SHOCK & AWE
A new contender for greatest upset ever
EVEN as it was happening, it was hard to believe it was happening, and that’s when you know you’re watching something special. It’s funny, no matter where you were Friday night — alone in your den as midnight approached, in a crowded sports bar — there was an obvious community about the Mississippi State-Connecticut game. You could sense — no, you
knew — that when the refs concocted that absurd flagrant foul that seemed to hand the game right into UConn’s hands, late, you weren’t alone in wanting to see those officials immediately removed. You could sense — no, you knew — there really was an impending sense of swift justice afoot when the Huskies rushed into a bad shot, same as everyone else did.
And you could sense — no, you knew — the moment Morgan William’s 15-footer splashed clean through the net, you weren’t the only one reaching for Rasheed Wallace’s classic, and perfect, summary when these things work out as they’re supposed to: Ball don’t lie.
Was this the greatest upset of all time? Few things are more subjective, but there’s little doubt you can toss it on the list right away, and it belongs. For the purposes of trying to rank this, because that’s what we do here, let’s build a simple scorebook to figure these things out. Winning the game alone gets you 10 automatic points. If that win happens in the playoffs, add five, and if it determines a championship, add 10 more; if it’s a league/tournament final, add five. If it ends an historic winning streak? Add 10. And add your own wow! factor, on a scale from 1-to-10.
Thus do we present this list …
1. Giants 17, Patriots 14, Super Bowl XLII
Playoffs? Yes. Championship game? Yes. Winning Streak? Yes.
WOW! Factor: 10. Total: A perfect 45.
The perfect-storm upset, because the Pats were 18-0, they were the heavy betting favorite, seemingly invincible … and the Giants won anyway, and on the sport’s biggest stage, and they added a couple of wrinkles — David Tyree’s catch chief among them — that ensured this always will be the gold standard for upsets. To do all of this with a title on the line? It’ll only grow in stature as the years pass.
2. USA 4, USSR 3, Medal Round, 1980 Olympics
Playoffs? Yes. Championship game? No. Winning Streak? Yes. WOW! Factor: 10. Total: 40. If we decided to give a limitless potential number to the wow! factor, of course, this might win every time. The Soviets hadn’t lost in the Olympics in 20 years. They probably wouldn’t have lost to the U.S. if they’d played another 99 times. The only missing element was this: it was a semifinal, a point Herb Brooks himself made in the greatest pregame speech of all time, two days later when his team faced Finland. “Lose this game,” he warned his team, “you’ll take it to your [expletive] grave.”
3. Mississippi St. 66, UConn 64, 2017 NCAA Tournament
Playoffs? Yes. Championship game? No, Finals (+3). Winning Streak? Yes. WOW! Factor: 10. Total: 38. Logically, you understood UConn’s 111-game winning streak would end sometime, and Geno Auriemma kept praising how much this team had overachieved. Still, they had erased a 16-point deficit early and a four-point lead late, and that flagrant just seemed like a message from the gods this couldn’t happen. And then it did.
4. Villanova 66, Georgetown 64, 1985 NCAA Tournament
Playoffs? Yes. Championship game? Yes. Winning streak? No. WOW! Factor: 10. Total: 35 To put what Mississippi State did in perspective, consider how often we’d just assumed this would be the greatest upset of all time, in any sport … and then add in if the Wildcats had ended an 88-game winning streak by the Hoyas, the way Notre Dame did in a regular-season game with UCLA in 1974. The only thing missing was being able to cut the nets down afterward. Also: look at the final score. Spooky.
5. Jets 16, Colts 7, Super Bowl III
Playoffs? Yes. Championship game? Yes. Winning Streak? No. WOW! Factor: 9. Total: 34. The Jets have long insisted that while Jimmy the Greek and others considered them 18-point underdogs, they themselves never did; it’s what emboldened Joe Namath to make his guarantee. So let’s reward that pluckiness by reducing the
wow! factor by a point. Still a result (almost) nobody saw coming.