The Best and The Worst of Times
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What’s a paladin? If you watched Furman upset Virginia in the first round of the men’s NCAA tournament, you already know what a paladin is. It had been 43 years since the liberal arts school in Greenville, South Carolina had been invited to the dance, and head coach Bob Richey’s cast of characters were not about to let the opportunity go to waste. By the way, in case you missed it, a paladin is a knight.
And Fairleigh Dickinson, not Farleigh Dickerson, is a college, not the name of a brand of milk. It has an average annual enrollment of around 8,000 and it’s located somewhere in New Jersey. Peggy Noonan went there, as did Seth Greenberg, but that’s old news. Their 16 seed 2023 basketball team knocked off number one, number one Purdue, and they only made it into the tournament on a technicality. Merrimack, their conference tournament winner, is still transitioning to Division I status, therefore they were ineligible for the dance. So the runner up, Fairleigh Dickinson, got the nod. Obviously, nobody on the FDU staff or team gave a hoot about any of that though. They just showed up and on the grandest stage, together, cut a rug. And, wouldn’t you know it, their mascot is a knight.
You can’t make this stuff up.
March Madness always breeds a hero. And a goat. The only people not parsed into piles are those who don’t get to play. The 50-50 chance (though those are NOT betting odds) of being in the hero pile is why roughly 70 million brackets are filled out every year. The one shining moment race feels like an open tryout for everyman.
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People in offices and oil fields and cafeterias and hospitals are watching ball because what is possible suddenly feels more real than it does even on Ted Lasso. For just a little bit, we get wrapped up with the teams on the court who are intent on shocking the world. We’re reaching for the ball and the outstretched hand and the championship trophy, too. How can we not get happy as we watch Princeton run around and grin? Or feel invincible when the Pitt freshman from the Canary Islands blocks a potential go ahead shot with 2.7 on the clock in the fragile play-in game? Or leap with Marquette’s Shaka Smart when his shooter stretches a second half 5 point lead to 8 by knocking down a long range three?
These are the best of times.
But we also, because we’re invested, feel the point blank putback that rolls around the rim and out. And the rebound that goes off the fingertips of a player out of bounds. And the freethrow that’s been made hundreds and hundreds of times but just will not go in when it matters most. We watch giant men cry and hold each other up and drag themselves from the floor they never wanted to leave. We watch coaches keep desperately drawing with markers on miniature courts, like emergency workers doing CPR in hopes of finding a pulse. The clock always races like a wildhorse when you’re behind.
These are the worst of times.
Absolutelly nothing, though, is better than the postgame locker room after an NCAA tournament win. It’s the exhale of a long-term committment popping out of a pressurized cast. The celebration comes from some place you can’t access on ordinary days. The hugging and the dancing and the throwing of whatever liquid you can get your hands on is partly rite of passage and mostly unhinged joy. Inside that space, it’s as if the world triples in size and yet simultaneously you get closer to every single thing. The days between the games are like riding on clouds.
These are the best of times.
And yet, absolutely nothing is worse than the postgame locker room after an NCAA tournament loss. Gut wrenching is a euphemism regardless of the round. Just getting in the door is like wading through piles of sharded glass on your hands and knees. And once you get in you have to figure out what to do with all that’s waiting for you. The disappointment, the sudden stoppage of the train, the finality sparring with the future, despite all you try to do to make it please just wait a bit. Those wounds leave marks and though they eventually heal over, at the time you cannot fathom how you will make it through the night.
These are the worst of times.
I never won the last game of the season at the NCAA Division I level, so I can’t say what it feels like to ride off as the happy guy. But in 2002, we got really close. The only difference in that one and all the other losses along the tournament road was that we knew as we pulled up to the arena that regardless of what happened, we were at the finish line. There’s something about the road not running out underneath you, about knowing where the drop off is, that helps you land more like a blob where all your parts are mangled but within reach rather than like a glass that shatters when it hits scattering into pieces you might never find again.
When we lost to Connecticut in the National Championship game, we cried like babies. We all had broken hearts. It’s hard to be hungry and close enough to smell a thing that you don’t get to eat. But we weren’t crippled by the pain. Maybe it was the team we had. Maybe it was the team we lost to. Maybe it was just that fact that we knew it was going to end one way or the other and we knew we’d done all we could do. Our locker room tears had double edges. They were proud and disappointed. They were happy that it happened and sad it had to end. They were “I love you” and "I’ll miss you” all wrapped up in two-sided tape.
These are the best and worst of times.
PS. At the time of this writing the Women’s NCAA Tournament was only in round one. But I sure hope you’re watching….