Maturity

It's been this staple of how I watch college basketball games for decades. Or perhaps I should say "how I watch college basketball seasons." Especially during conference play. The more games a player has under his belt the more of a calming influence that player will be on the floor.

Even during the lean years we saw this. Fans were frustrated with Maverick Morgan as a freshman but by the time he was a senior we found ourselves talking about how far he's come. Senior year Aaron Jordan was like this as well. The light bulb turned on for Mike Tisdale as a junior. We've seen Terrence Shannon Jr. turn it up three notches as a senior and lead a team to the Elite Eight and we've seen junior-year Rayvonte Rice elevate an otherwise going-nowhere team in 2014 to at least a sniff of the bubble.

Watching the Northwestern game last Friday night, specifically as we watched that 10 point lead slip away later, I kept thinking about how we weren't seeing any Calming Influence Upperclassmen stepping forward. Some CIUs. Northwestern was full of upperclassmen making plays. But we just looked young (because we are young).

Tonight was a different story. Tonight, in my opinion, we only won because of two massive Calming Influence Upperclassmen: Tre White and Kylan Boswell.