’t make an effort to score but he also made sure the ball stayed at the one-yard line. Those two plays took the clock down to the two-minute warning and on the next play Belichick called for a run by BenJarvus Green-Ellis that resulted in a touchdown. They could have picked up those seven points earlier but Belichick knew the value of keeping the two-minute clock stoppage out of the Bills’ hands.

Don’t let superstition get in the way of things.

Early in the 2008 season, New England had back-to-back games at San Francisco and San Diego. Instead of flying back to the East Coast and then returning back a few days later, the Patriots just stayed out west the entire time. That trip ended with a disheartening 30-10 loss against the Chargers. New England then had another western double dip with games at Seattle and Oakland in Weeks 14 and 15. Many coaches would have changed their travel plans and gone back east out of a superstitious mind-set to avoid a repeat of the SD loss, but Belichick knew that staying out west was still the best thing to do. New England won both games and thus validated his approach.

Don’t let a macho attitude get in the way of things.

Ty Warren missed a few games late last year with a torn groin. By Week 15, the injury had healed some but not fully. He told the coaches that he could play on run downs but not on passing downs.

The Belichick Way: Still the Best

By KC JOYNER

This is an excerpt from Scientific Football 2009:
After reviewing the game notes from the 2008 season, I am convinced that Bill Belichick is the NFL’s version of The Beatles.
That The Fab Four were extraordinarily charismatic was evident from the very moment they set foot on American soil and Beatlemania took off. What wasn’t known at the time was just how far into the ground their reservoir of ability went.

Patriots Coach Bill Belichick. Is he more like Lennon or McCartney? (Gary Wiepert/Reuters)

The Beatles’ first five albums (Please Please Me through Help!) contained enough brilliant works to ensure them a place in musical history, but that was only the beginning. Those were followed up by a run of truly phenomenal records. Rubber Soul. Revolver. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Abbey Road. I didn’t grow up in the 1960s, so I can only imagine what it must have been like to see this artistic genius displayed over the course of eight years. Just when you thought that the last album was by far the best the boys from Liverpool could do, they went out and topped themselves again.

Two interrelated items made John, Paul, George and Ringo’s works so amazing. The first is that they could take a musical type being done by their competitors and add a Beatles touch that raised it a quantum level. A good example of this is when Paul McCartney wrote the song Helter Skelter in response to reading a comment by The Who’s Pete Townshend saying that the song I Can See For Miles was “the loudest, rawest, dirtiest song The Who had ever recorded.” McCartney figured that he could do that one better and set about doing exactly that.

The second is that they saw a musical landscape that their competitors simply weren’t capable of seeing. This is best told via an anecdote about the Beach Boys’ lead singer, Brian Wilson. Wilson was so blown away by Rubber Soul that he dedicated his life to trying to equal or beat it. He seemingly accomplished that goal with Pet Sounds, but that only drove The Beatles to take things up a notch by recording what is widely hailed as the greatest album of all time, Sgt. Pepper’s. The ingeniousness of that record was so vast that Wilson reportedly had a nervous breakdown upon hearing it. He came to the same conclusion the rest of the world did – musically speaking, these guys were just on another level that no one else could reach.

That’s how it is with Belichick. Even after all of these years, no one comes close to having the same kind of grasp that he has on operating a football team.

The funny part about this is that the New England approach seems simple enough for anyone to implement. It merely requires following a set of core principles:__* Make the game plan specific to the opponent. Belichick’s play-calling is the epitome of the Tony Dungy saying that I have been so fond of quoting over the years, “70% of NFL games are lost rather than won.” Belichick takes this mind-set to heart by always going after the weakness of an opponent. If it is a schematic weakness such as an offense always blocking a certain type of blitz the same way, he’ll exploit it. If it is a personnel weakness, he’ll target that. This is by far and bar none the centerpiece of the Belichick philosophy of winning games.

* Build your team so that it can go after any of these weaknesses. The Patriots lost the best quarterback in the NFL not even one quarter into the 2008 season, yet they were still able to adjust their offense to attack defenses in any manner needed. Need proof? Try this. The Pats rushed for 257 yards against Denver in Week 7, the most by a New England team in 23 years. They also had a backup quarterback become only the fifth player in NFL history to throw for over 400 passing yards in back-to-back games. They found a way to run or pass with extraordinary effectiveness whenever they needed to.

* Combine athletic ability with intelligence as often as possible. This has two rewards. First, intelligent players are going to be able to adjust to new game plans. Second, because the game plan is based on the opponent, the plan each week is always going to be a fresh one. This approach will appeal to intelligent players and keep their interest levels higher than it would unintelligent ones. Mental stimulation is an extremely effective tool in helping an organization stay focused late in the year.

* A team doesn’t need a great running back to win. A good one will do if you have quality blocking up front (and New England had that in 2008, ranking 2nd in the team POA win percentage run blocking metric). And if all you have are a collection of solid backs, always use the healthiest one. This is why the Patriots drive fantasy football coaches up a wall -– they’ll always go with the healthy back and will never let anyone know who that is until the game starts.

* If you can’t go after a specific weakness in your opponent, use every tool in the playbook to put your players into the highest percentage position possible. The Patriots provided a textbook case of this in the Week 7 game against Denver last year. They repeatedly called plays with pre-snap motion that had the receiver get up to full speed right as he was reaching the tackle or tight end at the edge of the offensive front wall. What this did was prevent the defender from getting a clear view of the receiver. Because of this, he would not know that the man he was due to cover suddenly went from a slow trot to a full sprint and would thus be at a speed disadvantage at the snap. This happened time and again that night and caught Denver defenders slow on multiple occasions.

