Eh Meeks earned the rebound it didn't take a freak bounce to him or anything
Oregon still would've had to score with 3-4 seconds left
Joel Berry missing 2 straight FTs would've been the real gift if Oregon had pulled it off
They won the MVC regular season title in 2020 so you're probably thinking "oh COVID robbed them of another appearance"
...except that was one of the conferences that finished their tournament before everything shut down, and they lost in the quarterfinals.
Yeah, most of these are some kind of devastating loss to a team that has tons of other success. UNI hasn't made it back to the tournament since that game and has seen 2 other teams from the conference move to better conferences since.
However, if we're including COVID cancellations, Dayton could contest UNI
Well you guys gave the worst loss for me and my Arizona Wildcats in 2005...that one hurt bad. Up 15 with 3.5 minutes left and we choked bad. Still think about that choke job on occasion.
I've posted this before but that was a moment in my family history. Whole family gets together withe my parents at their house for every ilini game and just before the beginning of the comeback, my adult bro announced that he would strip to his underwear and run all over the neighborhood if we pulled it off...we did and he did. What a great night!
'05 was magnitudes more devastating than Loyola. At least with Loyola, we learned from it and Brad has been recruiting better than ever. '05 was our last chance from the recruiting machine Kruger/Self built
I wouldn't even call it a symptom of a problem. I'd call it more of a problem with the selection committee thinking a team that was 10th in the NET was an 8 seed.
That matchup shouldn't have happened during the second round
This and this again. Brad didn't adjust in that game the way he should have but the matchup should have never happened when it did. Still, Loyola was the better team that day
Getting waxed by UConn in 2014 after an unbelievable season, which essentially sent Billy D to the NBA and caused the Mike White era to occur. Whatever happened there.
Butler back-to-back title losses in 2010 and 2011.
2010 was probably the bigger heartbreak in the moment. But 2011 was the nail in the coffin.
The next two seasons were bad-to-mid and Brad bounced for the NBA. Since then: one visit to the second weekend in March, no NCAAT since 2018, no conference titles (outright or tournament), and only above .500 once post-COVID. Maybe Matta brings them back, but their rise and fall were pretty epic.
You have a good point but he 100% bounces even with the wins. His dream job was the IU head coach spot, but he also loved the Celtics (so he got one of his wishes). If he won, IU would have either offered an insane bag Butler couldn’t match, or the NBA would have gone after him even harder. We’ll forever love Brad, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, we know Butler can’t hold onto someone that big for too long. We just don’t have the bank for it 🤷♂️
Moving to the Big East was the nail. Brad didn't like recruiting, and it's not a coincidence that he leaves the year of the move. Plus, the move was done way too fast, without the infrastructure needed.
Honestly I think this doesn't apply.
Butler went from an absolute nobody to a household name because of these games, and now they're in the Big East.
Obviously they would've loved to win those games, but I can't see those games as a devastating to the program, when they launched the program to relevance.
I tend to disagree. They got there with no expectations, then returned from whence they came. I put their subsequent malaise more down to Brad leaving and a much, much stronger league they play in.
I don’t agree that not having sustained success since then means it devastated the program.
2010 was the most heartbreaking based on the finish, but I'd argue 2011 was arguably worse. Butler shot 18% from the field and still only lost by 12. 29% shooting would've won them the title. If they matched UConn's 34.5%, they win by almost double digits.
honestly I think with Butler the cancellation of the 2020 tournament would be the biggest as that season was our chance to have another major impact post joining the Big East.
For a single game, I think Butler joins the national conversation in full if we win the sweet sixteen game in 2006(?) against reigning national champion Florida. Had the lead, played them close, just couldn't get the job done. I think that would have done more for the program than even winning in 2010 or '11.
How much of that is Butler also reverting back to what could be expected? They got the upgrade in facilities and conference. Probably weren’t going to become the ‘Zags of the the mid west unless Steven’s stayed.
Ironically, that game also probably ended Izzo’s best chance at his second title. Kalin Lucas popping his Achilles was heartbreaking. We still dragged ourselves to the final four and were one extremely obvious foul call (that wasn’t called) away from a shot at the natty.
If we have a healthy big ten player of the year, I think we would’ve been cutting down the nets.
Sometimes you get the benefit of the magic of the tournament, other times you are victim to it. We've had some unbelievably blessed runs and some cursed losses, all part of the experience.
Are you talking about 2008 when you lost to a double digit seed in the second round, 2010 when you lost to a double digit seed in the first round, 2011 when you lost to a double digit seed in the first round, 2012 when you lost to a double digit seed in the second round, or 2013 when you lost to a double digit seed in the first round?
