Gordon Monson: SLC hosts two sold-out NCAA Tournament sessions, reminding people why March Madness is so cool

This is different.

It’s always different.

The NCAA Tournament does something to college basketball. It transforms it. It gives it juice. It ratchets it up. It adds authentic excitement. It makes it … what’s the word? … watchable.

Yeah, that’s it. It makes it watchable.

Especially when you can actually get to the venue, any venue, any round, anywhere the games are being played. In this case, it’s the Delta Center, right here in Salt Lake City, which pumps all of the aforementioned into a frenzy. It’s a place where the ricochet of fans’ cheers and screams and their acting like maniacs bounces off the concrete, off the steel girders, off the walls, off the ceiling, reverberating out of mouth, out of clapping hands and stomping feet back off those hard surfaces straight down onto the court.

It’s a recognizable kind of commotion, familiar to anyone who goes to Jazz games, at least Jazz games in which the home team is within shouting distance of whomever they’re playing. There’s just something about that building, the way the crowd darn-near sits on the hardwood, side-to-side and end-to-end, the unusual care factor of the fans, that makes it sound in big games as though a squadron of F-35 Lightnings is taking off from mid-court.

Thursday’s tournament action in the house that Larry Miller built was like that, even though, with rooting interests divided eight ways in four games, in two separate sessions, with the additional infusion of local basketball patrons who showed up undecided as to which team they would throw their support behind, and still it was also … yes, different.

The behind the scenes stuff was equally compelling, athletes suffering elimination, some having played their last college game, athletes psyched to play another day, a fired coach saying, “Goodbye,” and his players saying, “Thank you.” And a random BYU fan, with a BYU sweatshirt on, wandering around the arena, so, so disappointed at the Cougars’ first-round ouster in Omaha.

“How ‘bout those Cougars?” I asked.

“We suck,” he said, walking on by.

Let’s stow away the emotion and the sentimentality for a moment and say it all plain, the way it is, here: College basketball typically stinks, at least in the eyes of those accustomed to watching NBA games. Most of that can be attributed to the steep drop off in talent.

It’s not close, but it’s not the kids’ fault. They play hard, but can only be as good as they are — and most of them will never sniff an NBA club. Most of them might be convinced that they will play in the NBA, but … no, they won’t. They can’t shoot like the elite pros, move like the elite pros, rebound like the elite pros, pass like the elite pros, execute like the elite pros. A few exceptions to that whole deal do exist, but they are indeed exactly that — exceptions.

That’s not, however, what this column is intended to emphasize. It’s just a fact that contributes to, doesn’t detract from, the main point here — the upside of the tournament atmosphere, which is beyond stellar.

Regular college fans know all about that occasional atmosphere, at least the ones who follow favored teams that come from schools where basketball is a big, big deal. Emotion is often cited as the differentiating factor for college teams and college fans in college games. At a good number of college gyms that’s true. Many NBA players have said that’s a distinguishing factor when playing at the Delta Center against the Jazz, that it’s a college environment.

Thing is, all of that spills out and over at flood levels in March Madness, from the fans who make sacrifices, financial and otherwise, to travel to arenas like this one in support of their team, to other fans who happen to be on the premises to root for their own teams. It spills out and over to onlookers via television around the country, a hundred-million of whom have filled out their brackets and now are — or were — counting on teams like Samford and McNeese to make them look smarter than all the other dopes in their office pools. They may not watch college basketball at any other time during the season, but they watch this.

The diehards are the real party. On Thursday, I spoke with Sean Gill, a contractor from Reno who made the trip to SLC to watch the Nevada Wolfpack take on the Dayton Flyers. Gill was decked out in funky shorts and a cape with the Nevada logo on it. “This is fun,” he said. “I’ll follow this team wherever they go in this tournament. We don’t do this very often, so …”

It was fun until Nevada lost, got dressed and headed home, after the Wolfpack gave up a 17-point lead late in the second half, as Dayton went on an astounding 24-4 run to take the victory.

I talked with Cat Sorensen, Hailey Stephenson and Judy Calo, each of whom had their faces painted in Dayton colors, as part of the school’s pep squad. They said they were absolutely stoked to be in Utah — “It’s gorgeous here,” said Stephenson — watching their Flyers. They were stoked out of their minds at game’s end.

All the winners were the same, but the losers were rocking and rolling, at least at times, too — Arizona fans, Kansas fans, Long Beach fans, Samford fans, McNeese fans, Gonzaga fans. Everybody was in the pool. At all the games, the seats were filled, the bands played, the people had a blast … until defeat — or an awful whistle on a clean block — dictated that they didn’t.

These are ordinary folks, in the best sense of that description, who at the Delta Center had their normal rooting interest amplified in major ways, fully realizing that their teams were in a must-win situation, with an opportunity not only to advance to the next round or next rounds, but also to become the tournament’s golden dudes, to make a national splash. And, of course, also dealing with the opposite end of the spectrum.

But that heightened care factor is what makes the NCAA Tournament what it is, what it was at the Delta Center in these first-round games. And don’t the players and coaches feel it. They do in an unmistakable way.

“These games are hard,” said Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, who added that he was proud of his Wildcats in their win over Long Beach State. He felt for his friend, Dan Monson, the coach of LBSU who, because of the loss, coached his last game for the Beach, after 17 years there. You may have heard he was fired a week ago, agreeing to stay on through the league tournament, which his team won, qualifying for the shot at Arizona in the dance. After his guys lost on Thursday, he was gracious, thanking his players for their efforts, thanking his family for their support, saying further that his players were his family, expressing gratitude to all of them. It was a classy, sweet postgame moment. The players reciprocated the love, with appreciation of their own. The looks on their faces told their stories, as the plumbing backed up in their eyes.

Players and coaches always are happy when they win important games, but they don’t usually break down and bawl like babies, no matter how disappointed they might be, when they drop those games. Some of them wept on Thursday, though, in Salt Lake and other locations.

That’s what makes all of this worthwhile for sports fans, rabid and casual. it’s why the place was sold out — in each two-game session.

It’s what makes the madness different. And the cheers that reverberated through the building, off the walls, off the ceiling, off the girders, off the concrete, as well as the sighs and the cries, will be remembered by those who were on hand. Sports moments they’ll tell their friends and families about two or three decades from now, and that’s both extraordinary and pretty darn cool.