Another game, another unexpected outcome for the Missouri Tigers. This time it was a 72-57 win at home Saturday against #6 Baylor. A week before, it was a close win against archrival Kansas. Two weeks before that, it was a road win against Baylor at a time when the Bears were ranked #2.
These are games the undersized (only two players are 6-8 or taller) and undermanned (only seven scholarship players suit up) Tigers are supposed to lose. Especially with a first-year head coach, Frank Haith, who was widely considered to be a disappointing choice.
So why are the Tigers an astounding 23-2 in mid-February, and about to become the #3-ranked team in the country?
Eric Kapitulik has a thought: Missouri attacks.
Kapitulik knows a bit about attacking, having spent eight years as a Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance officer, retiring as a major. Before that he was a four-year letterman in lacrosse at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Today he runs The Program, a business he founded that teaches athletes and corporate warriors how to become better leaders and helps teams become more cohesive. Among his company’s clients: the Mizzou basketball team.
Last fall Kapitulik and former Army sergeant Sam Cila put the Tigers through “Judgment Day,” a two-day team-building exercise. It’s like Outward Bound as imagined by SEAL Team Six. “The men at Missouri basketball, they wanted to be challenged, and they attacked it over the two days we worked with them,” Kapitulik says. “They’re good guys. They’ve got a high care factor.”
The Tigers are just one of about 200 sports teams to sign on with The Program, and although their success so far exceeds expectations, Kapitulik is careful not to take credit for it. “We also work with plenty of teams that don’t accomplish anything,” he says with a laugh.
“Nobody from the outside is going to come in and fix your team,” he explains. “The teams we do have a big impact on are the ones whose coaches already believe in what we’re doing.”
For that, he gives all the credit to the players (“They’re talented young men”) and to Haith. “The ship sails the direction the captain points it in,” he says.
Still, there’s something different about Missouri this year that goes beyond talent and coaching. The players were never this good in previous years, and Haith’s teams at Miami never showed this kind of discipline, efficiency, and teamwork.
It may come down to a word Kapitulik uses more than any other: leadership. “What do great leaders do?” he asks. “They accomplish the mission, and they take care of their teammates. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You make every decision with your teammates’ best interests at heart.” (If you’re looking after your ownbest interests.
That, more than anything, explains why Missouri’s players often pass up a good shot if a teammate has a better one. (They currently rank third in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio.) They also protect each other on the defensive end, pressuring opponents to cough up the ball (they’re 14th in steals per game) while staying out of foul trouble, committing six fewer fouls per game than last year’s team.
And there’s something else about this team that becomes apparent if you watch them often enough: With cold-blooded efficiency, they wait for opponents to make the kind of mistake that suggests they’re losing their composure. They’ll turn that single miscue into a series of turnovers and poor shots, time and again transforming a close game into a rout. (Transform your mundane workout into an incredible fat-blasting routine.
At those moments, you aren’t surprised to learn they’ve spent time with people who once pulled triggers for a living.
Kapitulik is quick to point out an obvious difference in what he teaches vs. what he once practiced. “No basketball game is about life and death,” he says. But he also notes that the best military officers are often those who played sports in high school and college. Those who learn leadership in either milieu—catching balls or dodging bullets—tend to take it with them.
“Those same lessons will make you a successful person in life,” he says. “Life is a team sport.”
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