Requiem for a Season

This wasn't supposed to be that team. It wasn't that veteran-heavy, superstar-infused team that was supposed to make it all the way last year, and almost did. It was a team with one great freshman, two proven veterans, and a lot of questions in October. This Memphis Tigers team didn't seem like it had a spark, a heart to push it to greatness. The early losses bore that out, and we settled in for one of those in-between seasons and looked ahead to the next recruiting class. Then, somehow, we moved Tyreke Evans to the point, and we caught fire. And despite myself, I started to see a great year coming from this obviously flawed team that managed to win, and defend, and even shoot. I definitely wouldn't have believed you if you told me in December that this team was a 2-seed. I saw that after all it would be a fitting ending for the careers of Antonio Anderson and Robert Dozier.

And then tonight. The despair, the near helplessness of the end of the first half, and the early part of the second. The hangdog looks, that 1 step that we always seemed to be behind. But we burst through that illusion. We woke up, and we sprinted back toward an opponent who thought they'd left us behind.  We drove and drove and drove, and we trusted our superstar, and it all made us realize too late that if we'd only been ourselves a little bit earlier, Mizzou would have been but paper Tigers. But dammit, we went down swinging, a team that wasn't really made to be there, who achieved a kind of greatness in managing to come up just short. Thanks, Tigers, you left it all on the court for us in the end, and that's all we can ever ask.