The Shot Heard 'round B-Town
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| Hoosier fans rush the court in celebration. |
Where
does a Hoosiers fan begin when they try and describe the events and
feelings that occurred last Saturday night? Does the entire experience
begin at 5:25 when the ball was tipped off? Does it begin when we as
Hoosiers fans woke up Saturday morning to do all of our chores early,
just to be sure we were on our couch, or in the bar, or, for those lucky
enough, in our seat in Assembly Hall? If you were one of the 17,000
plus fans with a ticket to the game, I’m sure that at 5:25 you weren’t
sitting. And as I’m sure that my blood bleeds crimson, I’m sure wherever
you were, you were not sitting down as Christian Watford released one
of the most beautiful shots in Indiana Hoosiers basketball history. But
for this fan, the experience of Saturday night’s victory over the then
top ranked Kentucky Wildcats began long before Saturday.
I
often repeat in my head two words that Tom Crean said when he got hired
on as Indiana’s basketball coach, “It’s Indiana.” To those who question
why I’m a Hoosiers fan, to those who don’t know why a coach would leave
a Final Four team in Marquette to take a job for a program that is
suffering, to those who don’t truly know why I often times schedule my
social life around IU basketball games, I just tell them what Coach
Crean told so many: It’s Indiana. It’s Indiana.
Saturday
night was what I needed in my life when it comes to sports, and as
conflicted as it makes me feel, it’s what I needed in my life to move on
as an Indiana born man. When Watford’s shot went in, and Indiana
“upset” Kentucky, I felt a rush of emotion come over me that I thought I
would save for the next time IU won a national championship. Some may
think that all of that emotion stems from watching IU do so poorly the
past three years. Those people are correct, to a certain extent. I can’t
lie and say that the past three years have been easy to watch, but as a
true Indiana fan I knew that it was just a part of the process. I had
to stick by my team, and their coach, and one day it would all come
back. One day Indiana would be Indiana again.
But
the emotion I felt as that three point shot went through the net, and
the emotion I felt after pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming,
and the emotion I felt as I hugged my wife-to-be (proud to say a new
Hoosier fan herself), that emotion stems from my bedroom closet when I
was seven years old. When I was a kid (born in 1982, too young to
remember the ’87 championship), I admit I was a bit of a trouble maker.
More often than not I spent my time confined to my room for doing things
I knew I shouldn’t be doing; hiding my report card from my parents,
getting into trouble at school for taking the fish out of the tank and
causing it to die, not doing my chores, etc. But even though I was told
to go to my room after dinner, and not allowed to watch the
Hoosiers play, I always had my radio that I would take into my big
closet to set up shop with and listen to WOWO radio broadcast the game.
In that closet is where I fell into a deep, never abandoning, never
doubted love for Indiana basketball. In that closet is where Saturday
night’s emotion stems from. That beautiful closet where my blankets
where all laid out, where my stuffed animals kept me company and where
my IU basketball calendar hung will forever be etched in my memory,
right alongside a new memory I now have- the greatest shot I’ve ever
seen taken by a Hoosier. Some say I’m living in the moment, and that’s
fine. But I say, “No. I’m living in The Movement.”
-Kenneth Languell
@AskTheWho
@AskTheWho
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