So sports fans, you probably know this game was staged as the “battle for the city of Memphis”…the #1 ranked, undefeated Memphis faces Tennessee. But beyond all the hullabaloo about that matchup, I want to take you into the parts of the game we can all transfer into lessons for our own lives.

Managing teams, whether it’s a work group, or a college basketball team, is challenging. But there are characteristics in common that can strengthen the process and make for a stronger program and better team management.

1) Regardless of the sport or the level of play from little league to the pros, no team can consistently play their star player all game, every game. It truly takes a team and even the strongest players absolutely have to rest to play their best.

2) A successful team is as much about how they behave when they’re down in points as it does when they’re winning. Keeping their focus, their composure and maintaining their poise positions a losing team to seize the opportunity to move ahead.

3) A player may not start out well, but may be the star that eventually shines and creates the cohesive blend that leads to victory. Such was the case in this game with Tennessee’s #30, J.P. Prince. He had no points in the first half. Zero. Second half, he had 13 points!

We can safely assume that Prince had proven himself previously and so Bruce Pearl and the Tennessee coaching staff were highly unlikely to write him off just because he had a scoreless first half. What team members are you coaching who have yet to recognize their full potential? Do you keep putting them in the game or have you benched them and berated them for less than exemplary performance?

How we treat the members of our team when they’re performing poorly is as important, if not more important, than the way we interact with them when they are at the peak of their performance. Anyone can get by with natural ability, but laying the foundation of composure and confidence that make them true winners happens when they are billed as losers. Some players have the natural ability to mold adversity into an ingredient for success, but most aren’t so lucky. They either fall into the victim attitude and blame their performance on everyone around them, or their inner critic becomes the only voice they hear and they can’t find a foothold on which to claw their way back to a winning attitude.

Stick with your team members in the scoreless halves of their performance with your organization. It may be years before some of them really hit their stride, but if you aren’t watching and mentoring the tiny steps they take toward success, you may miss the opportunity to nurture the second-half star that hands you a championship.

Woah…this blog has been laden with so many sports metaphors I almost feel the need to go chest bump someone! But I think it’s important to remind ourselves of all the J.P. Princes who surround us…the players that display the resilience to stay in the game and to keep going even when they miss shot after shot. The poise and the confidence to stay in the game doesn’t just come from within the player…it comes from the coaches who imbue the players with the sense of support to keep shooting and the teammates who say, it’s all right dude, shake it off. Who can you support on the way to the second half success of their performance?