There is a statistic for everything at the NCAA Tournament, easy measurements that put the games into perspective.
So it’s not a surprise that there’s one for disappointment.
It’s about 30 yards, give or take, the distance between Locker Room C and Locker Room D. Those two rooms, along with Locker Rooms A and B, are found in a sterile, whitewashed hallway underneath the bleachers at the Rose Garden arena in Portland.
The rooms themselves are nothing personalized. They’ve got the same carpet, same red and faux wood lockers. When reporters were let into the rooms after the games, we found the players fixing themselves the same burritos from the same catered food spread.
But if nothing else, the rooms were the rotating homes for all eight teams at the Portland regional during the tournament’s four-day stay in Portland, the first time the men’s tournament came back to Oregon in 26 years.
And, sorry fans, they, and not the court, were the place where you found out what the tournament really is like. It was the snapshots from the postgame locker rooms that gave me what I’ll remember from my first NCAA Tournament.
The indelible image coming from Portland will be Gonzaga freshman Demetri Goodson sprinting the length of the court before scoring the game-winning shot over Western Kentucky to advance to the Sweet 16.
Or, was it seeing the entire Gonzaga team huddled around the 15-inch monitor in their locker room, celebrating the replay of Goodson’s shot like little kids 15 minutes after they’d mauled the freshman themselves on the court?
Or, was it watching Jarvis Varnado, the 6-foot-9 Southeastern Conference defensive player of the year, cry in his stone-silent locker after Mississippi State lost to Washington in the first round?
“As you can see, it hurts real bad,” he said.
The Bulldogs rode a six-game winning streak into the tournament and were a 13-seed after surprising everyone and winning the SEC conference tournament. Experts called them an odds-on choice to be a potential upset over Washington.
And then it didn’t happen. Varnado was hit with early foul trouble, and wasn’t the factor head coach Rick Stansbury needed. When Stansbury walked through reporters, past the locker room to gather with his assistants as the players walked in, he put his hands on his forehead and the conversation never got above a whisper.
You could make a case for all of it.
Like the Purdue reserves who sang alone in their lockers to rattle their teammates who were being interviewed. Robbie Hummel flashed a smile in front of three reporters and a camera or two as the reserves sang lines about the Sweet 16.
One, a freshman guard from Toledo, Ohio named Ryne Smith, snacked on a burrito by himself across from Hummel and JaJuan Johnson’s locker after the Boilermakers beat Washington.
He was alone, and hadn’t played the entire game. And he was ecstatic.
“Last year I was sitting at home watching it with my dad on the couch,” Smith said. “Now I’m sitting on the bench, front row.”
At points during our quick talk together, his phone lit up in a pile of clothes behind him. More than 25 minutes after the game was over, Smith still hadn’t changed out of his uniform. More text messages arrived; he thought he’d received around 25.
“The stars probably have a lot more,” he said with a point of the finger toward Hummel and Johnson, who scored 22 points for the Boilermakers in the win.
Reporters asked lighter questions, a smiles on their faces in those rooms.
Walk to Room D, and it was a morgue for Washington. Grim faces were everywhere. The stars, Justin Dentmon, Jon Brockman and Quincy Pondexter, had already left for the official podium to talk with media, so reporters were left to fend on the role players.
It was great, and it was sad. And it was the NCAA Tournament. Did you think it would be any different?
The only thing missing was Oregon. And sure, if you count the Oregon media services staff that ran the whole operation, there was a certain level of UO presence there.
And yeah, as has been repeated numerous times, outgoing athletic director Pat Kilkenny was there as mandated because of Oregon’s host school status. He sat at the scorer’s table, and twice, longtime friend and Gonzaga coach Mark Few stood right in front of him for much of the Bulldogs’ games.
Few is the object of Oregon’s not-so-secret affection. A 1987 alum, he played the loyal coach whenever asked about Oregon, saying he was indebted to Gonzaga, and how he was happy for the flexibility and power the job gives him in Spokane.
Let’s return to Locker Room C. That was Gonzaga’s room, where we waited to enter. Not only reporters, though. Kilkenny was there, standing outside the room, to congratulate Few on the win. On one level, they’re friends. On another level, that of public perception, it was an AD and the guy who has been on the short list of UO’s for years.
There were few words between them, nothing we could make out from our spot down the hall. It was hard to decide who was playing what role at the time.
Their mutual interest might be the only thing we couldn’t measure at the NCAA Tournament.
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