Three days in March, and it was over. Seventy-two hours and all of Central Indiana’s NCAA basketball hopes were dashed. There was Friday’s impossible Purdue loss to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson. There was IU’s disappointing — shoot, embarrassing — second-round effort in a loss to Miami in Albany. And one day later, the No. 1 seeded IU women became the second top seed to get run from the women’s tournament — parity! — putting an end to the most promising season in IU history.
All of this was best captured by the sight of the large, dry-erase board in the Purdue locker room in Nationwide Arena Friday night. Someone had punched a hole in it.
Check it out:
Purdue’s locker room whiteboard did not survive 😬#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/8GbbbrQ72z
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 18, 2023
Looks like an outline of the state of New Jersey, am I right?
March 17
Almost a week later, it’s still hard to fathom. I watched it again Wednesday morning, and it still doesn’t feel like it actually occurred. No slight of Fairleigh Dickson, but it’s largely a commuter school. It didn’t have a band in Columbus; the band from the University of Dayton filled in. The sports information director is a current junior at the school. And, lest we forget, FDU…