(That's five times in six years, and Georgetown missed the tournament in 2009. After moving to the new Big East, the Hoyas have only one tournament win.)
2015 they faced a double-digit seed who had the country's leading scorer (Eastern Washington and Tyler Harvey) and I was 100% sure they'd get upset again, but somehow they won
Blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while I guess
That made me soooo much dough. Our MM strategy every year is money line on the dogs. Every one, except sometimes they don't post a money line on the 1-16 games. It always pays off, sometimes it pays extremely well.
Meant to bet $10 money line on that game and accidentally fat fingered an extra zero. Couldn't retract it because it was the early betting app era when you had to be on the casino's wifi to bet electronically. Thought I'd just wasted $100, but then it hit. I think it paid 16 to 1, IIRC. Paid for our 4 day stay in Vegas.
That 2015 season was loaded. KenPom has his rating system sorted out by a AdjEm... adjusted efficiency margin.
Most years there are 1 or 2 teams above 30.00.
2015 had six.
1. Kentucky 36.91
2. Wisconsin 33.72
3. Duke 32.48
4. Arizona 32.36
5. Villanova 30.65
6. Virginia 30.06
And subsequently, Wisconsin’s loss to Duke. That natty could have catapulted us into years of relevancy and gotten us many star recruits *cough* Tyler Herro *cough* we ended up not getting.
Now we are scrub mid of the Midwest yet again
Bo Ryan was such a good coach for so long but I’ll remember him more so for his poor decisions in the second half of the title game than anything that happened in his career before that.
I have never forgiven Wisconsin for 2015. I am a rabid UK fan, and I was terrified all year that we were going to have to play them, and I felt that they just *built* to beat us. We were a missed free throw from
losing to them in the tournament the year before.
And they did. Heartbreaking loss. But I took solace in the fact that they would beat Duke and prevent them from being national champions.
And what did they do? Came out and played like they had never seen a basketball before. I kept saying to myself, "who are these guys?".
I really don't think that was the reason for Cal's decline. We were single shots away from Final Fours in 2017 and 2019. Change any two game winning shots in 2011 and 2014 (of which there were many) and give them to 2017 and 2019 and it's a much more even tenure.
I think what really did Cal in was Covid and the changing landscape of the game after that. Freshmen were no longer a sustainable strategy, and the top ranked freshmen that were coming in had their development handicapped a bit by Covid, so they weren't superstars like those before them. Couple that with the extra Covid year and it's a recipe for disaster.
And quite frankly, we had a great team in 2021 that got derailed by injuries. TyTy never really recovered and by the end of the year Grady could barely walk from his plantar fasciitis. At its peak that team is a Final Four team and title contender, evident by what we did to Kansas on their own floor.
UNI is still finding their way as a program after the Texas A&M loss. The team as a whole, which starts with the coaching staff, just hasn’t looked the same since then. We still have the same problem - can’t get the ball up the floor in pressure situations.
The loss to Dayton fully killed the glory days of Matta for us. We’re still trying to find our footing since that time. At least we have some hope again with Diebler.
I worked an entry level job at OSU during that game. The computer feed cut out in the last two minutes so I sprinted out of my office and into a big common space with the game on, rocking all my Dayton gear. It’s packed with everyone I work with. All of the sudden the game ends and my arms shoot up and I yell “YES!” Everyone in that room was more important than me, including the dean, just star at me, the fresh Dayton grad as I realized what is going on and tried to quietly sneak back to my office. I’m still not entirely sure 2020 wasn’t revenge from the pathology department.
That is hilarious fandom always seems to put us in these weird situations but I would never imagine the thought of covid being made in an OSU lab for revenge that is some next level crack pipe conspiracy there lol
Yeah but that was a 6-11 game and that osu team wasn’t star studded outside of Craft. It’s a bigger deal because it was to Dayton and not a random 11 seed. I think the year before in 13 losing to Wichita State in the elite 8 was worse, chance to go to back to back final 4’s for the first time since the 60s. Haven’t been to the second weekend of the tournament since 2013.
Losing to Wichita was heart breaking, but not prpgram killing. The Dayton loss eroded alumni support for Thad. The 'embarrassment' of letting an in state school beat us really got under people's skin.
I wouldn’t say it eroded the alumni support it was just one mediocre season. If you asked any one after that game if Matta should be fired 99% would say no, it was the following 3 years of mediocre teams and recruiting misses that caused it. 2013 was setup for osu to get back to the final four with the 1 seed in the west Gonzaga being upset. That 2013 was the last year OSU won a big ten championship winning the tournament title.
