March Madness resumes Thursday at 7:15 p.m. when Stanford University and the University of Dayton — 10 and 11 seeds respectively — square off at the FedEx Forum In Memphis, Tenn. in the first game of the Sweet 16. As you probably know, UC won’t be there.
UC will be the same place as you and I, watching at home from the couch, from the bar, or, more likely, not watching at all.
It doesn’t feel right, it never has felt right and it never will feel right, when whatever team you’ve just spent three months supporting sees its season end in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Every single team, one through 64 — well, 68 now that the NCAA has deemed it appropriate to punish four teams with play-in games every year, so that it may clutch a few more fists full of dollars — has a claim to it being “their year.”
Every team in college basketball has a story to be told, a walk-on leading the team in scoring, a coach overcoming insurmountable family hardships, an unheralded fifth-year senior blazing his way into lore on the back of only his own hard work and determination. That’s Sean Kilpatrick, but his story will not be the darling of March.
One story from one of the 16 teams remaining will, but that leaves 67 other teams crying.
Survive and advance: It is the same thing that makes the Madness both the best and worst tradition in college sports. The finality is what feels wrong. How can a brilliant 31-game regular season end in one painful span of 40 minutes played 2,000 miles away in the basketball mecca (insert heavy, heavy sarcastic tone) of Spokane, Wash.?
I don’t know how it can, but it did for UC and it feels wrong. Wrong that your team is out, wrong that I won’t be sitting on press row at Madison Square Garden Thursday night, and more than anything, wrong that the careers of Sean Kilpatrick, Justin Jackson and Titus Rubles ended — and will in many ways be forgotten — with an glory less loss to Harvard in a city that might as well have been in Canada.
It’s a special thing in major college basketball these days — a team with three seniors like the three that Cincinnati had this year. And to those three I am grateful. They’ve sent me out with a great season of games and stories, most of which were good enough to write themselves: the 15-game winning steak, Kilpatrick’s dominance, Jackson’s emergence, the captivating victory at Louisville that finally grabbed the national media and said “Wake the hell up, Cincinnati basketball is back.”
It is back, very much because of the contributions of those three seniors. Unfortunately and unjustly, much of their contribution will be forgotten because March Madness is where legacies live and die. And in first-round losses, they die.
Sean Kilpatrick’s name will get its rightful place in UC basketball lore, etched in white adhesive next to that of Steve Logan’s and the others named All-American in their time as Bearcats. Someday, years from now, they may retire his jersey — they should.
Justin Jackson will live on in the hearts of UC fans, jumping over tables and chasing down unknowing players who’d wrongly thought they had an uncontested layup, only to see Jackson send their shot into the 20th row — mean face.
Rubles, forever underrated, might someday be forgotten all together. None of them will be remembered how they could’ve been — how they should’ve been — had UC made a deep tournament run, whatever that constitutes.
Collectively, they will be four white numerals sewn into a banner of many more. Two. Zero. One. Four: 2014, American Athletic Conference Champions. Nothing more than a banner for men to look up at when we’re older, “Those guys could really play,” said old me to inanimate grandchild I may or may not ever have.
That will sadly be their legacy some day. I say sadly because their legacies should be that of three players who helped to drag this program back to the forefront of college basketball. Instead, we’re left with a banner and the memories, the last of which was the saddest of all.
Kilpatrick put up the game’s final shot, a runner at the buzzer just for the sake of shooting. Final Score: Harvard 61, UC 57. There’s Justin, crouched with his head between his knees, hiding his face from the camera that refused to look away. When it finally did the next shot was no better, Titus, tears streaming down his face with the memory of a crucial missed layup burning into his heart. The camera never found its way to Sean, and thank God for that because I’m sure he was inconsolable.
There’s so much wrong with that being the final images we get of them as UC basketball players.
Sean — the relentless All-American scorer — missing a shot that meant nothing. Justin — the fearless shot blocker, turned most improved player in college basketball — sitting on the floor. Titus — one of the toughest players in college basketball — sobbing.
Thus UC’s best season in a decade, the first that had truly captivated the city in quite some time, ended in the most unfitting of manners. It’s the reminder of what we’ve always known but somehow forget during the course of every season: It only ends well for one team, one fan base, one group of seniors.
The Madness knows no storylines. The Madness is as coldhearted and unforgiving as it is captivating and enthralling. The Madness is, after all, madness — painful, beautiful, unwavering, heartbreaking madness.