It ended in a haze of disbelief: thousands of hometown fans at Seattle's Key Arena chanting "O-VER-RA-TED"; members of an upstart Gonzaga team pumping their fists in the air; Arthur Lee, Pete Sauer and Kris Weems clutching each other at midcourt; normally stoic assistant coach Trent Johnson fighting back tears outside the locker room, grieving not over the loss of the game, but over five remarkable young men who had just played their last game of hoops for Stanford.
Just like that, the Cardinal was out of the NCAA tournament in the second round, losing 82-74 to a Gonzaga team that proved all the way to the regional finals to be far better than its No. 10 seed indicated.
Did any of us, on that rainy Seattle afternoon, remember how it had begun? With national magazine covers and No. 1 rankings in preseason polls and tents snaking their way around Maples Pavilion a week before student tickets went on sale? Was that just a dream?
Sports clichés aside, what really mattered about this season was everything that happened between the preseason hype and the postseason desolation. It was about coming off last year's heady run to the Final Four with the weight of the world's expectations on your shoulders and then having to work for every basket, every rebound, every victory -- and making history along the way.
Consider: the first outright conference title in 57 years. A 26-7 record while playing one of the toughest schedules in Division I basketball. A place in the Top 10 all season long. Sweeping UCLA for the second year in a row, a blowout victory against perennially powerful Arizona. A No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. And that list doesn't cover the accomplishments of the five graduating seniors -- Lee, Weems, Sauer, Tim Young and Mark Seaton -- over the course of their four years: four NCAA tournaments, two Sweet 16 appearances, a trip to the Final Four.
It was the 1998 Final Four appearance that set the bar so high as all five starters returned to the Maples hardwood last November. Although the team suffered a couple of preseason losses (to then Top-10 teams North Carolina and Maryland), the Cardinal got off to a solid start, putting away most competitors in the first half and gliding home. But there were some bad portents as well. Sophomore Jason Collins was sidelined for the season with a broken wrist. Three-point wizard Ryan Mendez took to the bench with a bad knee.
Soon the team's inauspicious, if mostly successful, pattern began to develop: fall behind in the first half and then grind back in the second, getting tough on defense, drawing fouls on offense and converting at the free-throw line. It worked, but it was often an excruciating process for both fans and players.
"This was a really hard season," forward Mark Madsen said the night after the final-game loss to Gonzaga. "We basically had to fight for every game." And that took its toll. "The fact that we were constantly having to come from behind eroded our confidence," says coach Mike Montgomery.
Montgomery believes the team's finish, while perhaps disappointing, was inevitable given the number of key players who came up injured. In addition to Mendez and Jason Collins, there was point guard Mike McDonald, who missed 10 weeks early in the season with a sprained foot, and Jason's twin brother, Jarron, who sprained an ankle the week before the NCAA tournament. "At the end of the year, it wasn't the same team. It didn't have the same parts," Montgomery says.
The coach was not making excuses, mind you. Montgomery, who became the winningest basketball coach in Stanford history this season and was named Pac-10 coach of the year, knows the game, knows how to do the best with what you have, how to make the breaks happen. You don't reach the Final Four without a little snake-charming to get destiny to dance in your direction. But the other part of the equation is a little luck, and it was clear enough in the close first-round victory over Alcorn State that, in the NCAA tournament, luck all too often smiles on the Underdog, not the Big Dog.
There you had it. The 'Zags played at the top of their game, sinking 3-pointers and pulling down rebounds like, well, like Stanford on a good day. For the Cardinal, it was not a good day.
In defeat, the team was every bit as classy as it had been in victory. No tantrums, no excuses. There was talk about love and, as always, that dry Cardinal humor, both were exemplified by team captain Sauer. As he pulled Weems and Lee into his grasp after the game ended, he said, "I love you guys." A few minutes later, Sauer made this observation about the game for the press: "This is not going to be one of the videotapes I get out and put in the VCR when I'm older."
As the Stanford and Gonzaga players cleared the floor, Art Lee stopped to take one last look at the Stanford fans, among them his dad, who were watching the team's exit with immense pride and sadness. With five seniors graduating, this, after all, was the end of an era. And then Lee smiled -- a strained, bittersweet smile to be sure, but a smile all the same -- as if to say, "Thanks. It was a great ride."
The pleasure, Arthur, was all ours.