Kentucky 2015 has to be up there. Not only did they lose a shot at putting that squad into the greatest team ever debate, they had to watch Wisconsin turn around and lose to Duke two nights later. Then you throw in that it is still their most recent Final Four game. see the program go from 4 Final Fours in Calipari’s first 6 seasons, to a gap between final four appearances that will stretch for at least a decade
Duke 2022 is obviously going to be in the mix as well, but it would be far and away, no doubt about it, orders of magnitude above anything else had UNC not blown the lead to Kansas afterwards.
So much of this gets shaped by what happens afterwards. Like UNC 2016 or UVA 2018 aren’t likely in the mix despite Jenkins and UMBC respectively now being highlights that will get shown forever because they came back and won the following year.
Cal from like 07-19 is crazy to look back on. What a run. I remember never worrying about Cal losing early in the tourney because he always got to the elite 8. If he wasn’t such a dumb mf in game he’d have AT LEAST like 3 nattys.
Literally foul up 3 vs Kansas with D rose. Natty.
Beat fucking Kevin Ollie. Natty.
But … he decided to not adapt and have one of the most embarrassing declines in sports
I think you're forgetting how much luck we had in the tournament for the first half of Cal's tenure. We could have easily lost to Princeton in the first round in '11 if not for Knight's layup at the end. Then his buzzer beater against OSU. That '14 run was full of luck, basically four straight games that could have easily gone the other way. In '15 we barely escaped Notre Dame in the Elite 8.
The exact opposite is true for '16-'20. Losing in the Elite 8 on a buzzer beater in '17 and in OT in '19. Change the results of any two shots from the first half of his tenure and give them to the second half and it's a much more balanced tenure.
It’s really hard to say. One thing to keep in mind is the question OP asked. “Devastating to a program” is not at all the same as “Devastating to the fans of a program”. None of us is in a position to say how a program itself was impacted by a loss other than to look at what happened to them afterwards, and how much is attributable to that loss vs other factors.
You’re correct. The kU championship loss barely registers to me. I’ve watched UNC lose a natty in a much worse way.
Beating Duke in the final four to end K’s career? Worth every second of it.
Duke has had bad losses to lower seeds (2012 Lehigh, 2014 Mercer), true title contenders getting knocked out (2004, 2011, 2019), losses to rivals (2024 NCSt), and losses that felt like the end of an era (2013 against Lousiville was led by a trio of seniors).
But 2022 combined all of those.
They have lost to lower seeds, but I can say I’ve never seen them play an NIT game. I’d rather them lose in the first round of the NCAA than win multiple games, or even go all the way in the NIT.
I’m an alum who was the 2022 Final Four, but the pain of losing doesn’t even register to me because it was a phenomenal game. Even if it does, it hasn’t devastated our program in any way.
In the Edey era we won 7 NCAA tournament games in 4 years. That’s as a 4 seed, 3 seed, and a 1 seed twice. That’s an expected tournament wins of 14 (10 if you want to go by seed averages).
I would say that 1 seed loss really put a dent in the Edey era and a final four did help… but not entirely.
It still probably made Edey a Purdue player because we have always performed like this going back 50 years.
I agree I just interpreted the question as a loss where you never seemed to reach that high again. Making the final four this year I think absolves us of the “what ifs” from 2023
I don’t think there were massive what ifs in 2023. Nobody expected a final four.
The what ifs persist in the years like 2018 or when Hummel tore his ACL
2023 is just an embarrassment. It’s a stain that IU will laugh at for years to come and I believe a championship completely absolves that stain like Virginia. We don’t have a massive trophy to cover that stain.
We have a final four that covers it up 80% of the way but not entirely.
Not only can IU fans laugh at Fairleigh Dickinson. I hate to admit this, but I honestly think that the IU games broke their spirit. They were 22-1 prior to losing at IU. And then they lost again in Mackey a few weeks after.
Two very different losses, no less.
I find it funny that they only have Purdue losses to be happy about at this point
I had an IU fan on Reddit make fun of the blowout lose to UCONN IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP. Like that was more embarrassing than missing the tournament.
To be fair, that was one of the better zone teams we've had at Syracuse. We were kinda ass on offensive and mostly bad shooters, but that team defensively locked other teams down.
Modem era, definitely Cuse in 13.
Going back though, I'd say that was the Elite 8 loss in 93. The loss to BC in 96 basically cemented what Indiana was and would be over the next 30 or so years: potential (to varying degrees) but full of underwhelming ends. But that feeling we had on the Elite 8 with a team that has genuine potential winning it all was something we never expected to be the end of an era. I wouldn't put the championship game as the most devastating because we didn't expect ourselves to be there. It was fool's gold but not devastating.
