ST. LOUIS – Behold, the magic of March. Behold its pain, too. Look at the two coaches shaking hands after their teams had just staged an NCAA tournament classic on Friday. Both had the talents to be doing something else, in quieter worlds, where a banked-in half-court prayer at the buzzer can’t break your heart.
But they wanted to be here, no matter the anguish that might be waiting.
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Kentucky has beaten Santa Clara 89-84 in overtime, after 12 ties and 20 lead changes. After each team exchanged 3-pointers in the final 2.4 seconds of regulation, Santa Clara seemingly seizing the day and then Kentucky yanking it right back into play on a banked-in Hail Mary at the buzzer.
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The two men quickly shake hands as they pass, probably too lost in their own feelings to chat much, even if they are friends.
Mark Pope is the tall winning coach. He could have been a doctor, having spent two years of training in Columbia’s medical school.
Herb Sendek is the shorter man, with the grim loss of finality on his face, the kind a coach invariably shows after a loss in the NCAA tournament. He’s the high school valedictorian who graduated from college summa cum laude in industrial management and earned the Carnegie Merit Scholarship. He could have been a CEO in a corporate headquarters Friday, not watching victory vanish before his eyes.
“It was a really euphoric high,” he would say later. “Followed by a tough one to swallow.”
WATCH THE MADNESS: Santa Clara and Kentucky trade threes in the finals seconds
Care to witness the enormously powerful lure pull of this month, in good times and bad? Right here.
“I don't know if I could have done anything (else),” Sendek had said the day before about his life’s choice. “This might be the only thing I had a shot at. My dad was a coach. I have been in gyms since I have been in diapers literally, not sandboxes. Now I look back on that and I realize he was never too busy or going to be with somebody too important to have me tugging at his pants leg. He went out of his way to include me.”
Pope had talked about his choice of roads as well. Why here, and not a clinic somewhere?
“This game has a magical pull. This time of year has a magical pull. It has a power over me. I love it. I love everything about it. I love the chance to be in the locker room. I love a chance to grow a team and face adversity and overcome it. I love the chance to do things people don't think you can do when you don't think you can do them. I love the chance to climb the mountain. All of that is here.”
They would all feel that Friday in the Enterprise Center, and so would their players. March giveth and March taketh away, sometimes in 2.4 seconds.
The survivors are sitting in their press conference talking about Otega Oweh’s buzzer-banker and the overtime that followed.
“We looked each other in the eyes in the huddle and just counted on each other,” Brandon Garrison is saying.
“I was just praying for it to go in. I was about to cry if he missed that shot,” Mouhamed Dioubate is adding. “That second chance doesn't come around in March too often, so we gotta take advantage of it, and that's what we did.”
Oweh scored 35 points but those three are what will be remembered.
“I was just trying to get the ball out quick and get as close as I can to the goal. I was looking at the clock the whole time,” he says. “Obviously they hit a 3, so we had to hit a 3.”
Pope had a clear view of salvation. “Otega raced down the floor and stopped right in front of me and as he raised up, he said "that's a bucket" and threw it in off the glass.”
Saved. And then a few moments later, moving on to the next round.
“I’m happy for our guys. I'm actually going to probably sound terrible. I'm happy for Santa Clara, too,” Pope is saying. “Just the fact that they got to be a part of such an epic game, such a dramatic game.
“It's what you want out of March. I don't know where you get this drama. I don't know where you get this transformation of emotions from despair to thrill to despair to thrill in a matter of four seconds. But we got that a bunch tonight, and it's pretty great.”
It's not easy coaching Kentucky with its constant uproar, like loud music a man can’t even turn off in the night. Big Blue Nation has no patience. There is scrutiny of every deed, every word and clearly it all has raised Pope’s frustration. There must be days it feels as if some of his alma mater's citizens have turned on him. If a team is deemed to be under-performing, as this one has been, you can quadruple all that. If Oweh’s shot doesn’t go in, the thunder will rattle walls. First-round losses are catastrophes in Lexington.
🤯 OTEGA OWEH: 35 points, epic buzzer beater in First Round win over Santa Clara
Pope, weary of the turbulence, had even made the Selection Sunday watch party a private affair. “For one moment we shut the circus down and let our team be our team. I think it was really good for us and really healthy for us.”
The stricken team sits in their press conference.
Santa Clara’s Allen Graves is talking about the 3-pointer he so confidently buried that might have been one of the most famous baskets in the history of Santa Clara basketball. “As soon as the ball hit my hands I knew, God willing, that it was going to go in,” he says.
The historic game-winner. Until it wasn’t.
Sendek confirms he wanted to set his defense for Kentucky’s last gasp after Graves' shot, “I unequivocally called timeout. But they didn't grant it. I mean, I think the video evidence is clear.”
Graves describes how the defense might have lost its focus a tad. Oweh was allowed to measure his time and shot location without a lot of interference. “I would say there was a lot of emotions involved in that play. Obviously hitting a shot like that was exciting, and then you kind of lose your man maybe.”
That had to be forgotten, quickly. All heads had to be up for overtime.
“Not easy to do, right, in the moment?” Sendek says. “But our players have a tremendous armor of resiliency and they've done a great job of staying in the moment, and we're a next-play team. So you take a brief second to breathe and then it's next play, because that's what it's been all season.”
But the next plays, especially in the last minute of overtime, are mostly made by Kentucky. Soon it is over. Watching from across the court in a red jacket, his arms resting on the rails, a resigned look on his face: Herb Sendek Sr.
And that’s why Herb Sendek isn't somewhere else in a boardroom Friday afternoon. He is here, hurting.
