It Hurts

Let's not sugarcoat the truth. It hurts. A lot. There are no guarantees in sports - you never know when your opportunity comes, nor if you'll ever get a second chance. The opportunity to win a national championship is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even at the greatest collegiate basketball program of all-time (yes Andy Katz, even better than Duke), with all the expectations of impending prosperity, the reality is that it is ridiculously difficult to make the Final Four on a consistent basis (again, just ask Duke) and have a legitimate shot at the national title. And while it's easy to look back at this year's glorious run and say "hey, we overachieved - no one expected us to be here; we went above and beyond expectations," it would be naiive of us to expect that these players will ever have a shot again.

It's extremely difficult to capsulize one's feelings in such a bitter loss at the highest level. On one hand, the appreciation for the legacies and contributions of seniors such as Cedric Bozeman and Ryan Hollins are heartfelt and emotional. On the other, there will never be a more vile, despicable, gut-wrenchingly cruel flavor of defeat. Perhaps this is why I couldn't bring myself to join the UC-LA pity clap others engaged in (down 15 with 2 mins left). We're not the winners. We didn't earn the right to celebrate our season. Don't take the easy way out. Just remember the pure pain and agony of watching awkward, overhyped 7-foot products of the East Coast Bias celebrating a win... that they completely deserved and earned. Soak in all the despair. Because only one team wins.

At UCLA, we make a big deal about only putting up championship banners. There are no banners for Pac-10 titles, or Sweet 16's (ahem, SC). So if all we care about is winning it all, then we can't really call this season a memorable success. The truth is that this season, as enjoyable and beautifully ugly it has been to watch, full of marvelous comebacks and heartbreaking injuries, will NOT go down in the same sentence as '95, or any of the Wooden era championships. Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Ryan Hollins, and Cedric Bozeman are not in the same sentence as, for example, Toby Bailey, Tyus Edney, George Zidek, Ed O'Bannon and Charles O'Bannon. This is no disrespect to this year's national runners-up; instead, it is the reality of UCLA. If we brag about our history, our legacy, we must maintain the standards of excellence uniformly.

The Florida Gators won this title fair and square, in such dominating fashion that leaves a Bruin in utter shambles inside. Can't blame the refs, a lack of execution (though there were some lapses), nor an opponent getting lucky. The Gators were just better. And for this reason, we are blessed to have players with work ethics as great as Arron Afflalo's and a dedicated coaching staff led by Ben Howland. They taste the agony of defeat and use it to fuel their desire for next year. Or the year after. Because none of us really know when the next chance will be.