ORLANDO, Fla. — They’d done more than battle the defending champions, of course. They’d done more than push the Louisville Cardinals to the darkest place imaginable for a team with ambitions of repeating, if not to the brink then within sight of it.
No. The Manhattan Jaspers had spent 40 minutes torturing Louisville, crawling inside the Cardinals’ heads in addition to pursuing their uniforms up and down the Amway Canter floor. Every play Louisville called Manhattan knew. Every defense? The knew it, because they use it.
“We knew we could match their toughness,” Manhattan center Rhamel Brown said.
It was more than that, too. For long stretches of the second half, eking even into the most critical moments, it was the small school from The Bronx, not the sprawling one from the Commonwealth, that showed the poise of been-there, done-that. It was the Jaspers who had Louisville fans screaming themselves hoarse, Butch and Sundance pondering the posse: Who ARE those guys?
Is that enough? For now, no, it probably won’t be. Manhattan led by three with 3 ½ minutes to go, but would lose by seven, 71-64, even as every sports bar in America swelled with customers craning for a better look at a stunner in the making. The Jaspers will believe they could have won this because — well, because they’re right. They could have.
Maybe even should have.
In the end what mattered was Louisville had two seniors, Russ Smith and Luke Hancock, who were good enough and gutsy enough not only to make three killer 3s down the stretch, but gutsy enough to take them in the first place.
“They saw a crack in the door,” Manhattan coach Steve Masiello said, “and they took advantage of it.”
The Jaspers?
Well, there were two things the Jaspers swore they would do once they leapt with both feet into this tournament. First, they were going to have a hell of a good time. Second? They weren’t going to be consumed by the moment. They would be humble, yes. They would look around, absorb the sights and sounds of the NCAA Tournament.
And then they’d play Louisville with the same fervor, the same fever, with which they’d get after Canisius, Marist and Siena from around the MAAC, or Hofstra, Columbia and Fordham from around the block. Honor the event, but honor themselves, too. That was the key.
“We’re not drinking out of water fountains now,” Masiello wrote in Thursday’s Post, the coach who’d played and worked at the highest levels of the sport getting a kick out of seeing his kids get a taste of how the other half lives. “We’re enjoying the chocolate chip cookies. We’re enjoying every little thing about this.”
But there was also this little nugget from the coach, too: “If you’re Batman, be Batman. If you’re Robin, be Robin.”
This is who the Jaspers are: they run and they press and they trap, they’re aggressive and they’re fearless. They are, in every way, Louisville in a dryer: a little smaller, a little slower, a little less skilled on offense and a little less clever on defense. But just a little.
If the Jaspers had drawn Duke or Carolina or Michigan State or Villanova, they weren’t going to stop doing what had gotten them through the MAAC, what had pushed them past Iona, what had dragged them back to the Tournament after a dry, empty decade.
This was left unsaid: Would Louisville change for us? Why should we change for them?
Because from the start, there was no need to say it: here was Manhattan, mirroring Louisville’s 94-foot vision of how basketball was meant to be played.
“Like playing ourselves,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said.
Yes, here came Louisville, the defending champs, the Hall of Fame coach, blasting teams by 30 and 40 and 60 points in recent weeks, plying their high-wire wares, crushing dunks, looking like they were playing 7-on-5 sometimes.
And yet, still, here was Manhattan: pressing right back. Going hard to the basket. Standing its ground. Sending another unspoken message to the big, bad Cardinals: It’s already late. We have no place better to be. You?
And so it was, 3 ½ minutes into the second half, the Cardinals got sloppy with the ball and the Jaspers took advantage, a couple of quick baskets and you looked up at the Amway Center scoreboard and you saw this:
Manhattan 37, Louisville 35.
That, presumably, was even more enjoyable than the chocolate-chip cookies.