There is validity to the argument that a team needs to build a winning attitude before it can break thru to real success. I made a post about that a couple of months ago...and got ridiculed about it, of course. However, anyone who doesn't think that mentally expecting to win close games at the end is an acquired skill is just fooling themselves. I used the 1975-76-77 WF teams as an example. Wake beat David Thompson & ended NC State's 38-game win streak in the 1975 Big Four Tournament, then beat Duke to win its 1st of 4 Big Four titles. You could tell that group of players was going to be special before they finished their careers....but they hadn't yet developed that winning attitude and quickly faded. The next year they had a little more confidence. They began the year by beating #3 Carolina in the Big Four to avenge the Scoreboard Game, then beat #9 NC State for the title...even with Skip Brown not playing due to a minor injury. (Jerry Schellenburg took over in that tournament, scoring 24 against Carolina & 31 in the title game against NC State.) That made the Deacs 10-0 for the year and they jumped from being unranked all the way up to #7. After a loss at Virginia (seems like we never played well up there in those days), we came back to Greensboro and played one of the best games I have ever seen a WF team play in my life, beating #2 Maryland 96-93 in an electric atmosphere before a sold-out crowd in Greensboro. One of the loudest WF games I have ever attended. And what balance! Skip Brown & Jerry Schellenberg each scored 22 points and Rod Griffin & Darryl Peterson each had 21 points.
Still, though, they had not developed that "killer winning attitude". That would come in the following magical 1977 season. The 1976 team lost 5 straight games after that Maryland win had made them 11-1 and ended the year in the middle of the ACC pack. The next year, though, they were ready from the start....moving to an 18-2 record after a win at Charlottesville....where they had had trouble for several years earlier. One of the most important indications that the 1977 team had developed an attitude necessary to make that next step was that they play 5 or 6 overtime games that year....and only lost one of them. The previous two years would have seen that team losing most of those OT games. They came from 15 points down in the 2nd half to win against #4 Carolina at Carmichael. Then in the NCAA, with everything on the line in a first round game against 26-1 Arkansas...a powerful team with Sydney Moncrief, Marvin Delph & Ron Brewer....they found themselves trailing 46-33 at the half and again charged back behind the determined leadership of Jerry Schellenberg and won the game. That team reached the Elite Eight and led Marquette by 4 at the half before falling just short of the Final Four. (And yes, that team hit a bump in the road at the end of the season, losing by 1 in that OT loss to Virginia Tech, then by 1 to Maryland in Greensboro on a desperation buzzer-beater by Brad Davis, a not-surprising 6-point loss at ranked NC State on Senior Day....and a really lackluster 2-point loss to Virginia in the ACCT. I thought I might as well go ahead and point that out, as ChrisL68 has followed every post I have ever made about that 1977 team by pointing out those losses at the end of the regular season.) Still that team regrouped and made it to within one half of one game of making the Final Four.
The point is that learning how to win is a real thing. Guys who expect to win are more likely to make that clutch free throw in the last minute. Guys who have doubts about themselves are more likely to be thinking about what happens if they miss. Some teams expect to win in close situations....and they usually do, more times than not. Teams like that can often mentally intimidate teams who do not have that attitude.