Sad Davidson Wildcat is saddest wildcat at KeyArena
Sad-sack Davidson Wildcat is saddest wildcat at KeyArena. Frike Spiedman

Key Arena, the former home of the Sonics and current home of the Storm (and concerts with intolerable sound) hosted four NCAA Tournament games on Friday: Northern Iowa’s win over Wyoming, Lousiville’s thrilling win over UC Irvine, Davidson’s heavy defeat at the hands of Regular Iowa, and Gonzaga’s victory over plucky North Dakota State. We were on hand for three of them. Here are some thoughts:

• The day’s biggest star was UC Irvine’s center Mamadou N’Diaye. N’Diaye is 7’6” tall, which I imagine sounds very very tall, but he was somehow even taller than what you’re picturing in your head or saw on TV. I swear. He is indescribably tall, which is stupid because it’s very easy to describe height. And yet, here we are. With me searching for a proper descriptor for N’Diaye’s height, and failing to find one. Here, watch him dunk:

With every N’Diaye dunk (and there were a good amount), the crowd, which was surprisingly full of Northern Iowa partisans who had hung around for the Irvine/Louisville matchup, all got behind N’Diaye and his Anteater brethren. Did I mention that Irvine’s mascot is the Anteater? It is. It was great.

Did Irvine win? No. Did they win my heart? Yes.

• On the flipside, Davidson was poor enough on Friday to extinguish much of the goodwill they built up during the Steph Curry era. Sure, you can’t expect them to shut down Iowa with their 180th ranked defense (which is by far the worst of any tournament team). But they were also pitiful on offense. They were bad enough that I’m not sure dropping Curry on their team would have made a difference.

• Wait, that’s dumb, of course it would have made a difference. Also, Davidson is still a great school, and its amazing that an academic powerhouse with 1,600 undergrads consistently also has good basketball teams filled with players who get useful degrees.

• Friday saw the first 15 tournament games of the day go to the favorite, which is its own sort of madness in a very “O alienista” sort of way, but was also very boring. Also, the pace of play in college basketball, which Louisville coach Rick Pitino commented on in his post game press conference, is a nightmare. Shorten the shot clock. Shorten it! Let’s fix this!

• Or… in a world where Steph Curry can dominate in the NBA, and chalk reigns in the NCAA, do we still need college basketball? Especially given the whole “student-athlete” madness that hurts players and educational institutions alike? I don’t know. Let’s proceed with this blog post as if March Madness is fun, while in the back of our head remembering it’s just a huge mess.

• Mascots are not actually important, but when the scheduling dynamic of the tournament means that much of the crowd in the arena won’t care about your team, the guy inside the mascot is obliged to bring it. Louisville’s Cardinal didn’t. Total “been there, done that” from a mascot who had mascoted at the Final Four. Almost cost his team the win. The UCI Anteater? Brought it. Davidson Wildcat? Looked sad from the tip. I’d say he scripted his team’s own demise. Gonzaga? They didn’t have a mascot. Didn’t need one.

• No strike against Gonzaga who looked pretty good on Friday, and remain favorites to make the Elite Eight, but watching them play with a home crowd advantage was weird. Gonzaga is the closest thing Seattle has to a real men’s basketball team right now, which is stupid because they play in Spokane and they are a weird assemblage of transfers and under-recruited specialists. No city needs real basketball, nor does any city deserve real basketball. Those are silly notions. That said, Seattle would really enjoy good basketball.

And by good basketball I mean NBA basketball. All day I was thinking to myself, “Someone should fill this place with an NBA team.” Now, I know Key Arena is not a suitable NBA arena. Not even close. Which is fine, because any potential NBA team will bring with it a new stadium primarily financed by private interests. That said, Key Arena still gets loud. Nostalgia-inducingly loud.

The cheers echoing through Key Arena on Friday as UC Irvine hung tough against Louisville and Gonzaga pulled away late did not fully awaken the ghosts of Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton (and not just because Kemp and Payton are still alive and ghosts aren’t real). But with the other big basketball news of the day, it was tough not to dream…

See, right now in Oklahoma City the Thunder are imploding. Would-have-been Sonics star Kevin Durant was sidelined indefinitely on Friday with a foot injury that threatens his season. Durant is a free agent in 15 months, which happens to be when the NBA salary cap will supernova out in response to a new TV deal and a poorly bargained CBA. This means any team in the country could sign him away from Oklahoma City, with triple-double machine Russell Westbrook able to leave in a similar climate the following year. This from the same team that dumped MVP candidate James Harden in a trade designed to save money.

In two years, Oklahoma City could have a team that lost three MVP caliber players because they got cheap after moving a team under questionable circumstances to a tiny market. That’s a bad look for the NBA. You know what a good look would be? A team in the fastest growing city in America, that’s part of a league that pays its players. That would be cool. Maybe call them the Sonics? I don’t know. Just spitballing here.