Local opinion: Time to root for the Cats in March Madness

Wherever the road of basketball’s March Madness takes our Wildcats, we’ll be there.

Some of us will be screaming “U of A” at “away” NCAA tournament games. Hundreds of thousands of other fans will cheer or curse at the TV from the comfort of our couches.

Interest in March Madness has risen every year, it seems, since Coach Lute Olson took his 1988 team to the Final Four with superstars Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott. Wildcat player Harvey Mason’s song kinda made it official that season with the lyric: “Tucson, Arizona is a basketball town.”

The Cats fell short of the championship that year, but we tapped a milestone — no longer would we take a backseat to a Kentucky or a UCLA. Our hoop dreams materialized in 1997 with a championship over, why yes, Kentucky.

Our Cats clawed their way to the championship game in 2001 but fell short to Duke. Of course, we diehard fans still blame poor officiating for costing us that victory. Ex-Duke player, now ESPN analyst, Jay Williams confessed on the air a few weeks ago that the refs missed an obvious foul he committed.

The Cats have missed the Final Four since then — a quarter-century of disappointment, sometimes losing in ignominious fashion. It’s bad, so I won’t remind you of 1993, when Santa Clara upended the highly ranked Cats. Or just eight years ago, when they were buffaloed and sent home in the very first round.

I fall into a funk each time the Cats make a quick tourney exit, and I hear that “ta, ta, ta” of CBS’s closing theme: “One Shining Moment.” Am I alone in that? No. Family counselors have reported trying to lift the spirits of depressed fans across the country.

We are true blue-and-red Wildcat fans, but that does not stop us from critiquing, from time to time, Coach Tommy Lloyd. Or players Krivas, Peat, Kharchenkov, Burries, Bradley, Awaka, Dell’Orso and Aristode. During football season, crazed UA fans called for firing football Coach Brent Brennan in midseason, only for him to lead the team to a 9-4 season. I don’t go to those extremes, but I do wonder why the talented Lloyd's players have trouble throwing in the ball from an opponent’s end line.

A UA journalism graduate, I’m proud of our university's achievements in academics and research. Yet I submit that it’s UA sports – basketball in particular – that brings our metro area together in a three-week journey as nothing else does.

For some of us old fogies, UA sports have come a long way since, say, 1955. In those days, we kids became lifelong fans by gaining entry to football games with 50-cent Knothole Gang tickets. Stuck then in the lowly Border Conference, we were thrilled with a victory over Hardin-Simmons. Could we ever even think of capturing a national title? No way.

We have high expectations for our Wildcats, and we’ll root for them with every beat of our hearts. Are they capable of winning the championship? Yes, but it’s called March Madness because the ball can take funny bounces.

One TV hoops commentator said Arizona “has everything,” including big men for rebounding, superb shooting guards, tenacious defenders. Let’s hope they have something else too – sometimes it takes a little luck too.

I, for one, will rejoice in the 32-win, 2-loss record so far this season. The Cats captured championships of the Big 12 Conference and the conference tournament. Remarkably, Lloyd has more victories in his five years as coach than any U.S. hoops coach before him. And what UA fan can ever forget Jaden Bradley’s last-second game-winner last weekend?

So, we have a lot for which to be thankful. More than 350 colleges have Division 1 basketball programs. Too often, we fans focus solely on winning the championship. Nothing short of that will do.

So this March Madness, let's aim for an NCAA title. But win or lose, let’s count our basketball blessings. Let the Madness begin.