Remembering March Madnesses of the Past

John Calipari says he has never watched the tape of the game. I don’t blame him. I haven’t watched it either.

It’s just too painful.

When the Memphis Tigers took a 60-51 lead on Kansas with two minutes, 12 seconds left to play in the 2008 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game, it soon looked like Tiger fans really would ‘be doing back flips down Beale Street.’ It looked, at long last, like Tiger Nation would be celebrating its first title.

But a funny thing happened on the way to cutting down the nets.

Kansas makes a few shots. Memphis misses a few free throws. Pretty soon, a nine point lead is down to three…and, inexplicably, the Tigers don’t foul with the game on the line. Mario Chalmers jacks up a three point shot and, voila, overtime.

You know the rest of the story:

• Kansas wins the game
  
• Coach Cal leaves Memphis a year later
• He takes everything but the popcorn machine and leaves (or was it a Sno Cone machine?)

Those last two events took place just a few months after the ones met Coach Cal and posed for postgame pix.

Memphis basketball is still trying to make its comeback from the depth of where Cal left the program when he went to Kentucky. Under Coach Josh Pastner, they are making progress even while “Big Blue” has advanced to two Final Fours and, now, a title game.

All the while, Memphis fans refer to him as “Coach X” ; he still calls the Memphis fans “The Miserables.“

Talk about an ugly divorce.

And now, what do we have here but a rematch, of sorts, of the 2008 NCAA title game to bring all the pain back to the surface. Only this time it is UK vs KU. Cal’s back in the finals to face Kansas again…he’s just wearing a different shade of blue.

All of this has Memphis fans singing the blues. Can you blame them? Former U of M star Antonio Anderson tweeted today that Memphis fans should move on. He’s rooting for Kentucky tonight and he says Tiger Nation should do the same.

Maybe he’s right. It’s hard, though.

Tiger fans, certainly, DO have a sense of deja-vu about tonight’s game even if they can’t pick a team to support. I think that is because, at the same time, there is a sense of longing; a feeling of ‘if only…’

If only:

• We had made ONE more free throw
• They had missed ONE shot in the last two minutes
• We HAD fouled them in the final 10 seconds

Well…I’m sure if any ONE of those three ‘what ifs’ had been achieved, everyone in Tiger Nation would have a different feeling about tonight’s game. Still, who do you root for? The team that took away our title or the coach who took away our entire class of 5-star recruits to try to win a title somewhere else?

At least it wasn’t that group of 5-star players who went all the way to win the title. I have a feeling this group, however, will be.

I’m sure there’ll be just a few of us, though, who will choose not to watch.  

JG

(Source: ESPN)

Originally posted 4/2/2012