San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
DESERVED A BETTER FATE? MAYBE, BUT MARCH DOESN’T CARE
This was not how it deserved to end for San Diego State, in a hail of misfires as lanky Syracuse guard Buddy Boeheim made a personal “One Shining Moment” video.
This was not a suitable roll of the credits for Matt Mitchell and Jordan Schakel after appearing in two NCAA Tournaments — destined for three, if COVID-19 had not ripped away the March rug a season ago. Four Mountain West championship banners. Wins piled upon wins. Consistent and captivating excellence.
Then came a 40-minute nightmare, where the Aztecs shot 22.6 percent in the first half as they finally had the nation’s full and undivided attention on Big Boy CBS. The clanking and clunking was worse than the first half against the Orange in the infamous, wind-blown aircraft carrier game in 2012 (24.1).
Schakel, through moist and empty eyes, framed the pain of a game that completely unraveled — a 78-62 finish that in no way felt that close.
“My shots didn’t fall,” he said. “Nobody’s shots fell.”
Well, Boeheim’s did. He shot over scrambling Aztecs defenders while scoring 16 of his team’s first 19 points and finishing with 30 by drilling a mind-boggling seven of 10 3-point attempts.
So, would you rather be Syracuse or San Diego State? One collected wins, going 53-6 the last two seasons. One won conference championships.
One produced a conference player of the year. One won 14 consecutive games before packing for Indianapolis.
The other finished eighth in the ACC and lost three of its last six, falling by nearly 17.5 points in games against Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Virginia and Clemson.
One, a regular-season monster. The other, a winner when the lights shined brightest.
“We had a lot of great memories over the years,” said Schakel, collecting himself after a long pause. “This wasn’t how we wanted to end it. … Right now, this one doesn’t feel good.”
That’s the outsized enormity of a handful of weeks in March. It can erase nearly everything before it. College basketball pushes all its chips to the middle of the table. The NCAA Tournament matters most. It drives the discussion. It’s each team’s personal valuation report.
So, here sit the heartbroken Aztecs. They aced the test for nearly two full seasons, through the grueling travel in the Mountain West, through the lungburning altitude, through COVID protocols that isolated and demanded selfsacrifice none of us truly will be able to understand.
Then San Diego State found out, painfully and again, that the final test question is worth 95 percent of the grade.
That’s why Terrell Gomez walked away from a flurry of points and individual success. He traded being a star on one campus to become a role player on another, saying time and again that the NCAA Tournament was the single and sole driver of the decision. Ditto for Joshua Tomaic.
All of that collective sweat adds up to a chance, but never a guarantee.
“We knew he was hot,” Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said of Boeheim. “We tried to make them contested, but to his credit he stepped up and made big plays in March like really good players do.”
The ache and agony of Bracketville comes with
intoxicating promise. The tournament allows a team to wipe away the lopsided losses, the uneven play, the mistakes of a season that crescendo when the CBS, TNT, TBS and trutv trucks roll in.
A team like Syracuse, with a 1-7 record this season in Quad 1 games, can bloom like a spring daffodil. The Orange, just 92nd in adjusted defensive efficiency according to analytics guru Kenpom, can suddenly short-circuit sharpshooters in the clutch.
The rest of the country now sorts out Aztecs basketball through a onegame, one-night filter. Most will swear that all of the success the last two seasons was a mirage, the byproduct of a weak conference and over-inf lated seeding.
There were plenty of nits to pick against the Orange. Too often, three Aztecs stood 30-something feet from the basket for the bulk of the shot clock, instead of trying to aggressively drive and pierce the seams of the vaunted 2-3 zone and thicket of long-armed defenders who waited.
Once the Aztecs finally charged into the breach, the fatal blows already had been delivered.
That’s for armchair coaches, though.
The most profound part of it was seeing the dull shock filling the eyes of Dutcher, Mitchell, Schakel and Gomez as the final minutes evaporated.
Mitchell, playing his rump off until the end, tried to will a sealed fate to change. The No. 6 scorer in program history has been on Montezuma Mesa, seemingly since Dan Fouts was throwing passes a few exits down the interstate.
His career co-pilot, Schakel, drained a few shots with the uncomfortable realization it was far too late.
There was so much work to arrive at that moment, two seasons in the making. The Aztecs did not earn better in a clunker against the Orange. They deserved better, though, for all the winning and banners collected along the way.
March hardly cares.