| Nothing in sports plays with the human soul quite like a buzzer-beater: the ultimate knife-edge of glory and heartbreak, provider of instant swings in emotion, and basketball’s version of a one-punch knockout. There are buzzer-beaters, of course, in all forms of basketball and at all times of the year, but this is the period of our athletic calendar when it feels like they never stop coming and when we can’t take our eyes away from them. The end of the college hoops season has a stunning and desperate finality to it, and nothing is more final than a ball soaring into the air before time has expired, transfixing everyone’s gaze, then dropping through the net as the clock zeroes out. It is captivating and uplifting, the best drama sports has to offer, the chance for young players to write their name in eternal school folklore and conjure a piece of magic that will last forever. And every time it happens, there is the part we don’t think about or remember, because that’s not how sports works. There is the flip side, the team who just got daggered, the hero whose moment just got stolen away. For some, that’s how their basketball life ends. Whenever that ball falls true and the latest dose of final-second mysticism hits, there will be someone — or several of them — for whom the closing moment of all those years on the hardwood comes with a devastating gut punch. For every Christian Laettner, there is a Sean Woods. As Monday showed this week, for every David Jean-Baptiste, there is a Mike Bothwell. If you’ve checked either the sports highlights packages or spent any time on social media over the last day, it’s impossible for you to have missed the clinching strike on the SoCon Tournament Championship Game, as Chattanooga’s Jean-Baptiste threw up a stunning 3 as time expired to give his team a 64-63 overtime victory over Furman. This was March at its maddest, a tense, speedy, captivating contest between two plucky mid-majors who didn’t know how to quit, and who only had one way into the NCAA tournament — by winning this game. Jean-Baptiste deserves his moment in the spotlight, but there will be enough written about him today and his moment of glory. Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I’m getting soft (and not just around the middle), but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Furman players. About Bothwell, a senior, who did everything he could and more, hitting an icy-veined 3-pointer to tie it for Furman with four seconds left in regulation, and then the go-ahead lay-up with 4.3 ticks remaining in OT. And about Jalen Slawson and Alex Hunter, also in their final year, who seemingly helped take coach Bob Richey’s program to the tournament for the first time since 1980, with a chance to become school legends. Furman did everything right, all the way to pressuring Jean-Baptiste without fouling, and forcing him into a brutally difficult shot at the buzzer. It was textbook defense. And yet, this time, due to the devilish fates of March, it was not enough. As Chattanooga’s players engulfed Jean-Baptiste and the celebrations began, Bothwell laid on the floor at Harrah’s Cherokee Center in Asheville, N.C., hands covering his eyes, unable to believe the unbelievable. Unable to accept the unfairness. March is wonderful, no question about it. The games are played with skill and fire and unflinching spirit, and college basketball is so deep that countless contests inevitably find themselves decided by the tiniest of margins. That leads itself to all those wow moments that we love and cherish, the jaw-droppers and head-scratchers, the wild comebacks and clutch free throws, the nerve-janglers, and, of course, the thing that fuels this intense period more than anything, the buzzer-beaters. It’s not a buzzkill to appreciate all parts of it. For every incredible moment for one group, there is a miserable one for another. For every explosion of joy, there is a corresponding sickening feeling of what might have been. For every opportunity grabbed, a chance lost. And for every shining moment, permanent and unforgettable, the reality that the losers will remember it too, in an entirely different way. |
