Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

The Final Score

The “final score” is not the final score. My final score is how prepared you were to execute near your own particular level of competence, both individually and as a team.

There is nothing wrong with that other fellow being better than you are, as long as you did everything you possibly could to prepare yourself for the competition. That is all you have control over. That is all you should concern yourself with. It may be that the other fellow’s level of competency is simply higher than yours. That doesn’t make you a loser.

In 1962 in the Final Four against Cincinnati (who won the championship that year), we lost in the last few seconds of our semifinal game. However, Walter Hazzard, Gary Cunningham, Peter Blackman, John Green, ...