Amaker responded: “Yeah, I think that’s a great statement and analysis of our program.”
You could see this team grapple with that weight early in the year. At a press conference earlier this season, senior Wesley Saunders rattled off all of the great leaders he’s played with. There was Oliver McNally ’13 and Keith Wright ’13 when he was a freshman, now-assistant coach Christian Webster ’14 when he was a sophomore, and Laurent Rivard ’14, Kyle Casey ’13-’14, and Brandyn Curry ’13-’14 last season.
When Saunders was done speaking, someone in the room (not me, again, I promise) chimed in: I guess you guys are the leaders now, huh?
He took a second, smiled and responded, “Yeah, I guess so.”
The seniors might have struggled with their new leadership duties early in the year, but they found them in time. After the loss to Dartmouth, senior Jonah Travis and his classmates spoke vigorously to the other players in closed team meetings, and Moundou-Missi, Saunders, and others could often be seen instructing and encouraging teammates during timeouts by the end of the year. Quiet players in past years, they became the heart of the team. Players like freshman Andre Chatfield will now rattle off their names in the years to come.
Moundou-Missi got his form back too. In February, his shots per game went back to its normal average and he made nearly twice as many as he did in December. He starting drawing more fouls again. In March, he looked even better, jumping up to 13 shots per game and 13 points per game.
Throughout the month of February, when the Crimson went 7-1, Amaker always talked about how his team was improving and gelling.
“I think you’ve seen the growth in all of our players within our program,” he said, “And Steve has embodied that as much as anyone.”
Moundou-Missi, for his part, credited his teammates for keeping him confident.
“They really trust me with that outside shot and really trust me to take and make those shots,” he said. “I really feed off those guys so I’m really thankful for my team.”
And this is where I’d like to get a little philosophical, if you do not mind.
We writers like to write a lot about games and numbers. It’s really a tendency all newspeople have. We cover the unveiling of bridges when what’s really happening is the building of the thing. And in basketball, we cover games, which is really just a reflection of how good a team is. Just like a doctor might look at the readouts during a check-up, it’s only a quantification of a snapshot.
Games are what people are interested in, sure, but they are not necessarily the most important part of a team’s storyline. And that’s particularly the case this year. Look at the list of games and what do you see? A bunch of W’s and L’s. I’ll even let you read the recaps for the games. It’s still just seems random. But it’s not.
Amaker knows this. All year he’s been talking about improving, the type of present participle that streams from coaches’ mouths but must get dammed somewhere before making it into print. He’s a process-over-results guy, like most coaches. And this year, the process was more interesting than the results—how Moundou-Missi went from where he was in December to the decision to take the game-winning shot, and make it, Saturday.
Amaker and his players never lost sight of the their goal of growth. Through wins and losses, they always worked to get better. The coach knew all along that would lead to good results.
“I like that about our ball club, that we’re still working to improve,” Amaker said after a game earlier this season. “If teams can adopt that mentality and that attitude, I like to think there really are good things in store.”
—Staff writer Jacob D.H. Feldman can be reached at jacob.feldman@thecrimson.com.