Some Dogs Have Their Day

A late-night switch to motel near the airport helped the 2001 Patriots, which included Rod Rutledge (83), record one of the greatest Super Bowl upsets. (By Doug Mills -- Associated Press)

You must believe you can win. " I think when you get to the Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four or World Series you know you have done something right along the way," said former Villanova basketball coach Rollie Massimino, whose Wildcats stunned the heavily favored Georgetown Hoyas in the 1985 national championship game. "You've got to make the players understand they are not in this thing to lose."

In the hours before Villanova stepped onto the Rupp Arena court in Lexington, Ky., Massimino told players they had accomplished a great deal in just making it to the Final Four and the championship game. Already they would be hailed as heroes, they would even get a parade through the streets of Philadelphia. But there was still something more they could grasp: respect.

That, he said, was more important than everything else.

Massimino, now the coach at Northwood University in Florida, was helped by the fact that the Wildcats knew Georgetown well, having played the Hoyas twice that season. And while the Hoyas had won both games, Villanova was comfortable with its opponent. Center Ed Pinckney enjoyed playing against Georgetown's Patrick Ewing, who seemed to tower over Pinckney and was considered the most dominant player in college basketball.

But Pinckney believed he could handle Ewing, Massimino said. That night Pinckney had 16 points and six rebounds and Villanova won, 66-64.

In 2000, when former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda faced the U.S. Olympic team he was handed -- a group not expected to fare well against the likes of Cuba -- he told the pitchers: "You don't know how good you are. If you give me this pitching staff in the big leagues, we'd win the World Series in two years."

Speaking by phone from his Dodger Stadium office, Lasorda chuckled.

"Shoot, they believed it," he said.

The Americans went on to win the gold medal.

Use any motivation possible. It was in the middle of the 1988 World Series and Lasorda had been handed a gift. This came in the form of a quote from broadcaster Bob Costas, who had referred to the Dodgers as perhaps the weakest-hitting team to ever make a World Series. Regardless of the fact that Costas likely was right, Lasorda played it for everything it was worth.

"Did you hear what Bob Costas said about you?" Lasorda said he shouted in the clubhouse before that game. "If I hear a guy talk about us like that, I want to chop his head off."

Needless to say, the Dodgers, who had already stunned the far-superior Oakland Athletics with Kirk Gibson's Game 1 game-winning home run, grabbed the final two games and the World Series title.