A ball floats toward the basket, hearts race and hearts stop, fans close their eyes and fans hold their breath, and basketball players prepare either to leap with joy or collapse in agony. It is long past midnight at Madison Square Garden, the second NCAA East Region semifinal bleeding into overtime and now towards the end of overtime.
The basketball has just left the hands of a Florida Gator named Chris Chiozza. There are 20,047 fans who don’t yet know whether to laugh or cry, exhale or weep.
In mid-flight, the buzzer sounds. The red outline backboard box lights up. The game will be over one way or another as soon as the ball finds its destination. Chiozza raced here with impossible swiftness, four seconds after a Wisconsin Badger named Nigel Hayes hit a pair of free throws, giving the Badgers an 83-81 lead.
The season will end for one team or another.
It will be extended to the Elite Eight, in all its glory, for one team or another.
In a snapshot, in a flash, you have all the madness of March compressed into one magical moment.
“I know I only have four seconds,” Chiozza said later, “and I wanted to get all the way to the rim, but they did a good job getting in front of me. So I had to take what I could get.”
The only reason we are here is because Wisconsin’s Zak Showalter made a floating 3-pointer at the end of regulation that Florida coach Mike White called “deflating.” The Badgers stormed to an overtime lead, and the Gators stormed back behind a drive from Canyon Barry — yes, Rick’s son; he also added a pair underhanded free throws just the way Pops used to do it — and because Barry made an otherworldly block.
But Hayes — who has played wonderfully, who hasn’t taken a licking from New York fans despite his anti-New York comments Thursday, mostly because the Garden is far more filled with residents of Gainesville, Fla., and Madison, Wis., and Columbia, S.C., and Waco, Texas — makes two free throws. There are four seconds left.
Now Chiozza’s floater is in the air. Pulses quicken. Sweat glands empty. Throats dry. Stomachs churn. Down two. No time on the clock. Do or die. Survive and advance.
Splash.
Florida 84, Wisconsin 83.
Holy cow. Holy. Cow.
“My goodness,” White said. “What a wonderful college basketball game.”
Wisconsin may disagree, at least for a while, especially across the next few weeks because Chiozza’s shot will be played and replayed a thousand times between now and “One Shining Moment,” probably will be the star of “One Shining Moment.” Badgers players drop to the floor as if they were knee-capped — from the brink of the Final Four to the bottom of the abyss in four cruel seconds.
Chiozza already seems to know he never will feel anything quite the same as he felt the moment the ball passed through the rim, the moment three-quarters of Madison Square Garden sounded like it might blow the roof off the place.
“An amazing moment,” he said. “And now we have an amazing opportunity.”
Suddenly, that prospect lies crystalline clear ahead. Both Florida and South Carolina, which defeated Baylor in the earlier game Friday night, have to look at what remains of the brackets and think to themselves: Why not us? Because one of these four teams is guaranteed a slot in the national championship game a week from Monday:
Florida. South Carolina. Gonzaga. Xavier.
“These opportunities are unique and they’re exciting, just as these opportunities are for all of our guys,” White said Thursday. “All of our players in particular, and all of our different programs. So this is what it’s all about. It’s March Madness. It’s the Sweet 16. It’s really cool. And who knows?”
It is a testament to both the unpredictable nature of the NCAA Tournament, as well as a parity we really weren’t aware of most of the year but one that has enforced itself through the latter stages of this tournament, at least on that side of the bracket. The other half features three legitimate blue bloods in Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky, as well as Oregon, which is nobody’s idea of a feisty upstart.
Funny thing, too. We thought the East Region might have ended when Villanova and Duke left the tournament a step shy of New York. Who could have known it was only setting up a forever moment, long after midnight?