A Madness to Remember

By Ryan McGowan

On Monday night, somewhere in Rockland County, New York, my old college roommate Jim Daly was probably putting a tape into a VCR and recording the NCAA championship game and the subsequent “One Shining Moment” montage of highlights that followed the contest.  I am not entirely sure he still takes part in this ritual, but as of our senior year of college in 2000, he had every NCAA title game and “One Shining Moment” on tape since at least the Kansas win back in ’88.  The rest of his video collection sometimes caused us to reassess our friendships with him (with movies ranging from “Copland” to “Sixteen Candles”) but the NCAA tapes were a constant for years and years.The Tar Heels of North Carolina were crowned champs this year, and the 2005 NCAA tournament stands to go down as one of the better ones all time, despite Bill Simmons’ whining about how the level of play in college basketball is subpar, about how none of the big-time players were stepping up, about how all the coaches are incompetent and he could coach the pants off all of them because he once took Boise State to a national title in NCAA Basketball 2001 for PS2.  Not to take pot shots at the Sports Guy, but as one of his long-time readers, I have never understood his elitist attitude towards college sports.  Of course they aren’t at the same level of pro sports!  That is what makes them great.  The players are mostly 18-22 years old, just young guys not very much different from me or you when we were in college, except that these guys can dunk and probably pull a lot more tail.  The flawed nature of college basketball is what heightens the level of excitement in the tournament; there is no guarantee who is going to step up, and who is going to fall short.  Either way, all of these guys (except probably the goofy CarrotTop lookalike from Georgia Tech) probably get more chicks than I ever dreamed of in college, so who am I to criticize them?

Still, I thought it would be a good idea to look on the optimistic side of another solid tournament, with all the human drama, excitement, and gambling immortality that it brought us.  Here, in no particular order, are the top 10 things that made the 2005 NCAA tourney a great one:  

1. Tom Brennan and the Vermont Catamounts. Every tournament has its first-round upset stories, but how many of them can you actually remember, outside of Princeton over UCLA in `96?  I have a feeling we will remember UVM’s upset of Syracuse for years to come, not only for the impossibly ballsy overtime three-pointer by T.J. Sorrentine, but also for the classic postgame comments by retiring coach Tom Brennan about going out that night and getting hammered after having to miss St. Patrick’s Day festivities the previous night.  Even though the Cats were fed to the wolves in Round Two against eventual regional champ Michigan State, they gave us some great memories.

2. Steve Sparks’ 3-pointer.  How crazy was the sequence of events leading up to this moment?  In the regional finals vs. MSU, UK’s Sparks comes off the bench as an injury replacement to shoot a one-and-one, and promptly misses the front end.  Then, down by three with around 12 seconds left, Sparks misses a three that would have tied it, then somehow gets a long rebound off another miss, throws up a desperation shot (with his foot about 1/8 of an inch behind the line), it clunks around the rim about six times, and somehow goes in the hoop.  Just a great moment as a basketball fan.  One question though: would it have been better for Michigan State to foul him before he got a chance to get a shot off?  I know it’s a risky move, especially if he’s somehow able to get a shot off, but I’ll probably take my chances with them having to intentionally miss a free throw and hit the followup.  I know it would have been impossible to coach that, but I am just throwing that out there.

3. Louisville’s comeback.  Having gone to my parents’ house for Easter weekend, I watched most of this game while gorging myself at Wright’s Chicken Farm in Burrillville, RI (highly recommended; for anyone who has never been there, all-you-can-eat pasta, chicken, and fries for $10), and with West Virginia leading by 6 or 7 with just a few minutes left, I remarked to my brother, “Wow, West Virginia’s going to the Final Four, eh?”  By the time we got home, we learned Louisville had somehow come back to win in OT.  Hey, you’ve got to give Pitino credit.  As much as he sucked with the C’s, the guy took a mediocre Providence team to the Final Four, won it with UK, and then got Louisville back to national prominence.

