March Madness’ best Cinderella story a symbol of sports’ magical intrigue
We have officially arrived at a new realm, those of us who watch sports, those of us who care about sports, those of us who have chosen to invest such a large portion of our souls in the games people play: Anything is possible now.
Say it again:
Anything is possible.
We always believed that, sure, or at least we wanted to in the worst way. The eternal dreamer inside us that makes us sports fans in the first place always insisted: Of course, the Chicago Cubs will win a World Series — if not in your lifetime, in someone’s lifetime.
The Mets once fell behind the Braves three games to none in the 1999 NLCS, and when it was inevitably pointed out to Bobby Valentine, the team’s manager, that no team in baseball history had ever recovered after spotting a foe an 0-3 lead, he shrugged and said, “Someday, somebody will.”
Now, he might have looked smarter — and Bobby Vee always liked to be the smartest guy in whichever room was lucky to host him — if he’d added, “In fact, it will happen in exactly five years and five days,” but that wasn’t necessary. He believed.
Because all of us want to believe. Because all of us watch these games at least in part because there is always the distinct possibility that we will see something that we’ve never seen before: a perfect game, perhaps, or Michael Jordan dropping 55 points — forevermore known as “double-nickel” — vs. the Knicks at the Garden only a few weeks after giving up his baseball dreams. Somebody shooting 59 on the final day of the Masters.
It doesn’t matter if it does happen.
It could happen. And that’s enough to keep us coming back.
And so there was something a little extra meaningful attached to one of the great sporting truths that had been revisited each March for the last 33 years, and was still very much in play as the great crush of NCAA Tournament games careened toward the witching hour Friday.
The last game on the docket in Charlotte, NC, was Virginia — not just a No. 1 in the South Region, but the overall top in the tournament — facing the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a 16. Maybe you were watching that. Maybe you were on another game. Maybe you were watching a “Law & Order” rerun. One way or another — text message from a friend, exhilarated tweet, maybe the slow crawl at the bottom of the TV, you were suddenly made aware of something.
The Cavaliers and the Retrievers were tied. At the half.
Was that a typo?
Not a typo. And suddenly, you could hear half of America changing television channels.
Since the NCAA expended to 64 teams in 1985, sparking a four-region bracket system that seeded teams in each division from 1 to 16, top-seeded teams had faced 16s 135 times.
They were 135-0.
Most of those games weren’t especially close, but the ones that were made an instant connection with fans of the tournament — where unless you happen to be an alum of a contending team, the things that matter most are A) your bracket pools and B) watching schools you’ve never heard of scare the bejeezus out of schools you’ve heard about too much.
Still, those “One Shining Moments” generally involve 12s beating a 5 (which always happens) or a 15 beating a 2 (which happens rarely, but enough to keep you watching if the score stays close for 35 minutes) or even the odd 9 taking out a 1 in the second round.
The 16? The very first year, ’85, Fairleigh Dickinson, based in Teaneck, NJ, nearly bushwhacked top-seeded Michigan before falling 59-55 — but at the moment it happened, 16s had been exactly 0-0 against 1s. Nobody knew what they were seeing. There was no stigma. There was no gaudy number on one side of the hyphen.
Four years later, though, the 64-team format had become a part of our very sporting fabric. Everyone knew enough that when Princeton had Georgetown pressed against the abyss on the tournament’s second day at the Providence Civic Center, it was a big deal. Georgetown escaped, 50-49, but in that moment, the four 1-vs.-16 games contested every year took on a shiver of mythology.
Well, it’ll happen someday …
Surely someone will do this some year …
It’s sports; of COURSE this will happen eventually …
Georgetown’s escape made it 20-0, all-time, for the 1s against the 16s, and the 1s were just getting started.
“You have to believe you have a shot,” James Green, the coach of Mississippi Valley State, said the day before his 16th-seeded Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils took on top-seeded UCLA in 2007, doing his best to bring some old-school Bobby Vee optimism into the room. A day later, it was UCLA 70, Mississippi Valley 29.
“I didn’t say we’d win,” Green said. “I said we believed. And we did.”
Except some had actually reached the point where they could say, with certainty, that after 33 years and 135 opportunities, maybe belief wouldn’t be enough to carry the day this time.
Once Virginia escaped, it would be 136-0, and the record would be tucked away for 52 weeks, and …
Only Virginia didn’t escape.
Virginia got its doors blown off in the second half, in fact; UMBC won, 74-54, and it inspired the Baltimore Sun to compose a headline that even The Post’s own back-page craftsmen would surely have stood and applauded:
U
May
Be
Cinderella.
Alas, the Retrievers’ run came to an end in the very next round, as they fell Sunday to No. 9 Kansas State, 50-43.
Still, right now, today, if you are a sports fan, you truly do have to believe it: Anything really is possible.
See, we always knew sports would supply upsets. We’ve seen them.
The Jets in Super Bowl III was an all-timer. So were the Giants in Super Bowl XLII, the Miracle Mets of ’69, Villanova and NC State’s run through the NCAAs in the ’80s. And many, many others.
We always knew sports could up the ante every once in a while and turn mere upsets into something else, too.
Few moments will ever compare with the night of Feb. 22, 1980, when, at the peak of the Cold War, a bunch of American college kids really did beat the Soviet hockey team in Lake Placid.
Eleven days shy of 10 years later, a no-name ham-and-egg boxer named Buster Douglas walked into a ring at the Tokyo Dome against Mike Tyson and walked out the heavyweight champion of the world, after punching the Baddest Man on the Planet through the ropes.
And then there is the place that exists even higher, where assumptions go to either die or live forever.
It was where we would’ve put the No. 1s’ 136-0 record Saturday morning, had Virginia survived Friday night. It was there when Bobby Valentine’s quiet faith was tested long before he lent voice to it. No team, after all, had ever even rallied from 0-3 down to force a Game 7 before.
Then, in 2004, the Red Sox, of all teams, did that, and not only did they do that, and not only did they win the World Series, ending an 86-year drought, and not only have they added two titles since, but they seemed to open the door for a river of other franchises presumed poxed forever: the White Sox, the Cubs, the Astros, the Saints, the Cavaliers.
We are beyond the age of assumption, you see. Not a bad thing. Always remember why Felix Unger (who lived for so many years with a sports columnist, remember, so some wisdom had to run off) warned you should never “ASSUME.”
(Kids, feel free to YouTube that.)