Dambrot....An Appreciation

We should pause for a minute and see what happened last night.  Here is an Akron team that was at the top all year.  I think everyone thought OU was close, but clearly Akron was better.

Abreu goes out.  Akron loses twice.  There's no doubt, they are reeling and what had been a magic season was falling apart.

Except it didn't.  What happened instead was that Keith Dambrot turned it around.  He rehabilitated their spirit, he developed a strategy for on the court, he figured out a way they could win.

In the face of adversity, many people just turn into victims.  This happened.  It isn't my fault.  I now have an excuse to fail.

Dambrot did what winners do.  He figured it out.  And this team, marked for dead, playing without its glue, beat OU by 19 points with a second half in which they held OU to 17 points and outscored them by 22.

OU was a good team.  Senior dominated.  Used to winning.  I actually think they are more talented than Akron.

But Akron is tough and they are also experienced.  And that's a team, and they know how to win basketball games.

That starts with Dambrot.  We need to stop and think that he is among the best coaches ever in this conference.  His team is in the conference final every year...they don't rebuild, they just win.  This week, though, this was special even by those standards.  In a world built on excuses, he had every chance to join in.

Instead, he succeeded.

I also thought that his comments this week about Abreu was right.  He didn't condone what happened, but he didn't condemn Alex either.  He knows that you can make mistakes--as he did--and you can pay a price--as he did--and then you can rehabilitate yourself and be a better person, and he showed faith that Abreu can do that, and to me, that was the kind of faith I'd like to see in someone charged with the lives of young men.

Hats off, Keith Dambrot.