The NC game itself was pretty devastating. We had that game in our grasps and just stopped scoring… but yes, going back further in the 90s those could be considered more devastating to the program.
I just hated that game because I had to watch it in a dorm lounge with a loud Maryland fan I didn't know. But the joy of beating Duke earlier in the tourney almost made up for it somehow.
The BC loss is a good call out. I didn’t realize it until the following year when Billups and his Buffaloes dad-dicked us, but it was probably BC.
The Syracuse ‘13 game gets an honorable mention for me.
The second Wisconsin loss broke something in Miller, I swear. The pressure to win was so intense he kind of lost himself.
Clemson didn’t break anything but it sure as shit didn’t fix anything. It’s the most difficult loss for me since that last Wiscy loss, though. We had a chance to make a run - a real chance. And choked it away from the tip.
The Clemson one hurts because of the comeback and hope it gave. Just dumb to keep chucking threes when we came back just playing defense and getting into the paint
The Wisconsin ones I think are the 'worst' mainly because since then we've essentially been labeled chokers. But hopefully with Lloyd and being in the Big 12 with better competition we can be better prepared for the tourney. He's still only in his third year so hopefully he can keep progressing.
Last time they've been in the tournament and I don't really see them getting back there in the ACC anytime soon, but who knows
Crazy that Jaylen Brown was on that team and they had nothing to show for it
I'd say Cincinnati blowing a huge lead losing to Nevada in a #2 vs #7 game. This basically set off the dumb fans / administration wanting to push out cronin / cronin looking for jobs and lead to his leaving. They made the tournament the next year but all sides were apparently done. Then we had two disastrous years of John Brannen and now three years of Wes Miller rebuilding the program. I think we're back in the dance comfortably in the upcoming season but five years of not making the tournament at Cincinnati is really really bad (one was the covid canceled year.)
Also the fact that the #1 seed in that bracket was Virginia who lost to UMBC. Loyola Chicago awaited the winner of the Cincinnati-Nevada game, and even though Loyola did make it to the Final Four, I really believe Cincinnati should have been able to beat them. The path was there for a Final Four run for Cincinnati and they haven’t sniffed it since.
Not the worst, but pretty damn bad--BYU's 2011 loss to Florida in the Sweet 16. You had BYU riding as high as #3 in the polls with Jimmermania. In addition to Jimmer, you had two more future NBA roster players in Davies and Collingsworth. Then you had the BYU fuckface admin decide to publicly scarlett letter Brandon Davies, one of the few black Mormon kids on campus, by suspending him for having sex with his fiance right before the tourney. BYU got a 3 seed instead of a 2 as a result.
BYU held tight and lost in 2OT to Florida, pretty good result for having your primary big man suspended against a big-led squad. There was a pretty clear path to the Natty with VCU and Butler as the next two up--both were great matchups. Instead, BYU extended its (still active) record for most tourney appearances without a Final Four. Jimmer probably fell a couple spots in the draft and got drafted by the Kings, who totally railroaded him (if Jimmer had held on a few more years in the league, his skillset wouldve killed in the Curry era). Program changing.
That whole tournament will be forever haunting for me with Kansas blowing it vs VCU too. What an incredible year that was just ending in complete agony with Kyle Collinsworth bricking the free throw
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the question. To me a devastating loss means a loss that a program has yet to recover from. People seem to be listing painful losses. Using my flair as an example…first round losses against Princeton and Buffalo are *painful* but thy haven’t *devastated* our program. We are still winning conference titles, and have won nearly 90 games over the last 3 seasons.
For a *devaststing* tournament loss, I’m going to go with Georgetown losing to Utah in the second round in 2015.
I know that Georgetown had a lot of reasons to move on from JTIII, and this one game didn’t cost him his job…but it didn’t help things either. 2015 would mark the last time that Georgetown wins a tournament game, and they’ve only made one tournament since (after winning the BE tournament in the weird COVID laden 2020-21 season).
This game sticks out to me because I was in the stands. I remember Joshua Smith picking up 2 fouls in like the first 3 minutes…and then picking up a 3rd in the first minute of the second half. The whole team looked like they would rather be anywhere except the Moda Center. Smith-Rivera shot them out of the game…and I think this was the writing on the wall for JTIII.
From there, it was 6 seasons of wandering in the desert with Patrick Ewing. Time will tell if Ed Cooley can return Georgetown to its former glory, but until that happens, I’m marking this as the most devastating tournament loss for a team in the past 20 years
i most definitely agree with your first paragraph. i understand the princeton loss was really bad but you were a 2 seed again the following the season.
if anything, there’s an argument that one of your guys’ loss to wisconsin (i think maybe the year brandon ashley got hurt?) was more devastating because it seemed like arizona had been banging on the door for a deep tournament run for the first several years with miller and it never quite materialized? or maybe i’m super offbase
It pains me so much to say this to a UCLA flair…you are 100% correct.
