(Make sure to start at Cpt. I)I've had about 24 hours to digest Pitt's removal from the 2009 NCAA tournament. I have avoided watching SportsCenter, stayed away from reading any Pittsburgh news articles or papers, and tried not to replay the key points of the game repeatedly in my mind.
If you're invested in a team, it's innate for you to cyclically experience ultimate highs and lows as a fan. It's easy to remember the best of times and worst of times and this certainly will rank as a low, for me, as a Pitt fan. It's beneficial (and refreshing) to continue to remind myself of both some of the more catastrophic heartbreaks in my day as well as the endings to every Pitt season that I can remember since I was 10.
I've seen the Pirates lose on the final play in Game 7 of the NLCS, sending the Braves to the World Series and permanently scarring my childhood.
I've seen the Penguins get upset by the Islanders to miss playing for the Stanley Cup.
I've watched the Steelers lose at home to the Chargers for the right to go to the Super Bowl.
And many more and so on and so forth...Those were particularly life-changing losses that brought a week's worth of depression to the city, if not longer. That, too, was in a three-year stretch between October 1992 and January 1995 - no wonder I had a long face all of the time. And as these three sports powers floundered under the brightest lights, Pitt basketball (and football, for that matter) was not even in the conversation.
As a youth, my buddy Joe would routinely invite me to go to the old Fitzgerald Field House to watch Pitt play since I was nine. Since Pitt was always middle-of-the-road mediocre, we never really knew what to expect; they could beat the #5 team in the land or fall to a squad 10 games under .500. Pitt made the NCAA tournament when I was 12 and I thought it was THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. That year, they lost to Utah in the first round and would not return to the Big Dance until 2002! Heck...Joe, my friends, and I were bouncing off the walls when they made it to the NIT in 1997. We got to attend their first round game against New Orleans and watched Vonteego Cummings and Mark Blount beat up the Musketeers for the first round win. The place was packed and it looked like Pitt hoops was back! That small taste of success went such a long way in a town starving for basketball promise.
The point that I'm probably unsuccessfully trying to make is that Pitt fans have never been exposed to this kind of sustained success. Do you know why Kentucky's heart were broken by Christian Laettner...because Kentucky and Duke are on that stage consistently. Do you know why no one really talks that much about George Mason stunning UConn in the Elite 8 in 2006...because UConn has two banners hanging from their rafters and they have been a Big East power for the last 20 years.
Pitt has made the Big Dance every year since I was a junior in college. Every time they lost, though, it was close with about 4 minutes remaining in the game, and then they would commit a turnover or miss some shots and wind-up falling by a deflating margin. They've managed to lose to powerhouses Kent State, Pacific, and Bradley during this tournament streak, as well as cupcakes like UCLA, Michigan State, Oklahoma State, and Marquette (I've since come to accept all six of these defeats expect the Pacific one - that's a long story we'll save for another chapter.) This setback against Villanova still stings and will for a while. But I'm happy to know the Panthers put themselves in position to get there and not settle for moderate success
More filibustering soon to come...
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