Last Dance In Big Dance Is Bittersweet

Just spitball ing here, but this team gets inducted into Gonzaga’s Hall of Fame immediately, right?

And Quentin Hall gets his own wing.

Mr. Zag’s Wild Ride through the NCAA Tournament is over. The property now reverts to all those faceless first seeds and second seeds and boring old Billy Packer, who hid out at the East Regional two time zones away from simply the best story going in college basketball. Wouldn’t want any of it to get on you, Billy.

Perhaps next March there will be another Gonzaga; there almost always is. Perhaps it will even be Gonzaga, though the circumstances will not be quite so memorable and certainly the school will never be quite the same now that everyone knows how to pronounce it.

It’s Gon-zag-uh, you know. Zag as in swag. Swag as in stolen loot, which is what Saturday’s West Regional final would have been had the Bulldogs been able to pull out another miracle in the final 30 seconds against Connecticut.

It also would have sent an entire state into psychoanalysis. Connecticut, that is. Washington may have just wound up in traction.

Instead, they settled for turning college basketball upside down, if only for a couple of weekends. The 67-62 loss to UConn at America West Arena kept them from reaching the Final Four and finishing the job, but as they and we came to understand, that wouldn’t necessarily have been their destiny or even their destination but just part of the journey.

In the end, championships and headlines didn’t drive this team.

Quentin Hall did. “I just didn’t want to let go,” said GU’s heart, soul, engine and gas. “And I don’t think the rest of these guys did, either.”

How much he didn’t want to was never more apparent than in the last 8 minutes Saturday, when the 5-foot-8 roadrunner willed Gonzaga back into a game that was getting away. Once he simply schooled Richard Hamilton, only the best player on any floor Gonzaga has played on this year, for a three-point play. Another time he grabbed a rebound, went from zero-to-Quentin in two steps and corkscrewed UConn’s other All-American, Khalid El-Amin, into the maple on a drive to the hoop.

“He was going to put us on his back and take us there,” marveled teammate Mike Nilson. He would badger El-Amin into an oh-for-12 afternoon of shooting and reap no consolation.

“I’d take his game,” Hall sighed, “and take the win.”

Finally, with the game all but over, the Zags trailing by four and the shot clock winding down, Hall juked the 6-6 Hamilton into the air and shot-putted a 3-pointer that slithered through the net. “And he fouled me!” Hall claimed, breaking into a smile for the first time in rather somber postgame session. “It should have been a four-point play. It should have tied it up.”

Quentin Hall would not let the Zags lose.

But he couldn’t keep them from getting beat.

The Huskies’ withering defense on GU’s perimeter shooters, their own will on the glass and their poise in the face of a remarkable defensive plan the Bulldog staff concocted were all telling. So were the gifts of the graceful Hamilton, who had 21 points and the pass at the end which, in fact, won the game. If anybody wondered if these Huskies were worthy of this first trip to the Final Four - playing nothing higher than a fifth seed to get there - GU’s Casey Calvary set them straight.

“They just beat the best team in the tournament,” Calvary said.

UConn coach Jim Calhoun wouldn’t necessarily disagree.

“This is a team that doesn’t have a national name,” he said of Gonzaga, “but has a national game.”

And Calhoun, for his part, has a national monkey off his back. Indeed, it would have been painful to see the Huskies lose, for all the caterwauling back in Connecticut about the program’s previous inability to reach the summit. Beating GU was like a civic shot of Demerol.

That no one expected Gonzaga to get even this far doesn’t mean this loss doesn’t hurt, but the hurt is different. Winning Saturday wouldn’t have done any more to prove Gonzaga’s point.

“We wanted people to know we are winners and we did that,” said guard Matt Santangelo. “We wanted to show people we belonged and we did. We deserved all this. We didn’t want it to end, but we still showed it’s not a matter of what’s on the uniform.”

Hold on. Don’t sell that uniform short.

“The hardest thing is that I will never get to play with these guys again,” said Hall. “I love each and every one of them in a very special way. I think of the times we’ve had on and off the court, and to see them come off the court and everybody crying, it was too much.”

It was definitely too much. Twenty-eight victories. An unprecedented turn around the Big Dance floor. Cult status from coast to coast. An inspiring reaffirmation of the rewards of sacrifice.

And on Saturday, an unforgettable goodbye from simply the most unforgettable player the school has ever seen, and that includes the one who’s really headed for the Hall of Fame.

On game days, coach Dan Monson has one stock piece of advice for his Bulldogs: Make sure the best team wins.

The best team did. Just not this day.