A lot. I finally graduated from college. I came home to find my beloved dog dead on my front porch on a chilly Friday evening. I celebrated watching one of my best friends get married. And I broke up with a girlfriend, and bid her goodbye.
A lot can happen to a person in 360 days, both good and bad. For me, there were events that happened in that time that are sure to never leave my memory.
But as a sports fan, only one memory refuses to go away. It was the moment when Georgetown overtook UNC’s lead in the final minutes of that Elite Eight game, when elation became confidence, confidence turned into uneasiness, uneasiness blended into worry, and worry sank into outright disaster.
It’s been 360 days since North Carolina collapsed against Georgetown, and I’m just now beginning to open my eyes to that fact, once unwilling to see the horror that even now I’m reluctant to admit ever happened. The aftermath of that rainy March afternoon is a complete blur for me, and I’m willing to admit I don’t remember much of the details once the buzzer sounded.
What I do recall is sitting outside after the game in staggered silence, bombarded by the sound of my phone’s incessant ringing, refusing to answer it each painful second it chimed. For every friend calling to empathize, I knew there was another calling to revel in the stunned misery of a Tar Heel fan.
To me, those 50/50 odds weren’t good enough to pick up the phone. And so I let it ring. And ring. And ring.
360 days later, the phone may have stopped ringing, but the misery and questions have yet to subside.
And that’s what this Tar Heel team is left with.
As basketball followers, we’ve all felt losses that cut to the core of our fanaticism. The last second buzzer beater, the blowout by a rival team, and the unexpected defeat by an upstart Cinderella all immediately come to mind. But something was different about this one. Something much more painful.
Up 10 with just over 11 minutes to play, North Carolina looked dominant. They had out scrapped and outplayed Georgetown at every turn, until it seemed only a matter of time before the Final Four tickets would be punched and the celebration could begin.
And then, something inexplicable happened.
The shots that had once seemed so effortless abruptly began to bounce off the rim. The rebounds started to fatefully fall Georgetown’s way. Suddenly no Tar Heel player could score, the clock moved meticulously slow and the lead, along with my confidence, vanished.
As it happened, the only syllable I was able to utter aloud was “no”. Over and over again, each version I spoke became more desperate sounding than the last. It was a feeling of helplessness I’ll never forget, one that may never be matched again for me as a sports fan. It was like watching a car accident from two hundred yards away; no matter how loud you screamed, there was no way to prevent it from happening.
To this day, the statistics of Georgetown’s comeback seem almost scripted and false. A 31-9 run. Outscored 15-2 in overtime. 2 for 21 shooting to end the game for Carolina. Maybe that’s why I’ve had such a hard time accepting the reality of this particular defeat.
I still have the game saved on my Tivo for some bizarre reason. I keep waiting for the day that I can sit and watch it without suffering the feeling of being repeatedly punched in the stomach. For now it mockingly sits as a constant reminder, both of what could have been and what actually was.
Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who took the loss hard. As Georgetown players celebrated on the court, a somber Roy Williams sat in the media room doing his best to explain the unexplainable. “Life doesn’t always go like you want it to,” Williams said. “It’s never as sweet as you think it could possibly be.”
I wish I could have taken those words to heart that afternoon. It may have saved me 359 days of heartache, and maybe then I could have understood that sometimes things just, well….happen. The fact is, no matter how much you want something to turn out well, there are times when even your best effort isn’t enough. Those Carolina players wanted to win that game more than I ever could have wanted it. As a fan, that’s all we could ever ask of our athletes. And sometimes you just have to accept the hand you’ve been dealt, both in sports and in life.
I’ve learned in these last 360 days a valuable lesson that I may not have completely understood or accepted before: you can’t live in the past. I can’t bring my dog back, I don’t want my old girlfriend back, and there’s no way I can change what happened in that Georgetown game, no matter how hard I try.
But for now, the team I live and die with is 32-2, clicking on all cylinders, and prepared to make another exhausting and exhilarating run towards a National Championship.
There’s a new NCAA Tournament upon us today. And while this one may end the same way for me as it did last year, filled with questions, confusion, and misery, I’m excited to have another chance.
A chance at redemption, a chance to witness another National Championship, and a hope that the despair and pain Tar Heel fans felt last year as they watched Georgetown celebrate will soon be rewarded with a much different outcome.