* Don’t ask players to do things they aren’t capable of. I spoke in the Kansas City section how Matt Cassel had more than a bit of trouble throwing vertical passes. The downfield passing attack was the focal point of the 2007 Patriots, but Cassel wasn’t capable of it, so Belichick altered the game plan to ameliorate his weakness as much as possible.

* The team’s psychological state cannot be ignored. Before the Week 8 game against St. Louis, Belichick showed his team a video of them being solemn and grim and told them no more, he wanted them to loosen up. He expects his players to be professionals who don’t need the constant prodding that a personnel-based coach would give them, but he also knows his role in keeping them on an even keel when they get too serious or too laid back.

* Teach players how to do the high percentage things. The Week 11 game versus the Jets on NFL Network had a stat that illustrates this team’s aptitude in this area. Coming into that contest, the Patriots were the least-penalized team in the league, with 26 penalties in the first nine games. According to the broadcast crew, that was the fewest penalties a team had in the first nine games of the season since the 1962 Steelers.

* Teach players that if the defense is giving you anything, take as much of it as you can. Wes Welker is a master at this when he runs crossing routes. Most receivers will run that route at the same depth no matter how deep the linebackers drop. Welker will base his route depth on where the linebackers are. If they go seven yards off the line of scrimmage, he’ll run it four to five yards downfield. If they drop to ten yards back, he’ll run that same route at a seven to eight yard depth. It is one of the reasons that Randy Moss and Welker ranked #1 and #3 in short pass YPA last year.

* Know how to work the clock in very creative ways. The most famous instance of this was the intentional safety New England took in that Monday Night game against the Broncos a few years ago that helped them to a win, but they did something just as creative against the Bills in Week 10.

The Pats had a first-and-goal at the Buffalo one-yard line up 13-3 with 3:18 left in the 4th quarter. Most teams would have just tried to punch the ball in, but Belichick wanted to run some clock while at the same time not losing yardage. What he ended up doing was having Cassel try a couple of half-hearted quarterback sneaks. Cassel didn’t make an effort to score but he also made sure the ball stayed at the one-yard line. Those two plays took the clock down to the two-minute warning and on the next play Belichick called for a run by BenJarvus Green-Ellis that resulted in a touchdown. They could have picked up those seven points earlier but Belichick knew the value of keeping the two-minute clock stoppage out of the Bills’ hands.

* Don’t let superstition get in the way of things. Early in the 2008 season, New England had back-to-back games at San Francisco and San Diego. Instead of flying back to the East Coast and then returning back a few days later, the Patriots just stayed out west the entire time. That trip ended with a disheartening 30-10 loss against the Chargers.

New England then had another western double dip with games at Seattle and Oakland in Weeks 14 and 15. Many coaches would have changed their travel plans and gone back east out of a superstitious mind-set to avoid a repeat of the SD loss, but Belichick knew that staying out west was still the best thing to do. New England won both games and thus validated his approach.

* Don’t let a macho attitude get in the way of things. Ty Warren missed a few games late last year with a torn groin. By Week 15, the injury had healed some but not fully. He told the coaches that he could play on run downs but not on passing downs.
That’s exactly what Belichick wants his players to do. He wants an honest assessment of what they can do and what they can’t do physically. Once they tell him that, he knows it is up to the coaches to figure out what they have to do to work around it.

The real beauty of this is that it shows how intelligence can be used in conjunction with the typical macho attitude. The Pats want their players to gut it out but not at the cost of hurting the team. Many coaches would say, “you have to be at 100% or we won’t use you” and force the player to either play hurt (which damages the team and could put the player at longer term risk of injury) or not play at all (which limits the benefit the team could be getting from him).

I think some of these coaches do this because they can’t get over the macho bull of no compromise. It may also be that they do this because some intelligence and thinking are required to do the compromise. The physical limitation means that the head coach and his staff have to remember that the player can’t go on passing downs and change their system accordingly. Belichick and his staff are smart enough to do this but there are coaching staffs out there that either aren’t smart enough, or they are too macho to use what intelligence they have.

The Beatles took what looked to be an uncomplicated form of music and turned it into an art form that many have tried to replicate but none have come close to duplicating. Belichick’s seemingly basic methods are in the same boat. They look easy but, as was noted both in Blindsided and in a terrific ESPN The Magazine 2009 NFL Preview Magazine article by Seth Wickersham, Belichick seems to be the only one who can master them.

(You can follow KC Joyner on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/ckavry or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kcjoynertfs).

ACC MEN’S BASKETBALL SCHEDULE

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FROM VPHOOPS.COM

2009 PRE-SEASON WNIT 1st ROUND

All 2008-2009 team records in parentheses
Friday, Nov. 13, 2009
Eastern Illinois (24-9) at Ohio State (29-6), 5 p.m. ET
UTEP (18-12) at Florida Gulf Coast (26-5), 7 p.m. ET
Arkansas-Little Rock (26-7) at Oklahoma State (17-16), 7 p.m. ET
Towson (17-13) at West Virginia (18-15), 7 p.m. ET
Winthrop (16-16) at Georgia Tech (22-10), 7:30 p.m. ET
Chicago State (16-13) at Bowling Green (29-5), 7:30 p.m. ET
North Carolina A&T (26-7) at Marist (29-4), 7:30 p.m. ET
Northern Colorado (12-18) at New Mexico (25-11), 9 p.m. ET

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