If there's something better than Orange agony, it's watching a Syracuse season fizzle in front of thousands of UConn fans.
The scene: the 2005 NCAA Tournament first round in Worcester, Mass. If I remember correctly, it was a Friday night and I was out bowling, keeping one eye on a lady friend and one eye on my bracket being ruined. I was naive, then - picking Syracuse to make the second round. Even so, I think I was subconsciously rooting for Taylor Coppenrath's Vermont Catamounts, the No. 13 seed, against the Orange. UVM battled closely, forcing overtime. Syracuse took a 55-53 lead with just under two minutes to play in the extra period.
Oh, and thousands of UConn fans made the 25-minute trip because UConn had defeated #15 seed Central Florida earlier in the day in the same building.
The moment:
As only Gus Johnson could capture it. Seriously: Kobe Bryant thinks that he was too far away to shoot that. What the hell was he thinking?
But apparently T.J. Sorrentine knows better than us mortals, and his name lives on in the annals of mid-major-school players with ginormous, uh... courage.
The aftermath: Syracuse's season would end (as would UConn's, two days later, against Julius Hodge and North Carolina State), but they would be back, regrettably. The following season, the Orange would win roughly nine f---ing games, while Gerry McNamara carried them to more than a dozen other wins. But on this Friday night in Massachusetts' worst city, justice prevailed.