The regular season for high school basketball is all but finished, which only means one thing. It’s tournament time.
The tournament is my favorite part of the basketball season, when teams from the around the state hit the court at the Cross Insurance Center for a week of basketball playing, watching, and going as deep as they can into the postseason. Each team goes into the tournament with only one goal; Take the gold ball back to their school.
While teams that are sitting in the top four or five feel confident in their chances of being in that fight for the championship title, I always think it’s the teams lower in the standings that are the most fun to watch in the post season. Those are the teams with a chip on their shoulders, the teams who have the most to gain. Each win puts them that much closer to a chance to keep their season alive.
And here’s the thing: in high school basketball, anything can happen, on any night.
Sure, when a top team is set to play a lower ranked opponent, we think to ourselves “they have the better record, they’ve only lost X amount of games,” whatever. But I have watched enough games in my time to know that some times, the record doesn’t matter. When a team comes out hungry, ready to leave every ounce of energy and sweat on the hardwood, they are capable of anything. For the underdogs, some nights the rim seems a little larger than usual, like the basketball gods have a hand in there to get the ball in the hoop no matter how it bounces.
You can see it, right? When everyone in the crowd is expecting a game to go one way, and slowly, somewhere in the second half, the atmosphere starts to shift. Fans of the team favored to win start getting a little antsy, while fans of the underdog get a little louder with their cheers. You don’t want to jinx it, but you can feel it; something special is happening.
So, to the fans of the teams who may not be the favorite team in the brackets, don’t lose faith. Keep packing those bleachers and cheering on those players, because in high school basketball, anything can happen, on any night.