The games will go on again today, as the games must. Four teams will reach the Elite Eight. Four will go home, wounded and hurting and unable, for the moment, to stop thinking about what might have been had they just shot straighter, defended harder, been less the victim of basketball's cruel physics.
Loft plus trajectory equals victory. Too much or too little loft, plus too much or too little trajectory, equals just another stat in the rebound column. And heartache.
But let's talk about true heartache a moment. Let's talk about true loss.
Both happened in northern California the other day, when a young man, his sister and a third person died in a car accident. The young man was 23-years-old. His name was Oscar Frayer. And three days before his young life ended before it had properly started, he played in the same tournament sixteen teams will resume playing today.
Frayer, see, was a 6-foot-6 senior guard/forward for Grand Canyon University, which last week played in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. The Antelopes lost to Iowa, 86-74. As noted in a story by Myron Medcalf of ESP.com, Frayer started 107 games for GCU in his career, and in his final game contributed eight points, five assists, three blocks and a steal to the Grand Canyon effort.
It was the pinnacle of his basketball life, one imagines. And when it was over he was off first to commencement and then to the rest of his life, having earned a degree in communications.
Now he and his sister and another person are gone. Like that.
No loss you see across the next few days will ever be as final, nor sting as hard.
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