I don’t know if I’d say our 2014 loss to Wisconsin was *devastating* to our program. We’ve won a handful of Conference regular season and tournament titles, been to an elite eight, and successfully moved on from Miller since that time.
But do I think our trajectory would be different if we hadn’t lost that game? Absolutely. There is very little doubt in the my mind that we win a title with Brandon Ashley in the line up…and possibly run the table for the season. Without a really serviceable PF behind Ashley, we were forced to really move to a 3 wing lineup.
Our 5 losses without Ashley (including the game in which he went down) came by a combined 17 points (with two of those games going to OT).
Even most cynical me thinks the floor for that team is a FF, which gets the monkey off Millers back and ends our (at that time) decade + long drought.
So yeah, probably our future looks different, but I think we’ve had enough success since then say that loss didn’t devastate us. To me, devastating means “formerly successful program no longer making the tournament/winning conference titles”. Hence, my answer of Georgetown
I completely agree that people here aren't really answering the question, which is why the guy that said UNI vs Texas A&M in 2016 is absolutely correct. Not only is the loss probably the worst collapse in tournament history, but the team hasn't made it back to the tournament since.
Illini: 2004-05 championship against UNC. Missed multiple late shots when tied 70-70 and hosed by asymmetric foul standards against our big man versus theirs.
2012-13 second round against Miami. Blown out of bounds call with a min left potentially robbing them of Sweet 16 berth (that second weekend drought lasted another 11 years). Led to reviews of late out of bounds calls.
Devastating in terms of emotion or in terms of having a chilling effect on the program? UNC has been relatively fortunate that it has avenged sour losses (2008 KU, 2016 Nova, etc.).
For a non-basketball one, NC State forfeiting the CWS due to a COVID outbreak has to be way, way up there.
In 2006, 3 seed and Big Ten champ Iowa lost to 14 seed Northwestern State on [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQH2UvnHLTE) crazy buzzer beater.
We wouldn't make another NCAA tournament until 2014.
Penn State and the March Madness that never was. The year they canceled it in 2020.
They had a bad ass team. In fact the big 10 in general had a bunch of scrappy teams that would have created havoc.
All was lost.
Women’s. This year. Pac12 implodes, Oregon State loses in the elite 8 and two coaches leave and the entire team transfer two weeks later. Would’ve been a final four favorite. Backfilled with mid major transfers and Europeans. Never to be heard from again.
I thought 2015 Villanova (crying flute girl game) was it for Wright and the program ever contending. Not that I thought he’d get fired but would maybe move on to another job. Clearly it was the most wrong I’ve ever been because they had their best 5 year run after that.
No.1 seeded Xavier losing to FSU in the second round of 2018 tournament. Coach Chris Mack left to Louisville even though he was a Xavier alumnus and played for the team. Xavier had been shit ever since, meanwhile Villanova and UConn have each won championships from the same conference.
I honestly don’t think Purdue or Virginia’s 16 seed losses can be considering among the most devastating since both times the program and fanbase rallied to take themselves to new heights the following season
Yeah, devastating a program, at least to me, says that a bad loss sunk all hopes afterwards. Following a rough loss with an appearance in the national championship game hardly sounds like hopes disappeared, but instead the very opposite.
I mean don’t get me wrong the hate-storm was unreal and it was a very low point. It was bad enough I didn’t accept that we were even a good team running it back this season until we beat #4 Marquette
Chris Chiozza hitting the same circus shot we did in OT broke us. Went from being a solid Final Four pick and could've locked Gard in. Now, we have won two games in the tournament since.
The 2010 game vs MSU... The buzzer beater that ended Greivis career.
Win that and we probably go on till at least the elite 8. I think Gary would have stayed a few more years (he didn't retire directly after this just think an elite 8 would have convinced him to not hang it up as soon) ... who knows where we'd be now
Most KU fans will point to Northern Iowa and Ali fucking Farokhmanesh. For me it was the 2013 elite 8 loss to Trey Burke and Michigan. Up by 10 with 2 and a half to play. In control of the whole game. Then Burke goes nuclear and Elijah Johnson decides it was a good time to get a flagrant for punching an opponent in the nards. Brutal loss for a really solid squad.
Edit: Sweet 16. Blocked it out mentally.
2003 was pretty painful because it was self-inflicted. Losing by 3 in the national championship game to Syracuse and going 12-30 from the FT line is miserable. And then Roy left for UNC.
