FACE!!!

I must be some kind of crazy basketball good luck charm. I watch maybe one or two UCLA basketball games per season, and we always magically seem to pull out an unlikely victory, every time I tune in. Today's incredible, last-second Sweet 16 victory against Gonzaga was no different.

Dominated for the entire game, down by as much as 17 points, there seemed to be no way The Bruins could pull out a win. They were shooting terribly, playing some of the worst defense of the year, and as always, they seemed incapable of making any important free throws. And yet...during the last few minutes of the game...the Gonzaga team just totally fell apart.

At one point, with about 15 seconds or so left in the game, All-American Gonzaga superstar Adam Morrison began to cry. That's a bit weird, I thought at the time. I've seen lots of players cry after losing the big game, but not a lot of players crying while still in the process of losing the big game.

My friend Brian related a story about his days in Little League. During a Championship match, the left-fielder missed a crucial catch that would have won the game. Brian (who was at Center Field at the time) swears that the boy started crying before he even had a chance to miss the catch. He could feel the loss coming, and instinctively began to cry even while he still had a chance to win.

I wanted to post a photo of Morrison (a very odd-looking, ungainly guy who was kind of bugging me just by his appearance for most of the game) crying here on the blog, but for some reason, it took the Yahoo! page a few minutes to fully load his glorious, glorious sadness.



This was all I was getting at first. It captured the heartbreak for the Gonzaga team, leading the entire time only to wind up defeated as the Bruins all around you cheer and celebrate. But it failed to capture the full joy of Morrison's on-court breakdown.



Yeah, that's the good stuff. The photographer here has captured that exquisite moment when Morrison knows he's about to cry, and tries to have the strength of will to overcome the emotion while on national television. You can see him welling up, his face beginning to contort, but he's holding it together. (At this point, I believe the game is still going on, and it's just not done to begin bawling before one's fate is sealed).

A few moments later...it's all over...



Not to kick a man when he's down...but what is with that bad teenage moustache, dude? Either you can grow a moustache or you can't, but I see no sense in lingering in this limbo, where it's obvious you've tried to grow a moustache but lack the overall swarthiness to really push it to the point where it's recognizable as facial hair.

I accept that it may seem cruel and unsportsmanlike to delight in the tears of a foe...but I never claimed to be a good sportsman. Or a sportsman at all. (At least, not in the Dick Cheney, shooting-at-penned-quail definition of the term).

But what can I say? Actual human emotion showing on the face of the vanquished is one of the only interesting aspects of sports for me, personally. Really, the only interesting aspect. I'm sorry, but I can't get excited about endless odd rules and regulations. I can't get involved in endlessly-expounded statistics or technically well-played games or "smart coaching strategy." But a grown man losing his shit on TV following a closely-fought match? That's drama!

(The same rule applies to athletes hurting themselves or outrageous displays of unsportsmanlike conduct. Really, I prefer odd interruptions of games to any actual game itself.)

I suppose my next step in egregious fair-weather fandom would be to watch the Elite 8 face-off against Memphis, where the Bruins will most likely have their asses handed to them in soul-crushing fashion. Fortunately, I have little emotional investment in the team's future, so it's unlikely my reaction will be as strong as Mr. Mojo Risin' up there...