Boswell: UMBC win ‘one of the most fun games that I have ever gotten to watch’

UMBC’s Jairus Lyles celebrates with fans after his team’s stunning upset of Virginia. (Chuck Burton/AP)

Post Sports columnist Thomas Boswell was asked in his weekly online chat with readers about UMBC’s historic upset of Virginia, which he watched on television while covering spring training. His answer captures why so many people felt so much joy on Friday night.

Q, from UMBCinderella: Well that was fun, and too bad they couldn’t hang tougher against KState (wow was I mad when the KState guys went over to congratulate the UMBCinderella starters when they were being taken out toward the end, and the TV director cut to some sad girls in the audience; get with it!), but how about the intrasystem bragging rights with the Retrievers over the Terps?

Boswell: That was one of the most fun games, in any sport, that I have ever gotten to watch.

And, by a fluke, I got to watch every second of it. I think everybody will probably remember “where I was” and “with whom” when they saw that one. I was in Florida covering spring training, so except for a few minutes here and there, I hadn’t gotten to see any of March Madness. Also, my wife has probably gone to fewer than a dozen of the events I’ve covered in the 34 years we’ve been together. That evening after finishing work and going to dinner, we got back to the hotel just as the UVA-UMBC game started. No reason to watch it. Except that, in ’08 I covered the GU-UMBC 1st round NCAA game and kind of fell in love with the Retrievers, even though they lost by 18. I wrote about them because they were far more interesting than the Hoyas.

[ For UMBC, the NCAA magic is fleeting, but the memories will be lasting ]

Like an “expert,” I kept telling my wife that Virginia would make a run and that it would be close the last couple of minutes, but that UMBC looked so poised and smart that I thought they actually had a chance — not a good one, but a chance — to win. With about 1:30 left, UMBC scored again to go up by maybe 14 and I was stunned. I just said, “It’s over. They did it.” My wife enjoyed it as much as I did.  She’d say, “What are you doing?” I’d say, “Tweeting.” As she should, she gave me that “Who cares what you are tweeting about UMBC, you can’t even name two of their players” look.

To show you the impact that the UMBC win had on everybody, how it must have had the whole sports-watching country glued to TVs, those two tweets — containing no real information (since I had none) just shared enthusiasm — got 305,300 “impressions.” Don’t ask me what an “impression” is. All it told me was that everybody just wanted to share that UMBC win, in whatever way they could, with everybody they knew.

Boswell’s 2008 column indeed touched on many of the themes that came out this March, after UMBC’s shocking win. An excerpt:

Usually, UMBC wins competitions such as the Ethics Bowl (debate) or the Technical Bowl (National Society of Black Engineers) or receives praise for a diverse student body. But, once in a while, a handful of special athletes can pull a university that doesn’t even have a football team into national sports prominence. That’s what happened at UMBC, where a superb little point guard, 5-foot-8 Jay Greene, ignited a long-shooting, high-powered offense by dishing to a trio of 6-2 to 6-4 dead-eye gunners, Brian Hodges, Darryl Proctor and Ray Barbosa. No, they don’t have a real center. And, of course, they can’t beat Georgetown with 7-2 Roy Hibbert and assorted McDonald’s High School all-Americans.

But, on days like this, when a No. 15 seed such as UMBC puts up a good fight, we’re reminded why the first round of the NCAA tournament is both a hoot and a public service. Actual academic institutions receive a few days of the sunlight that are usually hogged in March by sports factories that think racquetball is a tough major. So, we learn that UMBC is big — 12,041 students and a 500-acre campus — and draws a quarter of its students from Montgomery County. After $400 million of construction in 10 years, UMBC now has three-quarters of its freshmen living on campus. And UMBC is smart, heavy in science and math, with a quarter of students scoring over 1,350 on the SATs.

“Our idea of theater is Samuel Beckett,” UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski III said. Just to lighten things up after replaying a Karpov-Kasparov match?

Let’s be clear: UMBC does not have an identity crisis. They know who they are. But, after 20 years of building the school’s reputation in academic circles, they can be a little touchy that others have so little clue about who or what they are.