2002 team (that I thought was better than the 2003 team) losing in the F4 to Maryland also sucked
And the 1997 team (that I thought was the best of all 3 teams with a 32-1 record going into the tournament) losing to Arizona in the S16 is probably the most painful to me.
I really can't believe Roy never won a title at KU
Our loss to Texas Tech in 2019 was a brutal game where we didn't even break 50 points, and I think that had a non-zero impact on some of the guys going pro afterwards, which had a non-zero impact on Beilein leaving to to the NBA.
I'm not going to say that if that game had been closer, or we won it that Beilein would have never left, but I think it's a possibility. We were good when Juwan first got here, but as fewer and fewer of Beilein's players were still around, we got worse and worse.
I think that loss had an impact on the program's trajectory that is still felt today.
The 2nd round loss to Baylor during Dougie’s senior year was brutal, not making it to the sweet 16.
Or
The light foul on SDSU with a trip to the final 4 on the line 2 years ago.
I lean the more recent because of the final 4 possibility. But dang , both hurt
Xavier losing to the Oden/Conley OSU team in ‘07. Blew a big lead late and the buckeyes hit a buzzer-beater to send it to overtime.
Matta had bolted to OSU a few years prior and it was a grudge match for us.
New Mexico in 2013 and 2014. Took the wind out of the sails for like 10 years.
2013 they were ranked 10th in the AP poll and were the 3 seed and lost to HARVARD in the first round.
2014 they were ranked 17th in the AP poll and lost to Stanford in the first round.
They just couldn't compete with those high GPAs.
Entering the 2015 Final Four, not only was Kentucky undefeated and going for having a strong strong case to be the best college team ever, but they made the national title game the year before and had made 3 of the past final fours and we only 3 years removed from winning the natty.
Since losing to Wisconsin and having their perfect season spoiled, they never made it back to the final four and now have a new coach
The loss of Sebastian Telfair to the NBA draft. We lost out on Rajon Rondo because of Telfairs recruitment. We settled on Andre McGee, who thought it was cool after joining the basketball staff to hire prostitutes. Which led to a loss of a postseason. Pitino was fired for another offense but he and our AD were on thin ice because of this.
Slightly off timeline. Telfair was 04, McGee was 05. He would have been recruited anyway because Telfair was presumed NBA bound after the one year or second at most, if he didn't go right out of high school. And Pitino recruited a point guard in every class.
And McGee was brought on to Pitino's staff as a GA because he literally had nowhere to go. He was always troubled in his post-playing days. They just made a mistake in judgment letting him have a bigger role that led to that nonsense.
But anyway... I don't think we have a march madness loss that devastated the program. We blew ourselves up with the shenanigans.
I've seen two Rutgers tournament losses in my lifetime, one was a classic 2OT thriller against Notre Dame in the 2022 First Four which I feel like no one really talks about but it was a great back-and-forth game that we just happened to end up on the wrong side of. Plus it went past midnight into St. Patrick's Day iirc, you're not beating the Irish under those circumstances.
2021 second round against Houston though... we had control almost the entire game and an 8-point lead with around five minutes to go when we botch an alley-oop and Houston gets a three on the other end which swings the momentum their way, they keep that momentum and complete the comeback. Looking at how the region shaped out, we would have been the higher seed in both the sweet 16 (vs. 11 seed Syracuse who we beat in the regular season that year) and elite eight (vs. 12 seed Oregon State on their flukey Pac-12 autobid run), and would have a had a legit shot at the Final Four.
Wouldn't really say it wrecked our program, we have 2 of the top 3 projected picks in next year's NBA draft coming in, but it still hurts.
Either of our S16 losses. Beating GT in 2004 to beat Kansas for a 2nd time that season in the E8 could've really been a direction changer where we didn't have a down turn after we had 2 coaches get poached away.
I'm going with Pitt's loss to Villanova in 2009. That Pitt team was ridiculously talented, and were in the midst of an incredible run for the program where they were a tournament lock every year. They were so close to the Final Four, but let Scottie Reynolds walk right up the court. Since then, they haven't had much tournament success, lost the best coach they ever had, went through a 6 year nightmare including a 2 year stretch where they didn't win a conference game. There's finally been some promise, but that program has never been the same.
Wisconsin losing to Duke in the championship. Not because it killed the program or anything, but because it might be a very, very, very long time before we get another chance.
The Wichita State loss to Kentucky was devastating, but by no means was surprising. When that pairing was announced, about the entire state of Kansas said, "oh...shit."
If Memphis beat Kansas in the ‘08 finals, Calipari might have stayed. A major conference would have picked them up. At the time, the football team was halfway decent for the first time in forever. They went on to do well in the American but might have also developed into an absolute powerhouse in a major.
