The familiarity advantage

Leeper 4 yrs
Dillard 3 yrs
White 3 yrs
Osse 2 yrs
Hagins 2 yrs
Billings 2 yrs

These are the players who have had multiple years in the program. We talk about the experience factor and the maturity factor, and those are very important; and we have a lot of both of them this year. However, there is one other factor, and that is the number of years that players have played together on the same team under the same coach. Each year playing together in the same system lets players get to know each other, know their habits, know how they react, coordinate their timing. If they mesh well enough, they soon begin to function like the wheels in a watch. Maturity and experience can help this process along, but it will not finally happen until players actually have played together over a period of time.

If and when this condition occurs, when players know each other and are functioned like a well-oiled machine, it can sometimes overcome superior talent. There is no way to know if this year's Trojans will have that sort of instinctive timing and teamwork, but the elements are there. For instance, suppose this lineup is in the game: 1-Hagins, 2-Dillard, 3-Billings, 4-White, 5-Leeper. Those guys have been playing together for at least two years, and three of them have played together for three years, at least in practice. They know each other, and that goes a long way.