Chapter One
ONE SHINING MOMENT
ON a frigid March day, in the quiet of a near-empty field house, the members of
the Lafayette College basketball team went through the routine one last time.
For four days they had prepared and re-prepared and prepared again to play
Temple in the opening round of the NCAA basketball tournament. In all, there may
not have been a soul outside of the twenty people inside the Canisius College
gym that morning who gave them any chance to win the game. Temple was ranked
fifth nationally and many were picking the Owls to reach the Final Four. They
were the number two seed in the Eastern Regional.
Lafayette was the number fifteen seed. According to the computer rankings that
the tournament selection committee uses as a guide in seeding the
sixty-four-team field, it was the 126th-ranked team in the country. Among the
thousands filling out brackets in office pools, the number of people picking
Lafayette to win the game could probably be counted on one hand — with fingers
to spare.
Temple's most impressive victory of the season had been an upset of top-ranked
Cincinnati — ... read full excerpt from: The Last Amateurs ebook
