Book Review: A March To Madness

Book Title: A March to Madness

Author: John Feinstein

Pages: 456

I’ve read a number of John Feinstein books in the past and loved them. The way he tells the story and paints the picture is incredible. He writes a lot of books about sports topics, but I think he could take any subject and make in interesting.

I actually came across this book at a used book sale at the city library about five or six years ago. I had never heard of it, but since it was John Feinstein, I bought it knowing that it would be good. When I purchased it, I had every intention of reading it immediately but had other books that, for various reasons I read first. My delay was not an indication of my interest level at all.

Some of it was the fact that the book was “old.” The book provides a behind the scenes look at the 1996-1997 college basketball season, specifically the fiercely competitive Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). The ACC is home to one of my favorite college basketball teams, Duke as well as North Carolina, Clemson, Maryland, Wake Forest, Virginia, Florida State, Georgia Tech and NC State. It’s the conference that has produced spectacular players such as Michael Jordan, Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, Kenny Anderson and in this particular season, Tim Duncan.

For this book, Feinstein has rare access to ACC coaches, players, practices and games. He begins the book as the NCAA tournament ins ending in the 1995-1996 season and chronicles the ins and outs of the 1996-1997 season, including the challenges individual coaches and players deal with as well as their fears and insecurities.

He begins the book with an introduction to each team, specifically through the coaches. He includes a recap of the previous season and the coaches’ history and how they got to where they are. Some of the coaches are household names such as North Carolina head coach Dean Smith and Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski. By the end of the 1996-1997 season, Smith wins his 875^th game to become the winningest coach in college basketball history.

Tim Duncan is in his senior season at Wake Forest and on his way to being named the college basketball player of the year.

What really stood out to me is how, even with all their accomplishments and success coaches and players can still doubt themselves and obsess over the what-ifs. I think sometimes there is a perception that once you hit a certain level of success that the fear and doubts go away. That’s not he case at all with these coaches and plyers. I don’t think that’s the case in any business or professional environment.

To me, the competitiveness, the will to be better and maintain continued success breeds some of this doubt and insecurity. The difference in a successful person is their ability to navigate and create strategies that enable themselves and the people they work with and lead to rise above the challenges and overcome difficulties and be successful.

I said earlier that I like Duke. It’s not so much because of the players that they have or that they consistently rank in the top teams in college basketball. It’s because of its head coach, Mike Krzyzewski. Feinstein describes him as self-confident. Not cocky or arrogant, but incredibly self-confident. He’s also very honest and direct. If you ask a question, he’ll answer it honestly and directly. It doesn’t matter if it’s the media asking or another person. He’ll always been honest and wont skirt a question.

He wants to be successful and works very hard to be successful. Since this book was published, he’s passed Dean Smith as the winningest basketball coach in college basketball history. However, during the 1996-1997 season he had a number of challenges that he had to overcome. No doubt he’s had other challenges since that season, but I found it fascinating to read the details about those challenges and how he developed the strategies to overcome them and achieve the success he wanted.

It wasn’t always easy and required a lot of hard work, but he was willing to put in the work. The 1996-1997 season didn’t start off the way he had hoped but by the end he had led his team to the best record on the ACC and the number one seeding in the ACC tournament. He had a highly successful year and by the end of the season admitted that he wasn’t sure he still loved coaching, but that the challenges and the way his team handled them invigorated him and showed him how much he loved coaching.

One of my favorite quotes from the book came from Krzyzewski when he was talking about the challenges of the season. He said: “You see, sometimes in life, you have to embrace adversity. You just don’t want to become too intimate with the sonofabitch.”

While not every team and every coach achieved what they wanted during the 1996-1997 season, I appreciated their openness to sharing their struggles, successes and the hard work and dedication to their crafts. This was a wonderful read that I felt taught a number of lessons about the ups and downs we all face as we strive for greatness. I highly recommend this book and plan on passing it on to my son so he can read it.