There are very few days on the sports calendar that I look forward to more than the Thursday and Friday of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. 

 

Also known as, March Madness, college basketball’s premier event tipped off on Thursday and will continue until Monday, April 4 when the championship game will be held in Houston, Texas.

 

There are so many things to love about the event. The one-and-done finality of each game. The excitement and nervousness before a game…not knowing if it’s the last game of the season for your team. The Cinderella stories we get every year. The buzzer beaters and fantastic finishes. And, the quantity of games over a short period of time.

 

I love all of the things described above, but the sheer volume of games on the Thursday and Friday of the tournament may be my favorite part. Just this week, I remarked to a friend as we sat watching the games on Thursday: “You know, we’ve already seen four full games today and it’s only 4 pm. We’ve still got nine hours left of games.” 12 straight hours of basketball on both Thursday and Friday.  

I spent nearly 20 years as an employee of three different university athletic departments. NCAA Tournament memories stand out as much as any other memories for me over that span of nearly two decades.

 

I remember being a young, marketing department assistant at UConn and watching the Huskies in a Sweet Sixteen round game against a Florida team coached by Lon Kruger (now the head coach at Oklahoma).

 

It was a tight, back-and-forth game in 1994 and I was watching the game with a few friends and co-workers inside UConn’s basketball arena, Gampel Pavilion (our offices were also located inside the arena). I’m the superstitious type, as were my friends, so we kept changing locations inside the building to help bring the Huskies some luck.

 

My eventual landing spot for the final minutes of the game? The locker of UConn star, Donyell Marshall. I sat at his locker and watched on the big screen TV as Marshall was at the free throw line for two free throws with 3.4 seconds on the clock in a tie game. He just needed to hit one for the Huskies to advance to the Elite Eight against Boston College.

 

He missed them both and UConn went on to lose in overtime. I was crushed. I was sure UConn would beat Florida, get a win over BC (at the time, UConn had won 12 straight games against the Eagles) and then be headed to the Final Four. It didn’t work out that way and I would spend the next 16 seasons hoping each NCAA Tournament would be the one that would end in a Final Four.

 

I had friends over the years in the athletics business that would go to the Final Four for meetings. They would often try and talk me into going. Seemingly ‘everyone’ in the business was there. It would be a great networking opportunity, they said. ‘You have to experience it’ they would say. I knew I did…I just wanted my first trip to the Final Four to be with the school I was working for (and rooting for) when the experience happened.

 

It almost happened in 2005. Mountaineer fans remember that run, right? Kevin Pittsnogle, Mike Gansey, Patrick Beilein, JD Collins, Joe Herber, Darris Nichols, Frank Young, D’Or Fischer, Tyrone Salley are names we will remember forever here in West Virginia.

 

The last second win in Cleveland in the first round showed us to never think it’s over until the horn sounds. I can still see the picture-perfect fast break that included the outlet pass from Pittsnogle to Gansey near mid-court and Gansey’s pass to Sally for the game-winning dunk to beat Creighton. The ball never hit the floor in that sequence.

 

That win led to one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen in person. The double overtime win over the number two seed, Wake Forest, led by Chris Paul in the second round of the tournament. I remember waiting by the WVU locker room after the game to congratulate the guys as they came out. Gansey was first. When I saw him, I put both arms straight up in the air. He came bouncing toward me. I mean bouncing up and down. We hugged and I told him, “You were unreal tonight. Congratulations.” He looked at me with a huge smile and said, “Can you believe it? 29 points.” He had finished with 29 points in one of the biggest and best games in Mountaineer history. He was excited as any fan. You don’t always see that kind of emotion from players. I will never forget it.

 

Next came a win over Texas Tech in Albuquerque in the Sweet Sixteen round to set up an Elite Eight showdown with Louisville. One game, winner to the Final Four. All of these years later and it’s still painful to recall that game. The Mountaineers hit 18 three-pointers in the game and came within a whisker of advancing to the first Final Four since 1959. West Virginia was in control nearly the entire game, but came up just short.

 

I remember getting on the team bus after that game thinking I may never again be a part of team that gets that close to the Final Four. Winning four games in March to get to a Final Four is extremely difficult. As I learned so many years before, you never know when you will be close again. 

 

Luckily, another chance came along. Just five years later, West Virginia would go on a run that culminated in a Final Four berth in Indianapolis. The win over Kentucky in the Elite Eight in Syracuse remains as one of my fondest memories from a career in college sports filled with awesome moments. 

As the clock ticked down, I remember turning to a good friend and co-worker sitting next to me and simply saying, “We’re going to the Final Four.” 

 

Once the buzzer sounded, as I joined the team, coaches and other staff members to celebrate on the floor, I saw a familiar face. Jeff Hathaway, a member of the Division I men’s basketball tournament selection committee was right in front of me. What made that so special? Jeff was part of the UConn athletic department back in 1994, the year I sat in that locker and hoped to be headed to the Final Four.

 

The Final Four had finally become a reality and one of the people that gave me my first job was there to say ‘congratulations.’ I can remember it as if it happened yesterday.

 

The great thing about March Madness is that you can find thousands of stories just like that. They’re everywhere. Players, coaches, staff members and fans all have special memories associated with the tournament. It’s all of those special moments that make this one of the best sporting events in the world.

 

You have those memories, too. Those magical seasons are what we live for as fans. Each new year brings with it the hope that this will be the one. This will be the season we’ll remember for the rest of our lives. 

 

That hope is what makes sports great, in my opinion. Whether you’ve played, worked for a school or have been a fan, March Madness is one of those special events that reminds us why we root for teams.

 

Enjoy it. Watch every game you can. 

 

What’s your favorite March Madness memory? Leave a comment below or send me a tweet @BradHowe07.

 

Editor's Note: Top two photos, courtesy of WVU Sports Communications, show Da'Sean Butler in the Final Four vs. Duke, including being consoled by Coach Bob Huggins after blowing out his knee in the Scott Lituchy picture. Third photo by Joe McNemar is of Kevin Pittsnogle, while Mike Gansey is shown against Louisville in the Elite 8 in a photo courtesy of WVU Sports Communicatios.