The relief of winning

There are two emotions that can come with winning a championship – joy or relief. Teams that are expected to win celebrate their victory with a sense of relief to have lived up to expectation; teams that are the underdog show unbridled joy in their win, free of the expectation.

In the 2011-2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, Kentucky was the unquestionable favorite; for the Wildcats, anything but a win would have been failure. In fact, their coach John Calipari said, “At Kentucky, we don’t hang up banners for conference championships.” The writing between the lines is clear – at Kentucky, anything less than a national championship is a failure.

In this game, Kansas was the clear underdog, with no one expecting them to make the championship. If not for the injury to Kendall Marshall, everyone expected North Carolina to be in the championship against Kentucky. So despite it being a game between the two winningest programs in NCAA basketball history, everyone expected the outcome to be as it was.

Kentucky was the best team in the nation, by far. With as many as six players who could go in the first round of the 2012 NBA draft, it would have been hard for any team to compete with the Kentucky thoroughbreds. Led by Anthony Davis, just the second freshman to be named player of the year (the other being Kevin Durant) and the consensus number one pick in the draft, Kentucky was a team that, on paper, might look like the Miami Heat – lots of talent, with some difficulty working together. But the Wildcats won this national championship not because of diva offense, but incredible defense and uncommon selfishness. And as much as many hate to admit it, it is the work of the much-maligned Calipari – he took a team of six great players and got them to put aside their egos for the better of the team.

The best team in the nation with the best players; of course Kentucky was going to win, right? It seems simple, but we know from years of watching March Madness that this isn’t always the case in college basketball. For instance, last year UConn and Butler played for the championship – were they the two best teams in the country? No. It takes winning six do-or-die games in a row, under extreme pressure, to win a national championship. A lot of things can muck that up, from bad shooting to key injuries. So it takes talent, and a little luck, to win the NCAA basketball title.

Kentucky had a dominant interior defense; a balanced and efficient offense and the most talented collection of players on the same the team that we’ve seen in years – maybe ever. So on Monday night, the Wildcats expected to win; they knew they were the better team, and they performed like it. They were so good that they won despite Davis only scoring six points. And you could see the relief on the players’ and coach’s faces when they celebrated – the relief of living up to expectations.

Rooting for Goliath

When given a choice, most people will root for David before ever cheering for Goliath. That is why I was in a strange situation on Sunday afternoon, when I was cheering for Kansas over Virginia Commonwealth University in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. I was actively cheering for the number-one seed to beat the number-11 seed, an urban state school in Richmond, Va., that most people hadn’t heard of before the tournament. 

No, I wasn’t cheering for Kansas because of my bracket (though I did have the Jayhawks taking it all), but because I legitimately wanted Kansas to win. After they beat up on the ultimate David, the 16 seed and my Alma mater Boston University in the first round, I had to cheer for them. Plus, I feel as though I have a semi-vested interest because my brother is buddies with one of the Kansas starting-five.

Even as I cheered for the number-one seed, I felt like I was doing something fundamentally wrong. I was disgusted in myself as I cheered for the Jayhawks to come back from a double-digit deficit; as I stood on my feet when they pulled within two points; and as I wallowed in their defeat to “David.”

So why do we in the U.S. always cheer on David? Why would we all cheer against the programs that work hard to be the best, and put the time and money into being the best? 

Because we like to feel like anything is possible, that’s why. We like to watch a game and believe that VCU can beat Kansas, or Butler can beat the University of Pittsburgh. We want to believe that on any given day, anyone can win. That’s why we reveled in Appalachian State’s victory in football over the University of Michigan a couple of years ago, and VCU’s win on Sunday.

And there is no greater place to cheer on the underdog than in the NCAA tournament. It’s the only place where, on a regular basis, year-after-year, we see the lower seed team topple the higher-ranked team, where the less-known programs have a shot to topple the powerhouse programs. 

And this year is certainly no different, as for only the third time ever, no number-one seeded team reached the Final Four.

Of course in the Final Four, the two Davids left are playing each other, as VCU and Butler square off in the semis. This brings about a conundrum – if you are rooting solely for the underdog, then certainly the VCU Rams are the team to cheer for. But if you want to root for the team that has the best chance of beating the Goliath-division team – in this case, UConn or Kentucky – then you should probably cheer for Butler, the so-called underdog who lost in the championship to UNC last year.

In the end, I’ve jumped back on the David bandwagon and will be cheering on the underdog in the championship, whether it’s Butler or VCU. Because in the long run, there’s nothing any sports fan loves more than a Cinderella story.