We have all heard of our fair share of sports superstitions.
In baseball, the classic don’t step on the chalk line is one that has stood the test of time. In other sports, you’ll hear of people not washing certain gear while they’re rallying or playing well.
Milan Momcilovic brings us a new one that I would imagine nobody has heard of.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you many people that I know who enjoy jellybeans. They’re whatever to most people: Don’t love them, don’t hate them, but definitely won’t be grabbing
them off the shelves if they have a ton of other options in a store or gas station.
After this, however, jellybeans may start to be purchased more and more in the bluegrass now, as jellybeans are a huge part of Milan Momcilovic’s basketball game.
In his freshman season at Iowa State, Momcilovic began to notice his shooting was slipping a bit, making only 61 3-pointers and shooting 35.9% from 3-point range. Still pretty solid, and many people across the country would take that in a heartbeat.
Then, Dr. Matthew Myrvik entered the scene, a sports psychologist who had worked with the Milwaukee Bucks. Dr. Myrvik went through many different steps to try to help out Momcilovic, and what they landed on worked like a charm.
After many Zoom meetings and thinking through different things, Dr. Myrvik told Milan to simply say “jellybean” before he gets a shot up, a simple way to clear your mind of distractions that may appear at the moment. Dr. Myrvik didn’t tell him specifically to choose jellybean, but he gave him the task of thinking of a food to say for those moments.
Momcilovic, in an interview with The Athletic, said, “Dr. Myrvik suggested using a food item. I don’t know why I picked jellybean. Maybe because it’s a longer word? It’s not even my favorite candy.”
Momcilovic then said it was more for practice than anything else.
“It’s more for in practice. You practice your shot so many times, and you sometimes get thoughts that creep in your head that maybe something’s wrong. If I say it before I’m shooting, it’s a way to not think about the shot.”
Following that change, Momcilovic improved his sophomore year by almost 4%, and then in his junior season, he put on display one of the best shooting seasons this sport has ever seen, knocking down 136 3s on 48.7% from 3-point land, almost a dream season for anyone, but he put it into reality.
Whether he has two players closing out on his shot, or loses the ball and has to throw up a shot at the last moment before the buzzer sounds, he will have one constant: Momcilovic will say “jellybean” in his head before the shot. It’s worked well for him, getting him a nice paycheck, an opportunity to be drafted into the NBA, and an opportunity to play at the greatest program in all of college basketball.
Maybe we should take something from this: Maybe all of us should start naming a food item in our head before we start our car, while we cook dinner, mow the lawn, whatever it may be.
If it helped Milan Momcilovic become one of the best shooters in this sport’s history, we ought to try it out for ourselves in our daily lives.
