SURPRISE! SURPRISE!
THERE are a zillion cool things about sports, a zillion reasons why they capture our attention and our imagination — all of them good, all of them worthy. One of the things I’ve always loved is how every now and again, something happens in sports that is impossible to explain but you simply have to marvel at. Here is example one for me: The first nine baseball players to win back-to-back MVP awards represented all nine positions on a baseball field (for the chronological record: 1B-Jimmie Foxx, P-Hal Newhouser, CYogi Berra, OF-Mickey Mantle, SS-Ernie Banks, OF-Roger Maris, 2B-Joe Morgan, 3B-Mike Schmidt, OF-Dale Murphy). Just thinking of the mathematical likelihood of that gives me a headache, but it is pretty cool.
This has always been my favorite: the Frank Reich Factor.
Before Reich became the patron saint of Patriots haters worldwide by helping the Eagles beat the Pats last month, he’d already established one of the most unlikely and improbable records ever: He guided the greatest comebacks in both college football and pro football history.
On Nov. 10, 1984, while quarterbacking the University of Maryland, Reich brought the Terrapins back from a 31-0 halftime deficit to beat Miami, 42-40, entering the game in the third quarter, threw for three touchdowns and ran for one. Then, on Jan. 3, 1993, Reich led the Buffalo Bills back from a 35-3 hole to beat the Oilers in an AFC playoff game. Crazy enough that it was the same guy; crazier that he was a backup on both of those teams.
Which leads us to Virginia, which has had plenty of basketball seasons in which it has performed with polish and efficiency, which once had the biggest star in the sport in Ralph Sampson and now has one of the most respected coaches in the business in Tony Bennett.
The Cavaliers are an excellent basketball program with a fine history, but even the most fervent Wahoo yahoo would be hard pressed to say Virginia exists in the same pantheon, for better or worse, as the behemoths: Duke, Kentucky, Carolina, UCLA, Kansas and so on.
And yet thanks to the wonderful events of Friday night, when UMBC became the first of 136 No. 16 seeds to ever topple a 1-seed, it is the University of Virginia — Jefferson’s school, one of the storied bastions of learning anywhere — that has been on the wrong end of the two biggest upsets in college basketball history.
It was hard to believe anything could ever top the shocking news that arrived two days before Christmas in 1982, when top-ranked, Sampson-led Virginia lost to Chaminade, an NAIA school, 77-72. But even that game had an thin explanation: The Cavs had played two games in Japan, and used the game in Hawaii to stay sharp before flying back to the mainland. Also, please note: That was a five-point game.
UMBC 74, Virginia 54 was something else. For one thing, it was a blowout, and a stunning one. If you had the Retrievers and took the 20½ points, as Warner Wolf would say … you won! By 40½ points!
There have been enough close calls across the years that we always believed this was going to happen at some point. Except every year, another quartet of 16s would pair up with four 1s, and the lower seeds would express the same optimism, the top seed the same caution, and nine times out of 10 the games would be over by the third TV timeout. And you started to wonder: Maybe there really such a thing in sports as a sure thing.
Thanks to the poor Cavaliers of the University of Virginia, we are once again assured that isn’t possible. You can really argue which is more shocking, Chaminade or UMBC, both are either 1 or 1A (I go with this one, personally). What is more amazing is Virginia was a reluctant witness to both.