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After perhaps the greatest on-paper upset in NCAA Tournament history, someone put a gaping hole in the white board inside of Purdue’s locker room.
It came after a potential breakthrough run to end the program’s 43-year Final Four drought ended before it even got started with an unthinkable elimination at the hands of Fairleigh Dickinson, a 23-1/2 point underdog.
Sadly, the hole left in the white board is a fitting representation of Purdue’s season. You can still write Big Ten champions on the white board, something Purdue accomplished for a league-record 25th time. There is room to scrawl Big Ten Tournament champions, too, but there’s a giant piece of the white board forever missing, left in shattered pieces that can’t be glued back together.
March Madness is in the business of shattering white boards as well as hearts. Every college basketball fan in this state knows that the NCAA Tournament has been especially unkind to Purdue, but then again, it is rarely kind to anyone. Even national powers have not been shielded from March’s wrath.
I don’t know whether any white boards were broken in the process, but I do know Duke, led by the legendary Mike Krzyzewksi, lost to No. 15 seed Lehigh and No. 14 seed Mercer in 2012 and 2014 first rounds. Kentucky also owns a loss to a No. 15 seed as the first victim of Saint Peter’s (remember them, Purdue fans?) Cinderella run to the regional final one year ago. Bob Knight, who hung three of the five national championship banners in Bloomington, was sent home in the opening round of non-title seasons by programs like Cleveland State, Richmond and Pepperdine. Some of Kansas’ best teams (1998, 2010, 2011) suffered high-profile upsets at the hands of Rhode Island, Northern Iowa and VCU, and the only reason most people have heard of Weber State is because it toppled mighty North Carolina as a No. 14 seed in 1999.
The NCAA Tournament has handed out unforgettable moments of euphoria, an experience the teams immediately listed above have experienced, but on the other side of every one of those moments comes complete devastation. We have no choice but to allow a random, crazy, unpredictable, thrilling, soul-crushing, single-elimination tournament involving a bunch of 19-23 year-olds to produce a single champion. That’s what all 363 Division I college basketball teams sign up for.
Yet we can also choose to not allow that unpredictable tournament to be the sole determining factor in judging an entire season.
Was the season put together by Grace Berger and Mackenzie Holmes at Indiana not a resounding success? The Hoosiers, another of the state’s doomed No. 1 seeds, saw their campaign come to a stunning end when Miami’s Destiny Hardin sunk a step-through shot—which had a lot of, ahem, steps involved—in the final seconds of their elimination in the Round of 32 in the women’s tournament. It was only the second time since 2009 that a No. 1 seed had been bounced before the Sweet 16. After the heartbreaking defeat, Indiana head coach Teri Moren called the season “special” and said, “It hurts now, but this team will go down in history as one of the very best.”
And she’s right.
For this entire season, the Hoosiers were one of the best teams in the country, winning 26 of their first 27 games and rising to No. 2 in the polls. They won an outright Big Ten championship for the first time in 40 years and earned the program’s first ever No. 1 seed. Their dreams of a Final Four and championship run were dashed by a Miami team that finished sixth in the ACC, had a losing record away from home (5-7), and were blown out by 26 points in the ACC Tournament Quarterfinals earlier this month. Cruel, right?
After a November stretch that netted victories over eventual Big East champion Marquette, ACC champion Duke, and perennial national power Gonzaga, previously unranked Purdue rocketed up the polls to No. 5 and remained among the nation’s top-five all season. The Boilermakers reached No. 1 for just the second time in program history (and, unlike last year, had a couple of lengthy stays at the top), lapped the field by winning the Big Ten championship by three full games, and captured the program’s second-ever Big Ten Tournament title in the 25-year history of the event. Their dreams of a Final Four and championship run were dashed by Fairleigh Dickinson, a tiny commuter college in northern New Jersey and the smallest team in the nation. As the second-best squad in the Northeast Conference, the Knights required both a technicality (league champion Merrimack was not eligible for the postseason) and a First Four win two days earlier in Dayton just to earn a spot in the Round of 64. Having a team that finished the regular season 302nd in the NET ratings end your season isn’t just cruel, it’s downright barbaric.
However, it is also cruel and barbaric to dismiss an entire team’s body of work over the course of a season because of those losses.
Selling out the 17,000-seat Assembly Hall this season, something that had never been done in Indiana women’s basketball history, matters. For a Purdue team that was picked to finish sixth in the league preseason standings, adding two Big Ten trophies to the case matters. Hell, both Indiana teams sweeping Purdue this year to secure the upper hand in one of the nation’s best rivalries matters. If we don’t recognize these accomplishments and enjoy what happens before March, then what’s the point of having a season at all? Why stay up on a weeknight to watch the Boilers’ 10 p.m. tip from Portland in a November tournament? Why stand in line for general admission to Assembly Hall in frigid January temperatures? Why crow about Jalen Hood-Schifino’s 35-point performance in February to your Purdue fan coworker? If only March is meaningful, then why spend your time, money and emotional state on anything else?
Purdue will have to deal with the aftermath of its historic upset loss to Fairleigh Dickinson for years to come. The best season in IU women’s basketball history will have to carry the disappointment of an early exit, too. Forty minutes in March Madness can tear your heart into 40 pieces, but you don’t have to let it ruin four months of meaningful basketball.•
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From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Derek Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting. You can follow him on Twitter @Schultz975.
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