Doc Sadler Tells Team To Forget Everything He Taught Them About Basketball

Story by Greg Bright 

| Published Jan 17, 2012

Standing at 0-4 in the Big Ten conference--including blowout losses to Ohio State and Wisconsin--Doc Sadler made a bold choice. He said he knew that if Nebraska kept playing basketball the way he had taught them, they had no chance at winning a single Big Ten game this season.

That’s when it hit him, he said. The team could only win if they forgot literally everything he had taught them about basketball.

“I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to realize it,” Sadler said. “But I’m really not a very good basketball coach.”

“I realized that if I still wanted to be employed as such, the best thing to do was to make sure I never actually taught anyone anything. As long as that didn’t happen, I was sure the team could improve.”

And improve they did.

After Sadler told them to forget everything he had taught them--only 30 minutes before hitting the floor against Penn State-- the team instantly improved, jumping to a 34-22 halftime lead against Penn State on their way to a 70-58 win.

The improvement was so quick, Bo Spencer, a senior guard for the Huskers, stated, because the team always knew deep down that “everything” Doc Sadler taught them wasn’t improving them at all but actually causing them to get worse.

“Honestly, going into the Penn State game before Coach Sadler told us to forget everything he had taught us, I wasn’t sure I still knew how to dribble a basketball,” Spencer said.

“He had tried to teach me some new way of dribbling that would keep me from turning over the ball, but all it looked like to me was running with the basketball and never letting it touch the ground. I tried to tell coach that was traveling, but he assured me it wasn’t.”

Following the game, many players acknowledged Coach Sadler’s selfless leadership and said only a “great coach like him” could be “man enough” to tell his team to forget everything he had taught them just so they could win a basketball game.