Feb. 17, 2010

March Madness games of the decade: George Mason-UConn at No. 4

By Gary Parrish | CBSSports.com Senior Writer
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Watch the entire George Mason-UConn game from 2006

The never-ending radio interviews usually start about now.

Football is over. The NBA trade deadline is about to pass. So folks turn their attention to college basketball, and pretty much every interview features the following question: Who will be this year's George Mason?

My typical answer: nobody.

It's not happening again.

Because that kind of stuff never happens, which is why it was such a huge story. Someday Hollywood will make a movie about George Mason, the Colonial Athletic Association school that barely earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, then marched through Michigan State, North Carolina and Wichita State to set up an improbable Sunday with an improbable finish.

Coming in at No. 4 on the list of the "10 best NCAA March Madness games from the past decade" is ...

George Mason vs. Connecticut (2006)

Rex Ryan got a lot of credit this past NFL season for talking in a way that inspired his New York Jets to believe they could succeed from the underdog role, but Jim Larranaga mastered the approach in 2006. Facing a Connecticut team with a 30-3 record and five future NBA Draft picks in the starting lineup, there was little to suggest George Mason could find magic once more and make the Final Four.

Jai Lewis and the Patriots pulled off one of the most improbable upsets ever. (Getty Images)

The same Mason team that had lost to Hofstra twice?

To Creighton by 20?

To UNC-Wilmington in January?

No way.

No CAA team was built to do something like that. So everybody assumed the clock would strike midnight, that the story would end. And that's about the time Larranaga renamed the CAA to the Connecticut Assassin Association.

Put that way, why not?

But then UConn jumped to a 6-0 lead that eventually ballooned to a 12-point advantage. Forget the Final Four. UConn fans were starting to wonder if Jim Calhoun's third national title was on deck; the Final Four reservations were all but set with a 43-34 halftime lead against an out-manned opponent. But George Mason opened the second half on an 18-8 run capped by Lamar Butler's second of three second-half 3-pointers. The Patriots somehow led 52-51 with less than 11 minutes remaining, and CBS Sports' Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery were getting excited.

From there, it was back and fourth.

Nobody led by more than four in the final 10 minutes.

George Mason led 74-70 with less than 10 seconds remaining.

But Marcus Williams sank a runner to cut it to 74-72 with 7.9 seconds left, then George Mason's Tony Skinn missed the front end of a one-and-one with 5.5 seconds remaining.

Suddenly, UConn had a chance. Rudy Gay grabbed the rebound and tossed it to Marcus Williams, who flew up the court and found Denham Brown on the left wing. When Brown caught the ball there were only 2.6 seconds left, and he was at the NBA 3-point line with three Patriots in front of him; there was nowhere to go. But in one of the rare moments that displayed the difference in athleticism between these two teams, Brown blew by everybody and converted a reverse layup at the buzzer to force overtime.

"Yes!" screamed Raftery. "What can Brown do for you?"

At that point, it was clear. George Mason was done.

Sure, there was an overtime period to play. But UConn had momentum and all those pros, and this is where order would be restored. Or not. Against all logic, George Mason jumped to a five-point lead in overtime and never trailed. Brown launched a stepback 3-pointer at the buzzer that would've won it, but the shot clanked off the rim and allowed the Patriots to escape with an 86-84 victory and become the first true outsider to make the Final Four since 1979.

Across the board, they were called Cinderella.

They did not take offense.

"I think it's been working, calling us Cinderella," Skinn said. "We were not supposed to get into the tournament, we got into it. We were not supposed to beat Michigan State, and we beat them. Weren't supposed to beat North Carolina, and we beat them. And we definitely weren't supposed to beat UConn. So we don't mind being Cinderella."

That the subsequent week featured a lopsided loss to Florida was inconsequential to the story.

George Mason still provided one of the great runs in NCAA tournament history.

When will it happen again? Who knows?

But it's probably later rather than sooner, and the odds are stacked against it.