See, this is the flip side if you are a St. John’s fan. This is the consequence of caring. How many of these Selection Sundays have come and gone the past quarter century while you were off doing something else, anything else, besides listening to the sound of your nerves jangling over and over again?
These last 48 hours are the most difficult time to be a sports fan, in any sport. In all the pro sports, it’s simple: Win enough games, you qualify for the playoffs. Period. Even in college football, the other entity when strangers determine your fate, it’s only one or two teams a year that know they’re going to be angry and hurt if they fall off the bubble. Maybe that’ll change now that it’s a 12- (or 14-) team event, but last year it was really only Florida State that could make a case for being robbed.
St. John’s, and Johnnies fans, have had to sit and wait and idle and percolate ever since walking off the Garden floor Friday night, game but humbled 95-90 losers to the Connecticut Huskies. That game was it: Nothing more they can do, no further arguments to make. Their case is complete. It seemed like they’d done enough Thursday by beating Seton Hall, seemed like they’d even snuck onto a 10-seed line, meaning they could avoid Dayton.
But then they lost, and a few other teams won improbable games, and the subject of bid-stealers became a very real thing. Suddenly the ACC final Saturday night became very important to St. John’s fans, all of them wearing Carolina blue, since N.C. State was a sudden bid-stealing prospect thanks to an impossible shot made by a player named Michael O’Connell (Chaminade Flyers getting it done, wherever you turn!) late Friday night.
There’s no remedy for this, no cure. St. John’s fans can — and surely have — talked themselves into and out of a number of scenarios. They’ve undoubtedly grown queasy thinking of games that got away — notably Michigan, a loss that didn’t seem quite so devastating when it happened and now all but jumps off their dossier flashing in purple neon lights.
They have undoubtedly become quite familiar with the day-to-day (and now hour-to-hour) thoughts of Joe Lunardi and Jerry Palm and Michael DeCourcey, probably the three most-trusted of the bracketologists.
And I know from my own past, in years when my St. Bonaventure Bonnies had to grind through Selection Sunday Eve, that it’s impossible to tell Johnnies fans that none of these analysts, good as they are, are personally invested in ruining your day (or brightening it, for that matter). They’re making educated guesses. Usually they get a lot of it right.
Usually they get one or two wrong.
It’ll all be moot come Sunday evening, but if you have a dog in the hunt and a team on the bubble, that’s the longest wait in sports. It’s exhilarating and exhausting, it’s uplifting and soul-crushing — especially for a team like St. John’s, which has had far too few of these vigils the past few decades.
The last time, in 2019, the team gathered and watched the show nervously in Bent Hall, then waited 32 excruciating minutes before seeing their name. They had been, quite literally, the last team picked for the draw. When “St. John’s” appeared on the screen, you could hear the roar from Washington Heights to Montauk Point. The relief was palpable. The Johnnies had been the last team in one other time before — in 1979, when they were the 40th team in a 40-team field, then nearly made the Final Four before loosing to Penn.
It’s a reminder: Get in, and anything’s possible. But you have to get in first. And the waiting … well. Tom Petty was right.
Vac’s Whacks
After absorbing that “Dynasty” documentary on the Patriots, it’s pretty clear the producers credit the team’s success in this order: 1) Robert Kraft; 2) Tom Brady; 869) Bill Belichick.
Quite an eclectic group who gather April 14 to honor Doc Gooden when his 16 is retired: ’86 Mets Kevin Mitchell and Howard Johnson; CC Sabathia and Mickey Rivers; even noted Yankees fan Chazz Palminteri. Says Mitchell: “I was always bored playing the outfield when Doc pitched. I got no action because he struck everyone out.”
The difference between an ace and a non-ace? Gerrit Cole: “Give me the damn ball.” Marcus Stroman: “Give me the ball … on Day 3.”
The welterweight bout between Dan Hurley and Rick Pitino on Friday night turned Big East nostalgists like me so weepy we started immediately channeling Bowling for Soup and knocking out verses of “1985.”
Whack Back at Vac
Mike Sullivan: The Johnnies are back to respectability. Greatness to follow?
Vac: I certainly think they’ll be in the conversation every March for the foreseeable future.
Richard Siegelman: As vice president, might Aaron Rodgers have the right to issue an executive order forbidding opposing lineman from sacking him on the 17 Sundays when he takes a day off to quarterback the Jets?
Vac: That might be the only way Rodgers makes it through 17 games as a Jet.
MichaelHal59591: Too bad St. John’s plays an ugly brand of ball — unlike Rick Pitino’s beautifully hardworking Kentucky teams of early to mid ’90s. St. John’s has proven nothing, yet.
@MikeVacc: As the great Tim Capstraw once said when he was at Wagner and they played some or other national power: “They have McDonald’s All-Americans. We have guys who eat at McDonald’s.”
Tony Giamatta: Hard for me to swallow Tiki Barber’s comments about Barkley. You can add this to Tiki’s greatest hits. He stabbed Eli in the front, not the back, when he questioned Eli’s leadership qualities publicly, earlier in his career.
Vac: Apparently Tiki could’ve stood in for Patton Oswalt on that movie “Big Fan” a few years ago. Who knew?
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