Still seems like madness
Like many fans, UH dealing with basketball season’s painful end.
Sports fans living in the age of the coronavirus pandemic certainly have more serious issues with which to be concerned than our regular fix.
That said, it is as if someone with an all-powerful remote control is ruining our lives. Some sports are on pause. The NCAA basketball tournament, the event that dominates this month, has been powered down. Shut off completely.
There is no wall-to-wall basketball this weekend. It is maddening.
As difficult as the cancellation of one of the country’s biggest sporting events is for fans, imagine what it is like for active participants.
University of Houston guard Nate Hinton says he is still trying to digest the abrupt end to the college basketball season.
The Cougars were on a bus, halfway to the American Athletic Conference tournament in Fort Worth, when they were told that event would not be played. Shortly after they made it back to campus, the Big
Dance was called off.
They were crushed. A week and a half later, the disappointment lingers.
Hinton says a common theme in a group chat among teammates is, “Man, we should be playing right now.” One of them will see a #MarchMadness tweet and share it with the group: “This could be us.”
These are once-in-a-lifetime events, singular memories that can’t be recreated. The Cougars left town expecting to bring back several shining moments. All they got was a U-turn in the middle of nowhere on I-45 and a stop at Buc-ee’s.
That the Cougars, who finished the season ranked No. 22 in the Associated Press poll, believe this year’s postseason would have been something special, makes matters worse.
“Everybody didn’t see the full potential that we had,” Hinton said. “That’s the thing that stings us the most. We knew that we had another level that we could have gotten to. We left a lot on the table, and it was out of our control.
“We definitely would have made an imprint on the NCAA Tournament. I firmly believe, everybody believed, that we were going to make something happen, show something real special in the tournament.”
The Cougars lost in the NCAA round of 32 two years ago. They went down in the Sweet 16 last year.
This year, they lost without playing a game.
“All the work we put into it is gone,” Hinton said. “It feels like we mixed (a cake) and put the cake in the oven. Then, when it was time to take it out and put the icing on it and all that, we didn’t have a chance. We didn’t have a chance to take pictures of the cake and put them on social media.
“It is unfinished business.” Instead of enjoying the thrill of the tournament, Hinton was home with his family in North
Carolina, watching reruns of college basketball games and a lot of Netflix.
He had not been home to visit with his family since last June. That is the life of a college basketball player. The Cougars reported to camp before school began in the fall and traveled to Italy to play several games in August.
It has been seven-month grind even for the supremely fit Hinton, a 6-5, 210-pound sophomore, who is a defensive stud and could be the best rebounding guard in the country.
Hinton stepped up as a confident leader for UH this season, averaging 10.6 points per game, and leading the Cougars in rebounds, steals and minutes played.
As much as he has enjoyed the downtime to let his body recover, Hinton hasn’t stayed completely away from the gym.
“I tried to take a few days off, but that itch … I can’t sit around too long,” Hinton said.
The Cougars had some basketball left to play.
They lost their last three road games — at SMU, Memphis and UConn — to fall to a 13-5 finish in conference play and a three-way tie atop the AAC standings.
That bothers them.
“The attitude and mentality the guys had going into the conference tournament, we knew that we should have …”
Hinton cut himself off there. He was about to say that the Cougars should have won the AAC regular-season crown outright.
But he’s a sharp young man, so he phrased it this way.
“We were on a mission going to Fort Worth, and that was to win the (conference) tournament, and settle for nothing less,” Hinton said. “We were about to start hitting our peak, hitting that stride to show the real Houston Cougars basketball.
“With the young team that we had, the experience we gained throughout the whole season was starting to come into play. We were starting to execute on those plays that the lack of experience cost us earlier in the season.
“We were ready.”
We all were.