Six Overtimes?!?!

Personally, Thursday is one of my favorite days of the week. First off, its Thirsty Thursday and everyone likes alcohol, right? But every Thursday my friends and I go out to a local bar and play Bar Trivia (which by the way, I would definitely recommend everyone that enjoys Jeopardy, Cash Cab). I look forward to trivia each and every week and I always have a really good time, its an opportunity to hang out with my friends, work as a team, enjoy some trivia, and also have some sweet sweet alcohol. My friends and I have been going to the same place every Thursday since the middle of this summer and we thoroughly enjoy it.

Now I am definitely a college basketball fan, however it is not exactly my expertise. To be honest I don't even really watch college basketball until conference play begins because to me it is where the season starts to get interesting. Championship week to me rivals the tournament in itself, I love them both, but with my two TV set up I can watch one game on ESPN and another on ESPN2, ABC, Fox Sports, or any other network that my be showing the game.

So this past Thursday my friends and I play trivia, I get home at approximately 11:30 and then turn on the TV to ESPN only to see replays of Eric Devendorf hitting what looks to be a miracle game winning shot at the buzzer. I love overtime in any sport... it is why coaches make their players run sprints at the end of the game. As a player you hate it at the time, however when the time comes when you need to dig deep at the end of the game or in overtime it pays off.

I just need to say that that was one of the best games i've ever watched, and I only got to see 30 mintues of the game in a game that was 70 minutes long. Such a courageous effort by both teams. Towards the end you had star players on the bench due to fouling out and even had a walk-on for Syracuse on the court. Johnny Flinn and his Orange were incredible, but...

I haven't heard many people talk about how good the officiating was. Granted, I didn't watch a minute of regulation so there may have been bad calls during regulation, but starting with the decision to take Devendorfs three pointer at the buzzer off of the board to make the game go into overtime as it should have, to at the end of the 4th(maybe the 3rd, or even the 5th) overtime where at first glance it looked like a Syracuse player was fouled on a layup in the final seconds that was not called, only to see it from another angle and it clearly was not a foul. Everyone is talking about how many players played more than 55 of the 70 minutes, but the officials were up and down that court for 70 of the 70 minutes making many sharp and correct calls, my hat goes off to them.

Great game all around, this game definitely got me in the mindset I need to be when it comes time later to night to start to break down the brackets.