Carnegie News
FINAL FOUR FIRST PERSONS
By Matt Fortuna
By Nate Mink
I felt like I was the celebrity. Roommates begging for shoutouts on my blog. Friends tweeting at me during the games. Family members texting to ask where I was sitting. And yes, even a source waking me up the morning of the national semifinals asking for tickets. (I still cannot afford them myself, thank you very much.) Still, my first trip to the Final Four was about anything but me. There was a coach by the name of Shaka taking the nation by storm. There was mid-major Butler making it to its second straight national title game. There was Connecticut winning it all following an unprecedented run through the Big East and NCAA tournaments. There was even John Calipari in his first official Final Four after his previous two appearances were vacated. (Yes, a reporter did actually ask him how it felt to be there for the first time. No, it was not me.) But for every big name and crowd of reporters onsite, there seemed to be a corresponding little guy making it all happen behind the scenes. Pretty much the only directive I was given upon landing in Houston was to find stories as far away from the mainstream as possible. I went to Truitt Middle School to report on the only deceased player from 1954 Milan, Ind., state title team—the inspiration for "Hoosiers." It turns out his legacy is as great as any of his teammates, as he became both a coaching and teaching legend throughout Houston before losing his battle with cancer in 1988. I sat down with Felicia Crump, UConn's academic counselor, who had the unenviable task of bringing these players down from Cloud 9 to remind them that they are, in fact, student-athletes. (She's also a big reason why Most Outstanding Player Kemba Walker is graduating a year early.) And I spent nearly a half-hour with Butler's studentmanagers, several of whom were experiencing the sport's biggest stage for the second year in a row after signing up to be modest towelboys. Of course, the biggest feedback I received from my coverage came from my mother, a lifetime Chicago Bulls fan who had just watched a video of me interviewing Dennis Rodman, who had just been inducted into the Hall of Fame. “I cannot believe that my son is interviewing Dennis Rodman,” she said in an email. I'm not sure if she was proud or disturbed.
Before Shaka Smart and Brad Stevens emerged from the bowels of Reliant Stadium, taking their place on the raised basketball court above their respective benches amid the collective screams of 75,421 fans, before I saw Butler’s bulldog, Blue II, and hundreds of Virginia Commonwealth students assume their spots behind each basket, there was one dominant feeling. Gazing up and around the vast, cavernous arena, dark and almost entirely empty on the Thursday before games would be played, all I could think about was how toothless my first, and perhaps only, Final Four would be with a couple of mid-major, average basketball teams. If this was my One Shining Moment, I wanted Coach K. I wanted Roy Williams. Kemba Walker? OK, I’ll take it. The championship game, I would convince myself, validated that assertion thanks to Butler’s three 2-point baskets and 18.8 percent shooting. Twitter, of course, ran wild with reaction, calling it the worst championship game in college basketball history. It is more than a month later I write this. I’ve digested and replayed scenes from that week: dinners and breakfasts with an elite class of college basketball scribes who write marvelous stories; handshakes and introductions with Hall of Fame coaches and players; and, yes, standing in the pit minutes before VCU and Butler tipped this weekend-long spectacle off, the designated section behind the basket with VCU’s jazzy pep band and hundreds of students clad in black and yellow. Then there was this scene: those same students, some who rented a minivan and drove from Richmond to Houston, lining the ropes that lead into the tunnel, extending their arms as their defeated classmates walk with their heads down, realizing a ride as magnificent as the last three weeks could end in an instant. It is here I saw the pain, the agony, the cruelness of this tournament. It is here I saw the tears swelling in the eyes, the sweat crawling, jerseys being untucked for the final time. This didn’t need to be Duke, North Carolina or Connecticut. What I saw on that night was players running, jumping, shooting, competing for their shot at basketball lore. It was everything it ought to be.
10