Kevin Durant to sign shoe deal in 2 hours

Holy shit. How close were we to another huge disaster? Down 12 points? Down 9 with 2:50 in the game. I sat defeated in my chair fending off text messages from my Kansas friends. Moments later I'm up screaming, "That's my...!" and pounding my chest to Ron Lewis.

We taped the game and watched the last few minutes again today. How sick the Xavier fans must be. Conley's steal was inches from being out of bounds. That free throw with 9 seconds left was even closer to going in. But alas, Roooooooon Lewis comes through. Was that a designed play? Conley set one hell of a pick and almost laid the guy out. Oden was also inches from getting an intentional foul but the refs probably felt like that would add insult to injury. So let's break this down a bit further to see what saved us from having to watch Xavier's coach's wife from having a glorious postgame slow motion moment with her husband while Natalie Merchant's These Are the Days blares in the background.

The officiating was terrible. That no call on the rebound was the final touch on what experts are calling "The rapiest game of all time not involving Duke." The refs must hate Thad or something. He works them the whole game and still doesn't seem to get any calls for Oden.

Oddly enough though, Oden fouling out for OT was the best thing that could have happened. Xavier had no game plan with him not in there. We had to abandon our shitty game plan as well. I'm not even sure what it was. 11 points in overtime though is superhuman. Someone get that man a Tri-Delt for his efforts!

So should we be encouraged? Are we a team of destiny now? Or is this all leading up to one giant loss to Florida in April which could result in one less writer for this blog?

Onto a few other things...the brackets can suck me. Durant should have had his parents walk him onto the court for his last game as a Longhorn. He didn't even get to check out of the game and get the ovation he deserved for his years at Texas. Like I said before...or probably meant to say but didn't. The other 4 guys on Texas might be the worst team of all time (that means you too Augustine!).

And in one last story Jon Diebler will be in the Ohio State Tournament. I heard he got fouled hard a la Duke/Carolina, was supposed to go to the hospital and declined so that he could strap on a mask and finish the game. You know why? Because next year it will be even rougher. Some Purdue stiff will break his leg, punch him the face and body slam him into the ground. But as he's lying there he'll see Thad walking down the bench and leaning over to Terwillger. "Noooo!" he'll think, I'm okay. That's the kind of team effort I'm looking forward to.