College basketball is a heartbreaker
The beauty of the NCAA Tournament is its chaos and the ending of Sunday evening’s contest between the Kentucky Wildcats and the North Carolina Tar Heels exemplified some of its best drama. With under 10 seconds remaining, Kentucky freshman Malik Monk nailed an off-balance 3-pointer over two defenders to tie the game at 73, completing a ferocious comeback in the final minute, but a mid-range jumper from Luke Maye sealed the deal with 0.3 seconds on the clock.
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The result also produced the flip side of the March Madness coin: that for everything great that the sport gives viewers, there are the lives of young men affected by the results. In Kentucky’s locker room following the defeat, freshmen Bam Adebayo and De’Aaron Fox consoled one another as the latter answered reporter’s questions about the game:
Very emotional Kentucky locker room as expected. pic.twitter.com/ksNn4iOGHW
— Joe Mussatto (@joe_mussatto) March 26, 2017
“I love my brothers, man,” Fox said, echoing a sentiment that so many feel about the tight knit bonds that form over the course of a rigorous college basketball season. He also spoke of Maye’s final shot, the dagger that put an end to the Wildcats’ season and likely the college careers of Adebayo, Fox and Monk given the high probability that they’ll enter the NBA Draft. “The shot’s just playing back and forth in my head. It’s going to be difficult to get over.”
Adebayo and Fox will undoubtedly feel this loss for a while. The final minute will surely deliver plenty of “what if” moments for both of them as they move onto their NBA careers, but the truth is that the Wildcats should hold their heads high.
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Kentucky finished the season with a 32-6 record, won both the SEC regular season and conference tournament titles, and advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. That’s a good season even if it wasn’t what the Wildcats had hoped to accomplish. Expectations are always highest with the top programs in the sport and losses always sting the most right after they happen, but that’s unfortunately the the ugly side of the college basketball coin.