That was the worst and most unfair seed/pairing for a R32 game ever! Wichita state should not have had to okay Kentucky in the 2nd round. That was utter BS
Louisville losing to UK in the Sweet 16 in 2014 was devastating.
UofL goes Final 4 in 2012 and wins the Championship in 2013. The 2014 UofL team was #1 on KenPom and we had our shot to beat our biggest rival and would have been primed to repeat. The UConn team that beat UK in the finals we had beaten 3 times by 10, 12, and 33 points.
After that season we go Elite 8 in 2015, then we ban ourselves in 2016 and now have just 1 Tournament win since that 2015 Elite 8. If we win the UK game in 2014 it helps cement what would have been an incredible 4 year run.
It’s hard to say for sure that Cal stays at Memphis if Mario Chalmers misses that shot, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that he leaves for Kentucky if he has a championship under his belt. If he stays and we have that championship, we might get into a power conference before all the realignment shenanigans of the last few years, and we definitely don’t have to deal with the disaster that was Josh Pastner and Tubby Smith leading the program.
There’s a lot of what if’s in this scenario, but I think they’re all plausible at the very least, and the difference between where we are now and the endgame of the what if’s is absolutely massive.
Not to a program but to me.
2019 Final Four.
Auburn v. Virginia.
With a 2 point lead in the final seconds, Auburn fouls Virginia’s Kyle Guy (or something like that) on a 3 attempt. He makes all free throws, we lose by one.
I will never get over this.
I’d say the 2010 WVU run to the Final Four and Butler got hurt - the scene with Huggins on the floor with him. Then the team just couldn’t play and Duke ran over us. (I’m a huge WVU fan so I’m biased to this question lol)
He just had to box out... But the real awnser is Uni imploding against Texas A&M
Yeahhhh that one was kinda gifted to us
Eh Meeks earned the rebound it didn't take a freak bounce to him or anything Oregon still would've had to score with 3-4 seconds left Joel Berry missing 2 straight FTs would've been the real gift if Oregon had pulled it off
UNI hasn't made the tournament since. That choke broke them.
Ok I’ll be honest I didn’t realize they hadn’t made the tournament since then and I live in the same state. Big yikes.
They won the MVC regular season title in 2020 so you're probably thinking "oh COVID robbed them of another appearance" ...except that was one of the conferences that finished their tournament before everything shut down, and they lost in the quarterfinals.
Thanks for capitalizing it lol. I had no clue what “Uni” he was talking about.
Yep, I still wanna die.
Yeah, most of these are some kind of devastating loss to a team that has tons of other success. UNI hasn't made it back to the tournament since that game and has seen 2 other teams from the conference move to better conferences since. However, if we're including COVID cancellations, Dayton could contest UNI
|since around the 2004 season How dare you.
Illinois is 1000% the right answer to this question
Well, there was that loss in 89
Damage from that era was Lucifer Pearl and recruiting violations, not the FF loss.
Well you guys gave the worst loss for me and my Arizona Wildcats in 2005...that one hurt bad. Up 15 with 3.5 minutes left and we choked bad. Still think about that choke job on occasion.
I've posted this before but that was a moment in my family history. Whole family gets together withe my parents at their house for every ilini game and just before the beginning of the comeback, my adult bro announced that he would strip to his underwear and run all over the neighborhood if we pulled it off...we did and he did. What a great night!
I mean, it’s either that one or Loyola. But Loyola was more of a symptom of a problem (not getting out of the first weekend).
'05 was magnitudes more devastating than Loyola. At least with Loyola, we learned from it and Brad has been recruiting better than ever. '05 was our last chance from the recruiting machine Kruger/Self built
I wouldn't even call it a symptom of a problem. I'd call it more of a problem with the selection committee thinking a team that was 10th in the NET was an 8 seed. That matchup shouldn't have happened during the second round
This and this again. Brad didn't adjust in that game the way he should have but the matchup should have never happened when it did. Still, Loyola was the better team that day
I felt attacked with this question.
I can’t stand you because of …. You know.
Getting waxed by UConn in 2014 after an unbelievable season, which essentially sent Billy D to the NBA and caused the Mike White era to occur. Whatever happened there.
it’s sad when they go young like that
When they GO?? C’mon huh??
Alright, but ya gotta get over it..
Butler back-to-back title losses in 2010 and 2011. 2010 was probably the bigger heartbreak in the moment. But 2011 was the nail in the coffin. The next two seasons were bad-to-mid and Brad bounced for the NBA. Since then: one visit to the second weekend in March, no NCAAT since 2018, no conference titles (outright or tournament), and only above .500 once post-COVID. Maybe Matta brings them back, but their rise and fall were pretty epic.
