By DAN GARTLAND
EXECUTIVE SPORTS EDITOR
I am not very old, but I’m having a hard time remembering a college basketball season as exciting and unpredictable as this one.
When Indiana lost at the buzzer to Illinois last week, it became the fifth consecutive top-ranked team to lose. On Feb. 2, when the Hoosiers were third in the AP Top 25, they knocked off No. 1 Michigan. Kansas, which held the top spot in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll, was beaten by Oklahoma State. The week before that, on Jan. 23, Duke was the top team in the polls and was defeated by Miami. Louisville was beaten by Syracuse on Jan 19. The Cardinals had earned a No. 1 ranking after the Blue Devils lost to North Carolina State on Jan. 12.
Duke held the top spot from Dec. 17 until Jan 14. Since then, no team has sat atop the polls for more than one week.
The first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament are the greatest four days in sports. If this year’s tournament is anything like the regular season, it could be truly special.
With each passing week, it begins to feel more and more as though anything can, and will, happen this season.
Last Saturday night, Notre Dame outlasted Louisville in five overtimes, 104-101. Five overtimes. Only five games since 1997 have lasted as long.
The Irish have a Player of the Year candidate in senior forward Jack Cooley, but he fouled out with 6:54 left in regulation and his team trailing 47-41.
Without Cooley on the floor, Louisville is simply a better team. The Cardinals should have been able to close out the game. They should have, but they didn’t; and it’s not that they didn’t come close — they did.
Louisville led 55-48 with one minute left in the second half. Seven points is a pretty substantial deficit to overcome in the final minute, especially without your best player on the floor, but after a few key misses by Louisville and a few clutch threes from Notre Dame junior guard Jerian Grant, the Irish forced overtime.
One overtime became two, and two became three. Three overtimes couldn’t decide the game, so they played a fourth. By the fifth, I was sure Louisville would win. Three Notre Dame starters had fouled out, and the two that were still playing ended up logging a total of 116 minutes. The Cardinals simply had more talent on the floor. The Irish were leaning on junior center Garrick Sherman, who hadn’t appeared in the team’s previous two games and didn’t even enter this one until the first overtime. Sherman finished with 17 points in 21 minutes of action, and somehow the Irish won.
There’s no logical reason why Notre Dame should have won that game. Louisville had the final possession of regulation in all five overtimes. Six times the Cardinals took a potential game-winning shot, but couldn’t manage to hit any of them. The only explanation — and again, it’s an explanation that ignores logic — is that crazy stuff happens in college basketball sometimes.
The Butler Bulldogs are a team that knows a thing or two about the unpredictable nature of college basketball. No one expected them to beat Syracuse in the Sweet 16 of the 2010 NCAA Tournament, and when they did, no one thought they could do it again in the Elite Eight against Kansas State, or in the Final Four against Michigan State. But sure enough, Butler made it all the way to the championship game, losing to Duke by two. It was just as much of a shock when the Bulldogs made it back to the title game in 2011 before losing to UConn.
Butler is playing its first season in the Atlantic 10 this year and makes its first-ever trip to the Rose Hill Gym on Saturday. The Bulldogs are ranked No. 11 in this week’s AP Top 25. Fordham, on the other hand, is mired in another dismal season. The Rams are 6-18 and may very well lose again on Wednesday at Xavier. Butler will likely be favored by 20 points in Saturday’s matchup, as it should be. Realistically, the chances that Fordham comes out on top are slim. But if this college basketball season has taught me anything, it’s that once the ball goes up, expectations get thrown out the window, and you never know what can happen.
