And so it ends.
Not in glory, not with a signature win, but in defeat Saturday
afternoon ““ at the hands of a 12-loss Alabama team, no less.
I’m numb. I’m also angry, disappointed and dejected.
But mostly numb.
How does Stanford’s season’s worth of good fortune
unravel in 10 minutes’ worth of angst? Well, Matt Lottich
went cold. Rob Little went soft. Josh Childress fouled out. And a
13-point second-half lead went down the drain.
A Final Four? A national championship? My dignity? All gone.
Now my cell phone is ringing off the hook, my food is getting
cold, and all I can do is stare blankly at a wall and occasionally
mutter about what might have been.
I’ve been a Stanford fan my whole life. I’ve endured
tournament heartbreak every year since I was 11, including a
one-point loss to Kentucky in the 1998 Final Four.
This hurts more.
My friend instant messaged me, first to laugh, of course, but
then to say he was sorry. He compared the loss to what he will feel
like if the Lakers were to go out in the first round against
Memphis.
I appreciate the sentiments, but this is different. This was
Stanford’s year.
The Lakers have their championship rings ““ hell, pretty
soon Shaq and Kobe will start running out of fingers to wear them
all on ““ but Stanford might not be in this position for a
while.
Lottich and Justin Davis are graduating, and Josh Childress
might jump ship to the NBA. And even if Childress does come back,
who’s to say they can recreate the magic of this season.
They can’t. It was one of a kind.
From the 19-point comeback at Oregon, to the Pac-10 championship
at the Staples Center, to Nick Robinson’s 35-foot prayer to
beat Arizona. It was a memorable run. Yet it will all be forgotten
now.
What people will remember is the collapse. The eight-minute
stretch where Stanford froze up, grew tentative and coughed up a
double-digit lead that appeared insurmountable moments earlier.
What I’ll remember is the shock of it all. This
wasn’t Connecticut, North Carolina or Kansas who Stanford
lost to this year. Nope, it was Alabama, the seventh-best team in
the Southeastern Conference, one with little hope of advancing much
further.
This isn’t losing-a-loved-one pain, but it’s
certainly on par with falling-five-outs-short-a-World-Series-title
kind of pain.
I read a column by Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News
saying that Stanford fans aren’t passionate. That we
don’t care about our team as much as other fans. That
we’re disappointed after losses, but by Monday morning when
it’s time to go to work again, we don’t care
anymore.
I wish he could see me in my room right now. The door is shut,
the lights are off, and the remote control still rests on the floor
where it fell after I hurled it against the wall a half-hour
ago.
I spoke to my mother after the game and she was nearly in
tears.
“Sad,” was the only word she could muster.
“Just disgusting,” I responded.
The players agreed.
“I’m numb, I’m shocked and I’m extremely
disappointed,” point guard Chris Hernandez told the
San Jose Mercury News afterward. “I’m sick of getting
to this point and always saying, “˜We’ll do it next
year.”’
“To be frank, I don’t think that team should have
beaten us,” forward Joe Kirchofer added.
No kidding, Joe.
But still, as the seconds ticked down, there was a part of me
expecting Dan Grunfeld’s buzzer-beating three-pointer to find
the bottom of the net, and send the game to overtime, because that
would have typified Stanford’s season. But, no ““ not
this day. And so it ends. 30 wins: what a waste.
Eisenberg would have traded a kidney for Grunfeld’s
shot to have gone in. And that was just to force overtime. E-mail
him at jeisenberg@media.ucla.edu.