When I was an assistant at Colby College (ME), every year we would play Bates College twice. Jim Murphy was the head coach at the time and by my second year there, he would tell me at the end of our pre-game conversation, ‘Don’t worry Matt, we’re runnin’ the same ol’ sh*t’. And he wasn’t lying!
Bates ran the same stuff every year but they had different personnel and unfortunately for us better personnel than we had at that time so they always beat us. But the result was different every year because each time they got different looks out of the different players involved and we were trying new things with our personnel.
Here’s my point, now that it’s time for conference play, you know your opponents better than anyone you’ve faced so far this year. The question is what are you doing differently to combat that ‘same ol sh*t’? Does it just come down to you having more talent this season or can you take away what works for them? We recruit all year to make sure it’s the former but the great coaches always make sure it’s more the latter.