4. Illinois’ comeback. Easter was all about rising from the dead, and we saw it twice in big games that weekend.  I was convinced the Illini were dead and buried when they were down 15 to Arizona, but then all of a sudden it was a tie game, and then they went on to win in OT.  Hey, maybe all these teams watched a tape of last year’s ALCS and got some inspiration?

5. Dee Brown XII.  How many people named Dee Brown make it in big-time athletics?  There was obviously the guy who won the slam-dunk title for the Celtics, and I think there was also a defensive back for Syracuse a few years ago, now there’s the cornrowed guy from Illinois.  Have there been other Dee Browns?  Is it a requirement if your last name is “Brown” that you have to name at least one of your male children “Dee”?  (Side note: I once knew a kid named D Horton, the D wasn’t short for anything, it stood alone.  Should this be considered a mild form of child abuse?)

6. Down goes Duke!  Down goes Duke! I am not a huge Duke-hater, in fact, I like Coach K and his teams are usually nasty.  I just can’t stand Duke fans, the Superfans of the South.  I became a semi-fan of Duke since they got revenge on UNLV in `91, but I almost puked when ESPN ran a story last year about some dork in Durham who wrote Coach K an email exhorting him to stay because he felt like, as part of the crowd, he was the sixth man who played for Duke.  Since then I have had this sadistic impulse for them to lose, not for the players or coaches, but just to shut up their obnoxious fans.  The same goes for…

7. U-C-O-N-N… UCONN… UCONN… UCONN… loses… loses… loses… to the Wolfpack.  Again, I have nothing against the UConn players and I actually like Jim Calhoun a lot.  You have to respect two national titles within five years; only a handful of coaches have even won the tournament more than once.  But there are few things better as a sports fan than being in the building (DCU Center in Worcester) surrounded by obnoxious Connecticut natives feeling totally dejected after their Huskies were knocked out by NC State.  Maybe I’m a bit of a sadist, but it was a strangely satisfying experience.

8. Death of the Superfans.  Let me clarify this right now: although I am enrolled in a graduate program at BC, in no way, shape, or form do I consider myself a “BC guy.”  I do, however, think BC gets somewhat of a bad rap in Boston, somewhat deservedly, but often uncalled for.  That being said, I was very happy to see them lose to some random upstart from the Horizon League, UW-Milwaukee.  BC was a good team this year, just as they had a decent football team, but there are so many Eagleheads who have this incredibly inflated opinion of BC’s place in the pecking order.  When they lost to UWM, I wasn’t happy in a sadistic way, but more of a bring-them-down-to-reality way.  Don’t get me wrong, BC is a quality school with a very good athletic program.  But they still have a long way to go before they are truly big-time.  If their basketball players can keep from jumping off second-story balconies, maybe they could get to that level more quickly, who knows?

9. Patriot League fever.  The league featured in John Feinstein’s immortal book The Last Amateurs finally pulled off an NCAA tournament upset.  Although the Patriot League has some sorry basketball teams (see: Army), I’ve always thought that the hoops played there is better than most people think.  My alma mater of Holy Cross played three consecutive Final Four teams down to the wire between 2001 and 2003.  Even though they could never finish the job, Bucknell finally held the flag of the league by knocking off Kansas.  I’m sure Bill Self is happy about leaving that Illinois job right about now, huh?

Finally…

10. Picking the correct final game.  As much as my bracket was destroyed in the first two weekends of the tourney, I am proud to say that I picked Illinois and North Carolina to meet in the championship game.  It’s too bad they were basically the only two teams I had left after the Sweet Sixteen.  Even though I am probably one of 30 million people in America who picked that game, I still feel some vindication.  I think it’s the first time I’ve ever picked the correct final game pairing.  I picked Illinois to win though, which continues my streak of rooting for the losing team in the national title game to roughly ten straight years.

And now that March Madness is over, the real Madness can begin: the 2005 World Series title defense of the Sox.  Maybe if they signed a pitcher named “Dee Brown,” they could guarantee themselves another AL pennant.  Hey, it’s at least worth a shot.