Nothing beautiful about sting of Bobcats Sweet 16 loss

There was no one shining moment. For the Bobcats, it was one fleeting moment Friday night.

It was one that got away.

After their overtime loss to North Carolina, you can and should surely be proud of how the Bobcats played. But you can’t help but think what could have been.

Game tied, Walter Offutt at the line, one made free throw away from a one-point lead against the No. 1 seed Tarheels.

Offutt kept the Bobcats in the game with 26 points, helping to mitigate D.J. Cooper’s 3 for 20 shooting night.

But in college basketball, and especially the tournament, small moments define your run.

For all the Bobcats did right, taking North Carolina to the brink, they were close and just that.

They know it.

"As a leader on this team, I take responsibility that I've got to hit that free throw. ... It just feels terrible to kind of let my team down in that sort of way," Offutt said in the post-game press conference.

Ohio should be proud of its run. Step back, out of the moment, and you can appreciate that. The Bobcats were the No. 3 seed in the MAC Tournament, a No. 13 seed in the NCAA Tournament and they made it to college basketball’s final 16.

That’s pretty damn impressive.

But there is no beauty in Friday night’s loss, unless you consider pain and heartbreak lovely feelings.

Ohio will not see beauty in getting knocked out. Winning and nothing less was their mindset, not just giving a good team a heck of a fight.

What made Friday night even more difficult, the sting of the loss stronger, is the prospect of not knowing if the program will ever get this far again.

After the loss many fans were saying, “wait ‘til next year” or “we’ll be back.”  

Yes, the Bobcats return everyone.

Yes, John Groce has won three tournament games in three years.

But there’s no avoiding the fact that Ohio is a mid-major in a conference where only the conference champion has been assured a bid for a while. One bad night in the MAC Tournament and it may not matter how good you are. You don’t get a chance to be Cinderella if you’re not in the dance.

If Groce eventually moves on to a major conference program, who knows what a new coach would mean.

They’ll have a good shot next year but wait ‘til next year is one of the worst things you can say as a sports fan. Expecting to be back is an unrealistic notion. Sports are too variable to expect this kind of run again. 

It’s certainly possible but these moments are passing, especially for most mid-majors.

It would be wonderful if the Bobcats could do it again but you can’t count on that to make it feel better.   

If you want Ohio to one day be more than a Cinderella, you have to put aside the whimsy. Spare the prose and see it for what it was - one free throw away from a shot at the Final Four. It was that close.

One biting moment that slipped away in a run of many special ones to remember fondly.