The little kid in me wanted to do what I did as an eighth grader when the Billikens won an NCAA tournament game against the University of Massachusetts. When SLU made it to the second round of the big dance, I had just gotten home from middle school and watched the last ten minutes or so of the game. After they won, I sprinted around my house yelling, slipped on the hardwood floor in the hallway and hit my knee, which hurt quite a bit. I then got up and continued running around the house in circles yelling. I was simply more cautious when I got in the hallway. I was at work, so I didn't do that, but I certainly wanted to run through the halls. SLU went on to lose to Kentucky in the second round and I hate them to this very day for that very reason. I at least got to have reverse revenge on the Wildcats through Duke, though.
What's reverse revenge? It's bragging rights that you didn't know about when you became a fan of a team. I became a fan of Duke because my dad liked them and because my Aunt Missy's father, Papa, was a basketball manager for them many years ago. What I later found out is that one of the most famous college basketball games of all time involved Duke beating Kentucky on a buzzer beater by Christian Laettner to advance to the Final Four. I have enjoyed reverse revenge on the Cowboys via the Steelers and the Brewers and many others via the Cardinals as well. It's not as good as seeing it happen and not needing Wikipedia or Youtube to pull it up, but it works well enough to shut up most people. But I digress.
I've added reasons to hate the Wildcats over the year, like how they ran a good man out of town in Tubby Smith and replaced him with a twice-proven cheater, in John Calipari. Maybe they'll run Calipari out of town if he gets a Final Four vacated there like he did at Memphis and UMass. Kentucky also seems to have a hand in keeping my brackets from winning every year. I still have placed high enough to make the money the last two years, but haven't won. And by money I mean play money because betting real money on such things isn't legal. Now, back to the Billikens!
SLU hasn't had an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament since the Larry Hughes season that Kentucky ended. They went on a crazy run to win the 2000 Conference USA tournament, allowing them to lose to current head coach Rick Majerus' Utah squad, but that was an automatic berth. Everything is coming full circle now for the Billikens. The man who knocked them out of their last tournament is trying to lead them back there and their next big test is on the road against the last team that they defeated in the NCAA tournament: You guessed it. Frank Stallone. No, just kidding, it's UMass like I said earlier. But how often do I get to make references to old SNL bits in a sports blog? I think it's allowed since it's from roughly the same time period as the NCAA tournament game I'm referencing.
SLU's RPI jumped nine spots up to 42 in the country after Wednesday's win over Xavier. If they can knock off the Minutemen on Saturday, SLU would take the tiebreaker against one of the four schools that they are currently tied with for the conference lead before coming home against a very beatable St. Bonaventure team. Due to the Xavier victory, UMass isn't a must-win, but it certainly would be nice for the Bills to keep their run going before coming back home to Chaifetz Arena, where they lose very rarely and springboard SLU's season towards an at-large NCAA tournament berth that they've been anticipating for over a decade.
Interesting to see the smaller Catholic liberal arts 'universities' that remain NCAA Division I in basketball, such as St. Bonaventure and Xavier.
ReplyDeleteDuring the 1960's, my tiny college fielded a D1 basketball team, although its status and competitiveness diminished during the 'Dark Ages' of American higher education(1968-1974). Nevertheless, with a profound and abiding faith in the future, the (then) state-of-the-art Ross Sports Center was constructed in 1973 with a basketball 'wing' (locker room, weight room, etc) grander than a palace in Rome.
But Saint Michael's College basketball has never again achieved the prestige and success it enjoyed nearly 50 years ago.
[Full disclosure: I was in college at Saint Michael's 1968-1972, the Ross Sports Center was built the year following my graduation. It was a gift from Vincent T. Ross, the chairman and CEO of Prentice-Hall who was a member of the college's Board of Trustees.]