For the Love of the Game...

The NCAA Men’s Basketball page says it all. They had the right team winning but the wrong score and the wrong team’s picture. Then, the right score, but the wrong team winning. Finally, they got it right. I guess that’s better than ESPN, CBS, and Yahoo! none of which are running the story at all. It seems without a name like Greg Oden or Kevin Durant, it’s hard to make a case for front-page news, but with that said I just watched the most exhilarating ending to any college game I’ve seen since Laettner hit the game winner against Kentucky in ‘92.

Did it involve Kansas or UCLA? No. Was it Ohio State against Memphis? Not in the least. It was the Division II Championship between the Barton Bulldogs and the undefeated Winona State Warriors. Winona hadn’t lost since January… that is January of 2006. They weren’t about to start a losing streak against a team like Barton who overachieved all season. Not against a team they beat in the Elite Eight on their way to the 2006 championship. Not a little team from a little college like Barton.

With 39 seconds to go and Barton down 74-69, time was running out and legs for both teams were getting tired. After working for twenty minutes to hold on to a ten-point halftime lead it seemed like Winona State would be the first team to repeat as Division II champions in over 10 years. If Barton was going to win, they were forced to rely on 5’10” PG Anthony Atkinson, a young man who had already hit a game winning three at the buzzer and a pair of game winning free throws to take down two giants of Division II basketball earlier in the week. Did he have one more left in him?

Atkinson didn’t even look at his teammates as he came down the floor. Instead he found a small opening and sprinted towards the basket, forcing the defense to take a step back. This gave him just enough space to stop and hit a five-foot pull up jumper to pull within three. Then Barton caught Winona off guard as Quincy Henderson stole the inbounds pass and quickly dished it back to Atkinson for a lay-up and a foul. The pressure was heavy though, as Atkinson missed the free throw, 74-73. After the miss, Barton was forced to foul quickly and put Winona State’s Jonte Flowers on the line for two shots. He returned the favor by missing the front end, but made the second to put his team up by two.

With 19 seconds left Atkinson still wasn’t concerned. He walked the ball up to half court and then ran right past the defense again, scoring on an impressive reverse lay-up to tie up the game at 75-75. With 11 seconds left, there was still plenty of time for Winona State to get off a shot, but guard Zach Malvik could only make it to half court before having his pocket picked clean by Bobby Buffaloe with 4 seconds left. Atkinson saw this and quickly took off towards the basket, receiving the pass from Buffaloe with 3 seconds… 2 seconds. He didn’t have enough time to make it back to the hoop, but somehow he did and with exactly 0.1 seconds left, the ball left his hand and his game winning lay-up dropped through the hoop. Game over. 77-75 Barton Bulldogs.

You won’t see Atkinson in the NBA and you won’t see Buffaloe’s steal on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You probably won’t see Malvik with his head buried in his jersey on ESPN, and it’s truly a shame, because you won’t see a better end to an NCAA game this season. You probably didn’t even see this one. It just goes to show you, there are still guys out there who play basketball knowing that they'll never make a million dollars. They simply love the game.

See It Here.