Massachusetts is the birthplace of basketball.
Massachusetts also gave us the 17-time NBA champion Boston Celtics, and banner No. 18 is on the horizon if Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, augmented by a much-improved supporting cast, play up to expectations.
Alas, Massachusetts is also where college basketball goes to die.
This sobering reality has been brought to our attention yet again, what with Selection Sunday coming and going without any Massachusetts schools advancing to the NCAA Tournament.
Yes, the tourney spotlight will be focused on Boston on March 28 and 30, with the East Regional coming to TD Garden. Reality check: Even if some upstart, stargazing Massachusetts school had made the tourney, it’s unlikely the dream would have extended all the way to Causeway Street. But since dreaming is what March Madness is all about — come on, we all love those Cinderella teams — it would have been fun to see at least one Massachusetts team make an improbable run.
But no. No Boston College. No Harvard. No Holy Cross. No Northeastern. UMass? You gotta be kidding. Frank Martin ably coached the Minutemen to 20 victories this season, but their trip to the Atlantic 10 tourney was one and done via a 73-59 loss to VCU at Barclays Center.
There were some close calls elsewhere in the Bay State. UMass-Lowell was the No. 2 seed in the America East tourney but lost 66-61 to No. 1 Vermont.
Not how we wanted it to end, but so much to be proud of.
RECAP: https://t.co/NQJ6OEX7Pk#UnitedInBlue | #AEHoops | #AEPlayoffs
— UMass Lowell MBB (@RiverHawkMBB) March 16, 2024
And then there’s the ambitious Merrimack College program, now eligible for March Madness after making the big move to Division I. But the No. 2 seed Warriors came up short in the Northeast Conference title game, dropping a 54-47 decision to No. 6 seed Wagner at Lawler Arena, their home court, where they had won 13 straight games.
Thank you to the fans and community. Last night will go down as one of the best nights ever in Lawler Arena. Obviously not the result we wanted, but will be back next year with a new challenge in a new conference and we can’t wait!
Thanks for rockin’ with us all season long! pic.twitter.com/6SfM1igyPK
— Merrimack Men’s Basketball (@MerrimackMBB) March 13, 2024
We all remember what happened with Merrimack last year, when the Warriors defeated Fairleigh Dickinson in the NEC final but remained ineligible for March Madness because they were in the final year of NCAA purgatory as the program transitioned from Division II to Division I.
This was going to be the year for Merrimack. But as the headline in the local Eagle-Tribune put it, succinctly and poignantly: “MARCH SADNESS.”
“This team, this season, has meant everything to me,” the Warriors’ Devon Savage, who led Merrimack with 16 points, told the Eagle-Tribune’s Jamie Pote. “Getting to the NCAA Tournament has always been our dream. We didn’t get there, but we’ll be ready to make it happen next year.”
Next year. That’s the way it is with college basketball in The Land Where Basketball Was Invented. And I guess I should stop here and acknowledge that if you’re a fan of Boston College or UMass (Amherst or Lowell) or Holy Cross, you probably don’t care that Merrimack didn’t make the leap to March Madness. At this very moment, millions of eager bracketologists, from devotees of college basketball to casual fans who were guided by FOMO to enter the office pool, are making their selections.
And let’s just say it for the millionth time: College basketball generally isn’t a big ticket in Massachusetts. It’s all Patriots, all Red Sox, all Bruins and all Celtics all the time, with the college programs often angling for whatever attention they can get. When they’re good, they get it. The problem is staying good.
UMass had those great teams in the 1990s, with Marcus Camby powering the 1995-96 Minutemen to the Final Four. The NCAA eventually stripped UMass of these laurels, but that doesn’t change the fact the program received fierce media coverage and attention in those days. Over the past 40 years, it’s one of only two college programs that have truly taken the entire state by storm, the other being the 1984 Boston College football team, which, led by Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie, defeated Houston in the Cotton Bowl. (I’ll give a hearty honorable mention to the UMass hockey program, which in 2021 won the NCAA Division I hockey championship, but in terms of everyone stopping what they were doing, it wasn’t on a par with the Camby-led Minutemen and the Flutie-led Eagles.)
But there are those of us on the island of misfit sports fans who instantly become fans of any local school that makes the tournament — especially if said team makes it to the tourney via some improbable late-season run. The 2015-16 Holy Cross Crusaders lost five games to close out the regular season and lugged a 5-13 record into the Patriot League tournament, whereupon magic happened. The Crusaders proceeded to win four straight road games — at Loyola, at Bucknell, at Army, at Lehigh — to claim the automatic bid. They beat Southern in the West Region’s No. 16 seed play-in game, and that’s when the magic ended: Oregon 91, Holy Cross 52.
On March 12, 2020, just as the coronavirus epidemic was about to change our lives, I spent time interviewing Adam Mikula, a senior on the Boston University basketball team. Mikula, born in Slovakia, raised in East Boston, started out as a student manager on the BU men’s basketball team. To save money, each morning he’d cook up a giant batch of Quaker Oats oatmeal to get him through the day. He commuted to school, Blue Line to Green Line to campus.
As a sophomore, he made the practice team. As a junior, he made the team as a walk-on. As a senior, BU gave him a basketball scholarship as a reward for his diligence and to illustrate what he meant to the program.
Mikula had been a fine player during his days at Boston Latin High. I asked him why he hadn’t chosen a Division III college, where he might have been a three- or four-year starter. Simple: It was his dream to play in the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament.
The 2019-20 Terriers made the tournament by winning the Patriot League tournament.
As we were talking, word came there would be no March Madness. The tournament was canceled.
“When I was 13 years old, when I actually started playing basketball and taking it seriously, I made a list of all the things that I wanted to do with my career,” Mikula told me. “And making the NCAA Tournament was on the list. It would have been an incredible experience.”
I would have rooted for BU that year. I would have rooted for Merrimack this year.
There’s always next year.
(Photo of Merrimack’s Jordan McKoy and Wagner’s Keyontae Lewis battling for a rebound: Charles Krupa / Associated Press)
