Around dinner time Friday night, Chuck Culpepper of the Washington Post asked, “Is there any way they lose tonight?” By “they,” he meant Virginia, which is his alma mater, though I wouldn’t describe him as a raving fan of anything but a good story.
“Who are they playing?” I said, hoops maven that I am.
He said UMBC. (Stands for “University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Its campus sits six miles from BWI airport.) I said, “I don’t think Virginia will get to the Final Four, but it won’t lose tonight.”
I went to the court at Bridgestone Arena to watch Xavier, the No. 1 seed in the West, beat Texas Southern, which started its season 0-13. This was remarkable in itself: I’d never seen a No. 16 seed score 16 consecutive points. Still, form held, as form always had. Xavier won by 19.
I returned to the workroom. I noted the Virginia score from Charlotte – 16-all with four minutes left in the half. I mentioned this to Chuck. We both raised an eyebrow. It was 21-all at halftime. We raised both eyebrows.
Pause for the boilerplate: Since the NCAA expanded to 64 teams in 1985, No. 16 seeds were a collective 0-135 against No. 1s. And Virginia, we note, wasn’t just a No. 1; in this tournament, it was the No. 1 overall seed.
My reservations regarding the Cavaliers: When you play so slowly – Virginia ranks last among the 351 Division I teams in pace, per Ken Pomeroy – your margin for error gets slashed. Every possession takes on outsize weight, which is problematic if you're a 20-point favorite and you fall 10 points behind. And Virginia, not to put too fine a point on it, doesn't have typical No. 1-seed talent. It's a system team. An awful lot had to go right for it to be 30-2 and 20-1 against ACC opponents.
That said: UMBC? The Retrievers – I had to ask what the team’s nickname was – needed a last-second shot to win the American East tournament over Vermont, to which they lost by 15 and 28 points in the regular season. They played Arizona, recent author of the most shameful loss in the history of this tournament, and lost by 25. As UMBC’s Twitter account – which gained 60,000 followers overnight – kept noting, ESPN’s matchup predictor gave the Retrievers a 1.5 percent chance of winning.
The last game of the day here – Florida State versus Missouri – started. I tried to monitor Virginia-UMBC from courtside. The wireless wouldn’t cooperate. When I saw the Retrievers were up 10 with 12 minutes left, I bagged the game in front of me and retreated to the workroom. I wasn’t alone. Because Virginia-UMBC was the game we who track this tournament had awaited literally forever.
It almost happened with Princeton against Georgetown and East Tennessee State against Oklahoma in 1989. I covered the game in Knoxville in 1990 when Murray State and Popeye Jones took Michigan State and Steve Smith to overtime. I was in Philadelphia in 2006 when Monmouth and Albany threw momentary scares into No. 1s Villanova and UConn. And there was that game in 2012 where UNC Asheville had Syracuse going until the refs intervened. But that was all – in 34 years, a handful of close calls.
If ever a No. 16 seed were to win, it would surely take a U.S. Reed halfcourt heave or Bryce Drew on the hook-and-ladder. Right? Um, no. The Retrievers won by 20. If they’d played another 10 minutes, they’d have won by 30. The end of the greatest upset in the history of college basketball looked like no upset at all. The better team had won, which makes no sense, but there you go.
And then I thought about the game that had, from Dec. 23, 1982 until March 16, 2018 stood as the sport’s biggest upset before UMBC intervened. No. 1 Virginia, which had Ralph Sampson, stopped in Hawaii after beating Houston’s Phi Slama Jama in Tokyo. They played Chaminade, which had just lost to Houston Baptist, in Honolulu. They lost 77-72. Because of the time difference and the holiday season, some on the mainland didn’t realize it had happened until after Christmas.
Dave Odom, who would go on to coach Wake Forest and then South Carolina, was on the Virginia bench that night as an assistant to Terry Holland. The same Dave Odom sat in the stands Friday and saw his son Ryan coach UMBC to a victory that will resonate as long as basketballs are bounced. (At game’s end, CBS cameras caught Ryan Odom saying, “Wow.”) On Saturday, this correspondent called the elder Odom to ask how it felt to have been on both sides of the most stunning results in college hoops annals.
“Odom’s got a big stake in both of those upsets,” he said. “You know, I’m chairman of the Maui Jim Invitational. Every year I go over and give a welcome speech at the banquet, and the guy always introduces me by saying, ‘And coach Odom was on the staff when our Chaminade beat Virginia.’ I always say, ‘How many times does one guy have to lose one game?’ ”
As a former coach, did he believe UMBC had a chance to do anything but maybe come close? “I knew that certain things would have to happen in our favor. Most of the things that we talked about did happen. They had one kid (sub De’Andre Hunter) out. It shortened their bench and might have made a difference – but not 20 points.”
He was, however, mindful of daunting history. “I was afraid,” Odom said, “that (the Retrievers) were going to ask (Virginia coach) Tony Bennett for his autograph.”
Then: “It was 21-21 at half. We had gotten the kind of shots our guys usually get and hadn’t made many of them. Our defense had taken hope. I don’t know what Ryan said at the half, but he’s all about being positive. Then we go on 23-8 spurt. That’s almost half the number of points they give up for game, and that’s in six minutes. And then I thought, ‘Continue to make shots, continue to play great defense and turn it over to your free-throw shooters. That’s what happened.”
As for Virginia: “At the five-minute mark, they became downtrodden and despondent. I don’t think they quit. They lost some of the confidence they normally play with. Our guards – the little guy, K.J. Maura, and Jairus Lyles – were just quicker and faster.”
Dave Odom worked in Charlottesville for what he calls “seven great years.” Ryan Odom was a Virginia ball boy. “Then he graduated being the water boy for the opposing team. He got water for Lefty (Driesell) and Bobby Cremins and Dean Smith and Denny Crum. He’d come home afterward and say, ‘You won’t believe what Lefty said tonight.’ ”
As a basketball lifer, Dave Odom said the final moments of Virginia’s demise made him “look back with a little melancholy.” As a dad, it was the night of all nights. “The hotel was live until 3 or 4 in the morning. They’d gotten the players to bed, but it was full of UMBC people. I told Ryan, ‘It’s about turning the page.’ ”
Because the Retrievers, as thinkable as it seems, will play Kansas State on Sunday with a chance to advance to the Sweet 16. Said Odom: “I’m so happy I’m still alive and healthy and able to see this. I’m not coaching the team. Ryan and I are best friends, but he hasn’t leaned on me for anything except being a dad.”
Even with Tim Duncan at Wake, Dave Odom never made the Final Four as a head coach. (Won two ACC tournaments and an NIT with Wake, two more NITs with South Carolina, though.) He was part of the Virginia team that was undone by North Carolina State and Jim Valvano in the West Regional final en route to its famous triumph in Albuquerque; the next year, minus Sampson, the Cavaliers won the East Regional at the Omni to make the Final Four.
He’d seen both sides of everything, and now he has his counterweight to Chaminade. He has UMBC 74, Virginia 54. He has a parental slice of history.
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