On Monday night, LSU football coach Les Miles was badly outcoached by Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide, spoiling a great season and squandering a golden National Championship opportunity. True, the LSU Tigers were also outplayed, but their defense largely kept them in the game and did play well enough to win.
A major trap that coaches often fall into is that they forget how much strategy is involved in the game, especially when they have talent and have had plenty of success, such as LSU did during the season. It is very easy to simply leave it all up to the players, expecting them to magically pull of the win every time. Making adjustments and staying one step ahead of your opponents are not just mere clichés, but rather they are the crux of strategy at the highest level. While Saban was playing chess last Monday night, Miles was playing checkers.
The same can be said for many times in the market, where traders look at charts or setups in a vacuum, without regard for how the overall market is acting and the underlying psychology associated with whether breakouts are holding or not on a broad scale.
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After Monday’s blowout BCS Championship game, Alabama and LSU hit the hardwood on Wednesday night. Unfortunately for LSU, the result of this one was not all that different and ‘Bama cruised to a 69-53 victory on their home floor.
A regular season SEC basketball game – especially one with very little excitement – isn’t likely to draw up many headlines. This was a unique situation, however, and the Alabama fans were ready for this one. In fact they were the headlines. Their creativity (and wonderful, wonderful trolling) throughout the game was as good as you’ll ever see.
At one point in the game, Alabama went up 21 points on LSU and the crowd erupted into a “Just Like Monday” chant. A “Jarrett Lee” chant – as well as others – could also be heard throughout.
These were solid, but the best Tide crowd moment came early on when LSU crossed the half court line.
LSU’s inability to move the ball on offense in the BCS Championship game could be summed up in one unbelievable stat. The Tigers offense crossed the 50-yard line once, and that moment came in the 4thquarter. The home Tuscaloosa crowd was very aware of this on Wednesday night and mockingly applauded and cheered LSU in the first 30 seconds of their basketball game when they crossed that magical line.
Troll Tide indeed.
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