By Eddie Pipkin
We can’t close out March without me composing a riff on the basketball paradise that is March Madness. It’s been an amazing tournament this year, with ESPN announcing after the first day of play for the opening round of 64 teams that all 24 million ‘predict the winners’ brackets submitted to their website had already been busted. I spent this past Sunday evening watching a classic nailbiter between improbable competitors Creighton and San Diego State for a berth to the Final Four. It seemed like ‘another Cinderella story’ for those two teams, but the truth is that great coaching had laid the foundations of success long before the first game of the season had ever played way back in the fall. As it goes with basketball, so it goes with ministry; so it goes with life.
For a team to make a run deep into the NCAA tournament, some key factors have to come into play:
- Great coaching.
- An emphasis on doing the fundamentals well.
- Recruiting talented players.
- Letting those players play to their strengths.
- Coaching the team to work together, un