John Feinstein - The Back Roads to March: The Unsung, Unheralded, and Unknown Heroes of a College Basketball Season

As soon as the buzzer sounded, I closed my computer. Ever helpful, the NCAA had put out its one millionth printed statement of Final Four weekend prior to the start of the game, warning all of us in the media that confetti would come pouring out of U.S. Bank Stadiums ceiling as soon as the national championship game ended.

Sure enough here it came, and I quickly closed the computer so as not to have to spend several minutes picking confetti from the keys. Not my first rodeo. It was 10:40 central time in Minneapolis11:40 in the eastand, as was always the case on Monday night, time was precious.

For a moment, while waiting to be able to safely open the computer and resume writing, I flashed back nine years to another Monday night. There were thirty-one seconds left in the NCAA championship game between Duke and Butler, and the Bulldogs had the ball and had just called a time-out, trailing 6059.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, who was that years chairman of the NCAA basketball committee, was sitting to my left. As the buzzer sounded to end the time-out, Smith leaned over to me and said, Okay, youre the ultimate defender of the little guy. But youre also a Duke graduate. What do you want to see happen here?

I looked at my watch. It was 11:37 p.m. in Indianapolis. Prior to the game, my editor at the Washington Post had told me that if I wanted my column to make the home edition of the newspaper, he needed it in the office by midnight.

I had spent most of the last thirty minutes writing and rewriting as the game swung back and forth. The first ten paragraphs were unwritten, pending the outcome.

Gene, its 11:37 p.m., I said. I have to hit the send button by midnight or my column wont make most of the mornings papers. The only thing I dont want to see is f overtime.

Smith laughed. I could not have been more serious. The late, great Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prizewinning New York Times columnist, had explained to me early in my career that the first rule of sportswriting is simple: its always okay to root for yourself.

On that crisp April evening in 2010, I wasnt rooting for Butlerthe David of college basketballa team that had pulled one upset after another to reach the final game and now had close to seventy thousand fans screaming for one last shocker to finish the Disney movie.

I wasnt rooting for Dukemy alma matercoached by Mike Krzyzewski, someone I had known well, liked, and admired for more than thirty years. In the minds of most college basketball fans, Duke wasnt just Goliath; it was Darth Vader. The evil empire in shorts.

I wasnt rooting for either team. I was rooting, at that moment, for me. I knew I had a great storyregardless of the outcome. I just needed to have time to write it so that the Posts readers would get a chance to read it.

Nine years later, I had felt much the same way as the VirginiaTexas Tech national championship game wound down. Like Duke-Butler, it was riveting, the teams taking turns appearing to gain control.

Virginia had led by ten late in the second half, but Texas Tech had rallied to take a 6865 lead with under twenty seconds to play. Somehow, the Red Raiders, a superb defensive team, lost track of UVAs DeAndre Hunter, leaving him wide-open in the corner.

As soon as I saw Hunter catch the ball, I knew his three-point shot was going in and the game was going to overtime. Texas Tech lost in overtime; I lost in regulation.

But even as the clock ticked toward midnight on the East Coast and I waited impatiently for it to be safe to reopen my laptop, I was smiling while Virginia celebrated.

I was happy for Coach Tony Bennett, who had been brutally maligned a year earlier after the Cavaliers had become the first No. 1 seed in NCAA Tournament history to lose to a No. 16 seed. Prior to UVAs game in Charlotte against the University of MarylandBaltimore County, No. 1 seeds had been 135-0 against No. 16 seeds.

Just before midnight on the eve of St. Patricks Day, that record had become 135-1. UMBC-74, Virginia-54. That score hangs from a banner inside UMBCs Retriever Events Center and will be there for as long as they continue to play basketball.

That loss hung around Bennetts neck for more than a year. He answered every question, never snapped when it came up, and didnt bother to mention that Hunter, arguably his best player, had been injured that night and watched the game from the bench.

Bennett never fell back on the clichs of jock-world losers: Thats in the past, weve moved on; I only want to talk about the present; or the catchall That was a different team. Im focused on this team.

In a twist, the coach who most wanted to put UMBC-74, Virginia-54, behind him was UMBC coach Ryan Odom. His slogan for his 201819 team was no looking in the rearview mirror.