Moments like this are what Madness means
Aball floats toward the basket, and hearts race and hearts stop, and basketball players prepare either to leap with joy or collapse in agony. It is long past midnight at Madison Square Garden, the ball has just left the hands of a Florida Gator named Chris Chiozza.
In mid-flight, the buzzer sounds. The red outline backboard box lights up. The game will be over one way or another. The season will end for one team or another. In a snapshot, in a flash, you have all the madness of March compressed into one moment.
The only reason we are here is because a Wisconsin Badger named Zak Showalter made a floating 3-pointer at the end of regulation. Now Chiozza attempts a floating 3. Down two. No time on the clock. Do or die. Survive and advance. Splash. Florida 84, Wisconsin 83. Holy cow. Holy. Cow. Suddenly, the opportunities lie crystalline clear ahead. Both Florida and South Carolina, which defeated Baylor in the earlier game Friday night, have to look at what remains of the brackets and think to themselves: holy cow. Because one of these four teams will be guaranteed a spot in the national championship game a week from Monday: Florida. South Carolina. Gonzaga. Xavier. “These opportunities are unique and they’re exciting, just as these opportunities are for all of our guys,” Florida coach Mike White said Thursday. “All of our players in particular. And all of our different programs. So, this is what it’s all about, it’s March Madness, it’s the Sweet 16. It’s really cool. And who knows?”
It is a testament to both the unpredictable nature of the NCAA Tournament as well as a parity we really weren’t aware of most of the year, but one that has enforced itself through the latter stages of this tournament, at least on that side of the bracket (the other half features three legitimate blue bloods in Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky, as well as Oregon, which is nobody’s idea of a feisty upstart).
That was especially felt at the Garden, of course. When the field was announced, it seemed like the committee had done everything they could to fill Broadway with star power, handing Villanova and Duke the first two seeds in the East. At the least, the odds seemed powerfully in favor of one of those monstrous fan bases invading the Garden this weekend.
Except Wisconsin took care of Villanova in Buffalo, ending the Wildcats’ bid for a repeat and then South Carolina knocked out Duke in Greenville, S.C., and what seemed destined to be a blue heaven weekend on 33rd Street instead turned into a convention of outliers. Not that any of the fans clad in yellow, red, orange and green seemed to mind
Wisconsin’s is the kind of extended story that should serve as an inspiration for every team that has fallen on hard times — or has never known anything but. If fellow Big Ten member Northwest- ern wanted a blueprint for how not only to establish success, but to maintain it, it need look no further than Madison, Wis.
Of course, Florida could tell a similar history. The Gators spent decades as the quintessential football school, a place where the interest in spring football practice always was about a billion times bigger than whatever was happening on the basketball court. Florida never even qualified for the NCAA until Norm Sloan’s second tenure there, in 1987.
Seven years later, Lon Kruger led the Gators to a stunning Final Four. And then when Billy Donovan arrived things really got interesting — even in the shadow of the school’s relentless football obsession. This is the Gators’ 15th appearance in the past 19 years, a stretch that includes four Final Fours and back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2007.