WORCESTER, Mass.
This is why the NCAA tournament is like no other event in sports: Vermont.
Read this final score, remember it, savor it: Vermont 60, Syracuse 57. Overtime. Forty-five minutes of absolutely scintillating basketball. Neither team led by more than six throughout and that happened just once, when Vermont point guard T.J. Sorrentine drilled a three-pointer with 10 minutes 59 seconds left to give the Catamounts a 35-29 lead.
Every time it looked like Vermont's dream was dead, someone made a play. Taylor Coppenrath would make a cut to the basket or get a rebound. Sorrentine would hit from somewhere near Burlington. Germain Mopa Njila, the unheralded hero, would make a steal. Or a jump shot. Or a three. Martin Klimes, the only non-senior starter, would take an elbow in the mouth from a frustrated Hakim Warrick and draw a foul.
Coach Tom Brennan couldn't stop smiling the whole game. This wasn't a first-round game for Vermont; this was the national championship. A school from a tiny state meeting one of the sport's giants, a team many people picked to reach the Final Four. Three years in a row, Vermont has won the America East championship. Two years ago, it was blown out in the first round by Arizona, but it didn't really matter. "I did my job," Brennan said when the team returned home. "I won the press conference."
Last year, the Catamounts played Connecticut closer, but never had any real chance to win. This year, everyone knew it was the last go-round: for Brennan, who announced his retirement before the start of the season, and for the four senior starters, Coppenrath, Sorrentine, Mopa Njila and David Hehn. The Catamounts became media darlings because of their wisecracking coach, their image as the game's would-be Davids and because Coppenrath and Sorrentine had come from relatively obscure high school careers to become icons throughout the state.
"We've gotten a lot of publicity," Brennan said. "We were a good story because we had good kids, who were good students and we could play. All year long, we played under tremendous pressure because we were supposed to win. If we didn't get back here, it would have been a huge disappointment. These kids have dealt with everything thrown their way. But this, well, this validates everything. This is a night we'll all remember for the rest of their lives."
This was one of those first-round NCAA tournament games that CBS will be showing on highlight tapes years from now. Brennan's leap with his arms in the air when Sorrentine buried a 26-footer to make it 59-55 with 1 minute 6 seconds left in overtime may not quite equal Jim Valvano's mad dash in 1983 in air time, but it may not be far behind. What might be lost in all the celebrating is just how many shots the Catamounts took from the Orange, a tournament-tough team that started four players Friday who played key minutes on their national championship team two years ago.
"I thought both teams played tremendous defense," Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said. "We just made too many turnovers in an NCAA game to win."
When you grow up as a basketball player in this country, especially in a small town, you grow up dreaming of being a star in this tournament. When you end up at a small school in a one-bid league where only an act of Congress might get you a seed higher than No. 13, you tell yourself over and over that something like this can happen.
"But as much as you might talk about it, you have to go out and actually play to make it happen," Coppenrath said. "Tonight we actually made it happen."
They made it happen in large part because Sorrentine chose to ignore the most revered man in the state of Vermont since Ethan Allen. After Mopa Njila's steal, Vermont ran the shot clock down just as it had been doing since the final six minutes of regulation. "I just felt we had to shorten the game," Brennan said. "We had a chance to win at that point and making the game shorter was our best chance. I don't like to do that normally, but I felt we needed to do it tonight."
With the shot clock ticking toward 10 seconds, Sorrentine dribbled near the bench so he could hear Brennan's voice over the din at DCU Center.
"Run red," Brennan screamed, wanting an end-of-clock play where Sorrentine dribbles into a gap, Coppenrath slides across the lane and Sorrentine tries to find him for a quick shot.
