CINDERELLA SCUFFLES
Drama, upsets take time to arrive at the Big Dance
MILWAUKEE It took less than two hours to show, again, why March Madness is the best thing going in U.S. sports.
Three overtime games in a row, including one won by a 12th seed. For those keeping score, that makes three double-digit seeds still alive in the NCAA tournament.
And there’s still another day of second-round games to go.
“That’s what these games are all about,” Connecticut’s Shabazz Napier said. Exactly. As much havoc as the earlyround upsets wreak on everybody’s brackets, they’re what make March Madness the greatest quasi-holiday this country has. They’re the reason we skip work, blow off class and hit refresh on our browsers so often our fingers go numb.
But with the exception of Dayton and Harvard, most of the early games Thursday went exactly as seeded. Wisconsin routed American. Syracuse walloped Western Michigan. Adreian Payne almost single-handedly dismantled Delaware. Borrrrring. Then came those three games,
and the tournament was back to the March Madness we know and love.
After trailing 10th-seeded Saint Joseph’s for almost the entire game, Connecticut reeled the Hawks back in at the end of regulation. With Saint Joe’s gassed, the Huskies won it in overtime.
As that game was ending, North Carolina State was gagging up the last of what had been a 16point lead over Saint Louis with eight minutes to go. The Wolfpack didn’t help themselves with a historically horrid showing at the free throw line — they missed nine of 21 shots in those last eight minutes — but the Billikens were simply frenetic, drilling shots and pressing on defense as they forced OT.
“All of it. All of it was improvised,” coach Jim Crews said of the press.
T.J. Warren gave State one last gasp, but he fouled out, and the rest of the Wolfpack soon were trailing after him.
And if that wasn’t enough, Oklahoma rallied from a hole against 12th-seeded North Dakota State, sending that game into overtime, too. Score one for the little guys there, as the Bison held off the fifth-seeded Sooners.
“Honestly, I don’t know what all the hype is about, like, how exciting the NCAA tournament is,” North Dakota State’s Taylor Braun cracked. “Kidding. That was — the whole experience was unbelievable. Just the atmosphere was 100 times greater than I expected.”
UConn and Saint Louis might not count as “upsets” since the better-seeded team still won. But they provided heart-pounding, nail-biting, don’t-you-dare-lookaway-for-a-second entertainment, and something no one does better than the NCAA tournament.
Not the NFL. Not college football. And certainly not the NBA. Nobody. “Having done it last year, we know the amazing feelings you get from having an upset-type of victory in this great tournament,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said after his 12th-seeded Crimson upset Cincinnati.
Yes, it would have been a lot more fun if Albany could have become the first 16 seed to knock off a No. 1. Or had American hung on to that lead it had early on second-seeded Wisconsin.
“I wish we could have made it a better game today, represented ourselves and the league a little better,” American coach Mike Brennan said. “But Wisconsin has dismantled some really good teams this year. They’re a No. 2 seed for a reason.”
But we got more than our fill of the upsets and the squeakers we really want to see.
Think about it: Aside from games involving your favorite team or those you saw in person, which are the ones you remember from the early rounds?
Sixteen years later, I can still picture Bryce Drew making that improbable buzzer-beater to lead little Valparaiso to an upset of fourth-seeded Mississippi. Or Princeton shocking defending champ UCLA two years earlier with one of its patented backdoor layups. All of us became honorary Dunk City residents during Florida Gulf Coast’s run last year. Tell me you don’t hesitate, just a little, whenever you come across Richmond in a bracket.
Anything is supposed to be possible, but life reminds us every day that it really isn’t. So when the unexpected happens, you can’t help but delight in it.
“We’ll gladly be your Cinderella, America,” North Dakota State tweeted after its victory.
Said Braun: “We’re just trying to soak in every moment of this. This doesn’t come around to anybody every year or anything like that.”
But it comes around often enough. And therein lies the beauty of the NCAA tournament.