Now Get Off My Lawn!

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is fast approaching, and Shank gives the subject the contemporary treatment it deserves.

Just kidding! Shank instead goes back nearly four decades to his favorite decade (the Seventies) to let today's young whippersnappers know how good they have it now:

We will hear the noise a week from Sunday night when the NCAA men’s basketball draw is announced. Bubble teams will cry foul. Schools with double-digit losses will claim they were “snubbed” by the tournament selection committee.

Please.

You want to hear about a worthy team that didn’t make it to the NCAA Tournament? Hop into the wayback machine and let me tell you about the 1973-74 Maryland Terrapins.

They might have been the best team in the country. They had three of the top 10 players in the nation. They had six NBA draft picks. They were ranked in the top five all season. In December, they lost a 1-point decision to Bill Walton’s defending champion UCLA Bruins (the team that won 88 straight).

Then they lost the final game of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, 103-100, in overtime to North Carolina State. Some have called it the greatest college basketball game ever played. Maryland shot 61 percent from the floor in the losing effort.

The Wolfpack, led by David Thompson, went on to defeat UCLA in the Final Four, and won the NCAA championship.

All snark aside, this is a pretty good column; it's an example of the writer Shaughnessy is when he puts his mind to it.