By the end, the coronation had been called off and the sweatshop was open for business. Connecticut had been up by 17, had been fixing to take a victory lap around Madison Square Garden much to the delight of most of the temporary occupants of the arena.
But it turned out Iowa State hadn’t made the trip east in vain. Seventeen became 12, and 10 became seven, and suddenly UConn was in a clubfight, the seconds melting off the clock in super slow motion, the spot in the Elite Eight suddenly playing hard-to-get.
“If we go down,” Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg said, “we’re going to go down swinging.”
But they were also going to go down with their ears ringing. Because one more time, as the Cyclones tried to agitate the Huskies, tried to eat into their lead, the Garden rose as one again. It sure looked like there were plenty of red Iowa State sweatshirts, plenty of green Michigan State T-shirts, plenty of orange Virginia windbreakers splitting the Garden into quadrants.
But it sure sounded like something else.
“It felt,” Shabazz Napier said later, “like a home game.”
By then, the Huskies were safely in the clubhouse, this 81-76 victory earning them a crack at Sunday afternoon, an opportunity to compete for another Final Four, the first since Jim Calhoun traded in his seat on the bench for one in the VIP section.
By then, Napier had sliced through the Cyclones for 19 points and five assists, and DeAndre Daniels had dominated them for 27 points and 10 rebounds and two blocks, and even though Dustin Hogue, the pride of Yonkers and Lincoln High, had done everything he could to keep Iowa State alive — 15-for-19 from the floor, 34 points and six rebounds — it wasn’t enough.
Same as Hogue’s modest contingent of friends and family making the trip down from Westchester County wasn’t enough to offset the nutty Nutmeg noise that overran the Garden from the start of the game.
“We want to thank our fans,” said Kevin Ollie, the man who replaced Calhoun, “because not only were they cheering for us, but I think we were able to draw off their energy, too.
Too many of these games are played in respectful quiet, in funereal silence. You can understand why. There are nerves involved, the one-and-done stakes affecting a fan’s voice box every bit as much as a player’s legs. There are numbers involved: sometimes, only the most deep-pocketed boosters and alumni can take off work, hop on an airplane, stay three or four nights in a distant hotel.
Eventually, usually, the atmosphere catches up.
Eventually, usually, the moment takes over.
There was no eventually this time. Not with the Huskies playing in the Sweet 16 at the Garden. Not with UConn’s Storrs campus sitting only 137 miles away from the gym five floors up from Penn Station, and with Greenwich, Stamford and Fairfield, among so many other bedroom communities that so many UConn alums call home, sitting far closer.
The NCAA could scrub away every ounce of evidence this game was being played in Midtown Manhattan, but it couldn’t physically move the Garden away from Penn Plaza, couldn’t move it farther away from the Merritt Parkway and nudge it a thousand or so miles farther west on I-80, to make it more fair for Iowa State.
Location. Location. Location.
So the first half was a virtual pep rally for the Huskies, the Garden sounding like the Hartford Civic Center or Gampel Pavilion and, better still, the home team wearing the road blues of the lower seed playing about as well as they have played all year. Napier made his first four shots, all of them 3s, and Ryan Boatright was almost as good, scoring 10.
The Cyclones? The poor Cyclones, conquerors of Carolina and missing Georges Niang and his 16 points, four rebounds and three assists per game, they looked like they mistakenly had walked into Allan Field House, or Gallagher-Iba Arena, or any of the other bandboxes they endure on the road in the Big 12.
And by the time their ears stopped ringing … well, it was time to go home again. Unlike the Huskies, who had to feel like they never had left.