SAN ANTONIO “”mdash; It’s 1 o’clock and getting hot in Texas.
I’m on a packed Greyhound bus for the three-hour ride from San Antonio to the Houston airport, not wanting to stick around in a city that only reminds me of what could have been.
My exit feels rushed as plans of returning to California in celebration on Tuesday are long gone.
I wonder where it all went wrong. A shot at the championship game, a chance to redeem the brutal losses of the past two years, a perfect ending to an unforgettable season ““ all washed away.
As I get farther and farther away from the Alamodome, the lingering sense of missed opportunity doesn’t leave me. I try to put a finger on one moment, one play that could’ve changed the game for the Bruins, but there was none. There was no knee-jerk moment in Saturday’s 78-63 loss to Memphis. There was no dagger-in-the-heart desperation shot that left me speechless.
There was only the final minutes spent realizing that the comeback I thought was inevitable was simply not going to happen.
Maybe it was Derrick Rose’s deadly, twisting drives into the lane. Maybe it was Chris Douglas-Roberts’ sinister jump shots that seemed to always find the bottom of the net. Maybe it was the Bruins trying to run with the Tigers early in the game.
They were all signs.
For the third consecutive year, the Bruins were just not quite good enough.
There was Darren Collison, with his head in his hands after posting a two-point, five-foul performance. His typically jovial demeanor was reduced to a speechless stoicism only seen in losses of the greatest magnitude. The junior point guard and leader of the team looked as if he had awoken from a nightmare only to realize it was no dream.
I had watched as Ben Howland called timeouts in the waning possessions, wanting to postpone the unavoidable. He led his team to a 13-3 record in the NCAA Tournament over the past three years, and each year, more athletic, faster opponents have denied him.
When the buzzer sounded, the teams exchanged handshakes and the Bruins slumped off the court one by one. Senior Lorenzo Mata-Real headed for the tunnel as “78-63″ on the scoreboards seemed to glare at him from all sides. He covered his head with a towel, as if attempting to shrink away from the harsh reality of his final game.
Mata-Real embodied the toughness of recent Bruin squads and was the soul of this team. This was not the way he was supposed to go out.
Then there was Kevin Love. The big man in the post carried his teammates to San Antonio only to be outshined by another freshman on the biggest stage. In what was likely his final game as a Bruin, Love was flummoxed by the Memphis defense and held to only 12 points. He stared at the ground on his way back to the locker room.
I sat there watching. There was nothing for me to say.
A few minutes later, I changed my flight and sold my championship game ticket for a couple hundred bucks ““ cold reminders of opportunities lost.
All of the confidence that this would be our year and all of the anticipation of playing for a spot in the championship game was replaced by a demoralizing sense of emptiness.
On the walk out of the dome, I saw the signs lining the street that read “The Road Ends Here” from a different perspective.
I joined in on a sarcastic 8-clap with a handful of the UCLA faithful in a tunnel filled with Kansas and Carolina fans.
That’s about all I could do to try to soothe the loss.
Late that night I sat with a few friends at a Mexican restaurant along the San Antonio River.
“Mighty Bruins” echoed on the water ““ a hopeful sign of resiliency in the wake of one of the worst losses.
This is not the end.
E-mail Feder at jfeder@media.ucla.edu to ask him about his trip to Texas.