Case of the Mondays: Action, but at what expense?

March 19th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

Those of us clamoring for more upsets, more close games and more overall excitement in our NCAA Tournament were rewarded this weekend, finally, when everyone decided to go all crazy. My title-winner, OSU, nearly lost (I’m naming my first kid RonLewis), Purdue played Florida tightly, Wisconsin was upset and sent home, and Louisville and Texas A&M played a rousing game defined by ballsy guard play from Acie Law IV and Edgar Sosa.

All in all, a good weekend. Well … sort of.

There were at least two serious negatives here, too, and they were both brought on by LA’s two pristine academic institutions.

First, UCLA was complicit in a criminally disappointing end to our Hoosiers’ season, in which IU’s first half field goals (five) were outnumbered by their fouls (six). Terrible, terrible stuff, made all the worse by IU’s insistence on getting everyone’s hopes up and winning that thing down the stretch. Hard to swallow, to say the least. (And it kept me from another week-long vacation in California. Motherfucker.)

But the greatest loss was, by far, the USC-imposed tournament departure of Kevin Durant, who is likely to go pro now that his Longhorns failed to make it even to the Sweet 16 this year. That means no more of Durant’s sublime domination of the college game, no more Texas-Oklahoma State triple-overtime thrillers, no more 37/15 against the nation’s most athletic defense (Kansas). Instead, we have to watch Durant go through the altogether painful process of NBA draftdom. Instead of celebrating his mastery, we’ll be hearing for the next few months about the small flaws in the kid’s game, how he needs to put on weight, hold his follow through longer, and so on, why Chad Ford thinks he’s a mix of Player A and Player B with a mix of Player C thrown in, but with a higher ceiling.

It’s exciting, sure, but it’s also sort of sad. In that way, Kevin Durant, as we now know him, is gone for good.