During my spring break road trip, I got stuck in a car.
The car didn’t break down, nor was I in traffic. The situation was much more dire. I was stuck in the middle of Syracuse hell.
Michael Sortwell (MSB ’12) and I arrived two hours early to the Big East Tournament championship game between Syracuse and Louisville this past Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. The gates weren’t open yet, so Mike and I decided to sit down in the stadium’s lobby. This didn’t exactly please the Garden’s employees, who informed us there was “no sitting” and asked us to relocate.
As Mike and I made our way to a more friendly waiting area, we noticed that a brand new Lincoln—surely part of some special promotion—was sitting in the middle of the Garden’s entrance, and it was unlocked. The young lady in charge of the vehicle had no problem with us using it as a lounge, and we sat in the back of the car for about a half hour without any problems.
Suddenly, to our dismay, the Syracuse pep band, dance team, and cheerleaders made their way into the Garden’s entrance and started to unpack right next to our car. Before we knew it, the three groups were in the middle of their Orange-filled song-and-dance routine, trapping us and forcing us to endure a half-hour of Syracuse fight songs and cheers. It was the worst experience any Georgetown fan could have gone through.
Luckily, the Orange lost later that night, but the experience was just the tip of the iceberg in our epic trip to the Big East Tournament, which proved to be the best spring break I could imagine.
T.J. Dowling (COL ’12), Jared Copitelli (MSB ’12), Sortwell, and I arrived in New York City on Tuesday morning, with hope that the Hoyas would make a run to the finals and earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Our hopes were dashed a mere five hours later, when the Hoyas lost (AGAIN) to the “mighty” St. John’s Red Storm. However, despite our team’s loss, the Tournament—and the trip—were just getting started.
The first two days of the Tournament were anything but eventful, but Thursday brought a glimmer of light to the Garden. In the morning session, Villanova let a 17-point lead vanish, only to narrowly escape an injury-ridden Marquette team on a last-second buzzer-beater that convinced us we had just seen the game of the Tournament.
Not so fast. Later that night, Syracuse and Connecticut played a six-overtime thriller that, in all probability, will go down as the greatest game any of us will probably ever see with our own eyes. At the end of regulation, we watched Syracuse junior guard Eric Devendorf nail a “game-ending” three-pointer at the buzzer and jump on the press tables, only to have the shot negated by instant replay for being shot too late.
As the game kept moving into more and more overtimes, my fellow Hoyas and I tried to rile the UConn faithful in the crowd by starting “Let’s go Huskies!” chants that eventually spread throughout the entire Garden. It didn’t matter that we went to Georgetown. The epic game—and our mutual hatred for Syracuse—turned us into such fervent UConn fans that some people even asked us what we liked best about Storrs, Connecticut.
Alas, our cheers didn’t seem to fire up the players, and Syracuse sophomore point guard Johnny Flynn’s epic performance helped the Orange prevail.
But the combination of Syracuse’s success and Georgetown’s misery could not spoil the week. I got a chance to watch the best college basketball teams in the country, and I realized that I may have been too hard on the Hoyas earlier in the year. Navigating their way through this year’s Big East as a young, inexperienced team was borderline impossible.
And anyway, there’s always next season. So when the Hoyas are playing at the Garden this time next year, I’ll be hooting and hollering for them, and not just for the team that isn’t wearing orange.
