Last week, while my fellow students enjoyed wet t-shirt contests at Señor Frog’s, tropical temperatures and warm ocean water, I stayed indoors and watched guys with sticks and balls.
I never said the sports fan was logical.
The hockey team kicked off the post season last Friday. The best-of-three series at Providence was slated to begin Thursday evening, but was pushed back when inclement weather struck the northeast. Apparently when Boston drivers are blindsided with anything more than a dusting, they don’t know how to drive. Before they know it, they’re hydroplaning and slamming on their brakes. Bad idea. One hundred and fifty-car pile-up on I-95. Game postponed.
The extra night didn’t hurt the Terriers as they came out and for the fourth time this year, played the Friars to a deadlock after regulation. However, for the first time this year, the Icedogs came out victorious, 5-4. The following night, the Terriers dominated play from the opening face off, advancing with a 7-1 victory at Schneider Arena, which over the weekend, came to be known as ‘Walter Brown Arena South,’ thanks to the band and the fans that turned out in droves to silence the Friar faithful.
The men’s basketball team continued the Terrier post-season run on Sunday and Monday at Walter Brown Arena, which hosted the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds of the America East Tournament. After handling UNH in the quarterfinal round, BU took on conference foes Northeastern in the semis.
BU appeared to come out tense and fell behind by 14 points early in the first half, but the Terriers clawed their way in the second half. While the thuggish Northeastern players may have been throwing punches on the floor, the Terriers delivered the real knockout blow by defeating the Huskies 71-61.
On Wednesday in Hartford, Conn., the women’s basketball team overcame their own 14-point deficit against Northeastern; only they did it in the last six minutes of the game, escaping with a 55-53 victory. They followed that up by beating Vermont in the semis, a team they hadn’t defeated in 15 previous meetings dating back to 1996. Their reward? Facing undefeated conference champs Maine in the finals.
On Friday night at the FleetCenter, the hockey team tried to become the third BU team of the week to reach their respective conference championship game. They did just that with a heart-palpitating 6-5 double overtime victory over the Eagles thanks in large part to a late game tying goal and a game winner from Justin Maiser, giving the Minnesota native his first career hat trick.
Maiser’s hat trick set up another kind of trifecta; all three of BU’s major sports teams playing championship games on ‘Super Saturday.’ Amazingly, these three teams combined put up an unblemished record of 7-0 over the course of the week to reach this point.
Waking up Saturday morning, there was a feeling in the air of confidence and hope of a day that would reward all three Terrier teams for their hard work an exceptional play. The Vermont Catamounts and their 700 or so fans had other ideas as they opened up a 16-2 lead early in the first half at ‘The Roof.’ But a persistent Terrier team made the proverbial second-half home team run, taking the lead 55-54 with 3:15 remaining on a Ryan Butt 3-ball. Neither team scored again until Vermont guard David Hehn hit a baseline jumper with 5.6 seconds remaining to win the game for Vermont. And like that, it was over.
Depressed and deflated, a group of us sat in my apartment with looks on our faces like Vermont had just been the bully who punched us in the stomach and stole our lunch money. We flipped on the TV in time to watch the women’s team stun Maine and their clear 18-0 conference record to advance to their first NCAA Tournament.
Little did we know it would be the only championship we’d see that day as the hockey team dropped a 1-0 overtime decision to UNH on a fluke goal in the 71st minute of play.
Three teams, nine days and eight victories against only two defeats. Mathematically, it was an enormously successful week for BU athletics. Why then, did the sports fan inside us feel so unsatisfied?
It is amazing how those eight victories can almost be washed away completely by two losses that were decided by one point and one goal. All that stood between BU and a perfect week was a tough fade away jumper along the baseline with time winding down and a BU defenseman who was in right place at the wrong time. Often times, sport consists of luck and chance, just as much as skill and talent.
When your team finally gives back to you, the fan, for all the time, money and emotional energy you have spent on a team, there is no better feeling. But when the teams you follow religiously come up agonizingly short, as they did this weekend, you almost wish they were never in the game to begin with. Would we have felt any better had the basketball team never come back from that 14 point first half deficit or if the hockey team had lost 5-1 to UNH?
Many would say yes. Like I said, the sports fan isn’t logical.
The worst part about this weekend wasn’t the losing, rather it was the way our teams lost. They kept our hearts on the line until the very end and just when we thought we could taste the sweetness of victory, we were silenced, relegated to our seats with our heads buried in our hands as the opponent celebrates in your house. What are we thinking about as we sit there, staring into our hands? What if…?
Despite their losses this weekend, both the men’s basketball and hockey teams will be joining women’s basketball in post-season national tournament play. And we’ll be there hoping that this time we won’t have to ask ourselves that question.
On a final note, I’d like to add that while sometimes we may act like sports is a matter of life and death, ultimately it is just a game. I think we were all reminded by this last Friday when we heard that Merrimack goalie Joe Exter was sent to the ICU at Beth Israel Hospital in critical condition with multiple skull fractures and cranial bleeding after being run over in a collision with BC’s Pat Eaves. Joe has been unconscious since the incident and my prayers, and I’m sure all of yours, are with Joe and his family.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
