Watching all these close games it's easy to see in the final couple of minutes that Neyland was right about basketball, too, the team that makes the fewest mistakes will win. It's a very fine line but you can usually look back and see when the losing team lost its chance, never to recover. It was a missed open shot, a deflected pass, a blocked shot, losing the ball out of bounds, a missed front end of a one and one, etc. etc. Then the team that had to execute to get the lead back but is now still behind has to start fouling, and at this level the team ahead usually doesn't miss, then the team that’s behind spends the last 60 seconds slowly circling the drain. The players on the floor still desperately give it all they got while the faces of their teammates on the bench show that they know it's over. So many games between these high level teams are ending just like this. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
