There are many examples in sports where highly emotional charged situation can go either way. Coming off an 11 day lay off in February and what was a pretty traumatic event for anyone, especially young people I didn't know what to expect for them. When the team was down it would have been easy to get down about the situation but that is when they mounted an impressive comeback. I believe it was said to be a top 10 comeback ever by the numbers even without the secondary motivations.
This isn't quite Buster Douglas getting knocked down and then getting up and knocking out Mike Tyson in the biggest upset ever. In small ways it was similar to the emotion he must have felt coming off the loss of his mother. That motivation is sometimes what you need to fuel the performance and peak talent that is already there. Cincinnati came into the game with a 76 NET ranking and certainly NIT aspirations. Roy Williams was in the house to support his former player adding to the atmospherics. The team had a lot to play for on the night and now an unexpected win gives them a potential winning season to keep alive.
Doing it without a true point guard added the extra layer of difficulty as well. The most encouraging aspect from a basketball point if veiw is that this wasn't fueled by a fluke double digit 50% three point shooting game. This was mostly accomplished by out rebounding them 46 to 27 and protecting the ball well enough considering the lack of a point guard. Rebounding has been the best ECU attribute all season, but it something effort and motivation allowed them to take to another level tonight.
ECU has two winnable road games coming up. A let down would probably be natural. It's also when JC not being there might hit the most as he closely traveled with them on the road. After the events of this weekend happened I really didn't, and still don't know what to expect in the macro aspect of this season either. It has the potential to focus everyone towards the same goals it seems at a time it would start to get easy to lose a team and have some infighting. Either way they got one for JC and thats awesome.
