How to approach point differential games?
I coach in an u21's league where there isn't much parity among the teams and point differential matters as a tiebreak in head-to-head games. It's late in our season and we had a game where we had to win by 11+ points to win the tiebreak (and get to the same record as them, 12-7) giving us the best chance to make the playoffs. There's only 3 games to go before the playoffs.
We talked about it during the week and decided we had to press a lot on defense, but it didn't work and we lost by 14. Credit to the other team they played really well and hit some big time shots; but my team didn't perform nearly as well as we normally would. Does anyone have some thoughts on how to approach a game like this? Is there a way of discussing having to win by a point differential without negatively effecting the psychology of the team?