THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: If your team loses a big game ... it wasn't their fault!

Just thinking of Saturday makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Yes, this coming Saturday.

In case you’ve been stuck under a rock somewhere (or don’t care about college basketball), you’re surely aware that Gonzaga faces Texas Tech in a nationally televised matchup from Phoenix.

At 10 a.m., no less, testing how much you love watching hoops.

So, why … ?


What is it about this particular game that makes my tummy flop and even feel the need to fight off a general sense of depression?

OK, assuming you really are a fan (of the Zags or the college game in general), you’ll remember that in spring of 2019, it was Texas Tech who knocked Gonzaga out of the NCAA tournament in an Elite Eight game that was played more like a Saturday playground scrum.

In other words, the officials called it loosely, or not at all — allowing Tech’s “slap-your-hands-and-all-other-body-parts” defense to determine the outcome.

THE ZAGS of Rui Hachimura, Brandon Clarke, Josh Perkins, Zach Norvell Jr. and Co. were the best team in the country.

They should have won the national championship, but my personal horror was that the 2019 flame-out was the latest in a string of huge games over the years that have left me feeling disappointed, outraged, or both.

It goes back all the way to my own undergrad days at the University of San Francisco, when we had a great, great team that could have won the whole thing – except that the years overlapped with the reign of John Wooden and his endless string of champions at UCLA.

We even had the Bruins seriously on the ropes in the West regional final one year, when – in frightening succession – one of our studs let the ball slip out of his hands while going up what could have been a game-clinching dunk, and on the next possession, our All-American center accidentally tipped in a basket for UCLA.

So, my association with heartbreak started early.

Now fast-forward …

I was covering my first Final Four as a journalist in 1989 (as a sports editor in Decatur, Ill.).

The Illini that season had the most dynamic, exciting team I’ve ever seen, before or since.

They went to the Final Four in Seattle as a clear favorite, and were drawn against Michigan in the semifinals — a team they’d already hammered, both home and away.

In fact, the rout in Ann Arbor came right at the end of the regular season, and it was clear Michigan didn’t match up with the Illini at ALL.

AH, BUT the hoops gods conspired to make that semi a close game — mainly because Illinois had two players gutting it out with injuries (one of which came during practice a day before the game, when Lowell Hamilton slipped on a puddle of water that had dripped from the roof), and also …

The officials called two imaginary offensive fouls on Illinois’ all-everything forward Nick Anderson about 30 seconds apart in the first half.

That bizarre bit of whistling occurred just as the Illini were heading toward another double-digit lead, and doing to Michigan just as they had twice already that year.

Ultimately, the game came down to a guy named Sean Higgins tossing in a put-back at the final buzzer.

I remember feeling numb, sad, and angry just thinking about the players I’d come to know so well.

Preparing for takeoff on the flight home after that weekend, Illinois guard Kendall Gill sighed and said: “There should be a big trophy in the aisle right by our seats, but it feels like someone stole it from us.”

BUT, HEY …

That trend with the officiating came to haunt me again, when Gonzaga just got flat-out robbed in the 2017 national title game against North Carolina.

That was the game that prompted Bill Walton to holler on TV: “That was the worst-called game … ever!

“Zach Collins, the world owes you an apology.”

You see why Texas Tech makes my blood boil?

Rui and the guys should have been rolling toward Gonzaga’s second national championship in three years back in 2019.

I’ll be watching the game against Tech on Saturday with gritted teeth.

And I’ll be thinking that maybe this year, when I truly believe the Zags probably are NOT likely to win a national title …

Maybe those same hoops gods will shock me in a good way.

Email: [email protected]

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published weekly during the season.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”