Courting excellence

If you ever played basketball, or raised someone who played basketball or…breathed, you would have loved watching LSU battle Iowa in the the Elite Eight round of the women’s NCAA tournament Monday night.

The game featured everything we’ve all come to love about sports — an epic battle between two icons, a telescopic look at rising stars, a three-point slinger drilling shots from across the state line, a regal queen dominating the inside and two coaches who have seen it all and still wondered at the magic that happened on that floor.

If we let it, sports can teach us so much, like how a healthy ego generates excellence exponentially when it weeds out joy killers like envy and avarice.

Caitlin Clark doesn’t just sink impossible-to-guard shots, she also feeds her teammates incredible passes. She’s like a lithe Yoda out there seeing openings and opportunities long before they develop.

A once in a generation star, she elevates her teammates with her play, with her attitude and with her work ethic.

Angel Reese does too. A lingering ankle injury clearly hobbled her in that game, but she never used that as an excuse. The 6-3 model lost a contact lens midway through the third quarter but she never even blinked when she jammed it, dry, back onto her eyeball.

These women are tough — they battle hard out there and they want to win, to be the best who ever played.

Within that drive, though, they allow admiration for their opponents as well. They demonstrate that off the court in the interviews they give and in the things that they don’t say too.

Juju Watkins is only 18-years old. A guard for USC, she recently broke the national record for most points scored in a season by a freshman. She averages 27 points a game, second only to Caitlin Clark.

In this short clip, she demonstrates exactly the kind of generous, excellence-spreading self-confidence we should all try to emulate:

North Carolina State plays an undefeated South Carolina team tonight at 6 p.m. in the first game of the Final Four bracket.

The Iowa/UConn game follows at 8 p.m.

If you breathe, you’re going to want to tune in.