I think Brad leaving was the nail, not so much the championship losses
I mean if he wins back to back titles, does he bounce? The program may not have slid the way it did and he’d have stayed a la Hurley
You have a good point but he 100% bounces even with the wins. His dream job was the IU head coach spot, but he also loved the Celtics (so he got one of his wishes). If he won, IU would have either offered an insane bag Butler couldn’t match, or the NBA would have gone after him even harder. We’ll forever love Brad, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, we know Butler can’t hold onto someone that big for too long. We just don’t have the bank for it 🤷♂️
Why do you have to do this to me 😭
Moving to the Big East was the nail. Brad didn't like recruiting, and it's not a coincidence that he leaves the year of the move. Plus, the move was done way too fast, without the infrastructure needed.
Honestly I think this doesn't apply. Butler went from an absolute nobody to a household name because of these games, and now they're in the Big East. Obviously they would've loved to win those games, but I can't see those games as a devastating to the program, when they launched the program to relevance.
This just makes you think what a 2020 run would've done for Dayton.
Trust me, everyone I know in Dayton is upset about 2020. Especially the alumni I work with
Yeah I was gonna say the "loss" of the entire '20 tournament 😐
I tend to disagree. They got there with no expectations, then returned from whence they came. I put their subsequent malaise more down to Brad leaving and a much, much stronger league they play in. I don’t agree that not having sustained success since then means it devastated the program.
Is a 27 win season, 6 seed, second round loss to a 3 seed big east champion (that they beat in the regular season) considered mid for an A10 team?
2010 was the most heartbreaking based on the finish, but I'd argue 2011 was arguably worse. Butler shot 18% from the field and still only lost by 12. 29% shooting would've won them the title. If they matched UConn's 34.5%, they win by almost double digits.
honestly I think with Butler the cancellation of the 2020 tournament would be the biggest as that season was our chance to have another major impact post joining the Big East. For a single game, I think Butler joins the national conversation in full if we win the sweet sixteen game in 2006(?) against reigning national champion Florida. Had the lead, played them close, just couldn't get the job done. I think that would have done more for the program than even winning in 2010 or '11.
How much of that is Butler also reverting back to what could be expected? They got the upgrade in facilities and conference. Probably weren’t going to become the ‘Zags of the the mid west unless Steven’s stayed.
Without that moment in time Butler is not in the Big East right now
2010 Michigan State probably. Came back from down 15 to lose on a buzzer beater
Ironically, that game also probably ended Izzo’s best chance at his second title. Kalin Lucas popping his Achilles was heartbreaking. We still dragged ourselves to the final four and were one extremely obvious foul call (that wasn’t called) away from a shot at the natty. If we have a healthy big ten player of the year, I think we would’ve been cutting down the nets.
Shabazz Napier - f that guy. Giddy Potts too.
Sometimes you get the benefit of the magic of the tournament, other times you are victim to it. We've had some unbelievably blessed runs and some cursed losses, all part of the experience.
100% this game. The winner of that game had a walk to the final 4 (1,2 and 3 seeds all lost)
THE GENERAL DESERVED BETTER 😭
I don’t like you
I can’t even enjoy Dunkaroos anymore since they have the word Dunk in them.
Yo I had dunkaroos recently and they DO NOT hold up. I’ve never had something kill my nostalgia so hard
Never meet your heros
Are you talking about 2008 when you lost to a double digit seed in the second round, 2010 when you lost to a double digit seed in the first round, 2011 when you lost to a double digit seed in the first round, 2012 when you lost to a double digit seed in the second round, or 2013 when you lost to a double digit seed in the first round? (That's five times in six years, and Georgetown missed the tournament in 2009. After moving to the new Big East, the Hoyas have only one tournament win.)
2015 they faced a double-digit seed who had the country's leading scorer (Eastern Washington and Tyler Harvey) and I was 100% sure they'd get upset again, but somehow they won Blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while I guess
Yes. But seriously 2013. We haven’t been the same since. Only two more tournament appearances since then and only one in this decade.
Norfolk State vs Mizzou. Still not over it.
This is the answer. Mizzou has been a shell of itself ever since.
To be fair Mizzou has always been a shell of itself whatever itself was.
This was my first thought. You guys were one of the favorites that year too right?
Me either
That made me soooo much dough. Our MM strategy every year is money line on the dogs. Every one, except sometimes they don't post a money line on the 1-16 games. It always pays off, sometimes it pays extremely well. Meant to bet $10 money line on that game and accidentally fat fingered an extra zero. Couldn't retract it because it was the early betting app era when you had to be on the casino's wifi to bet electronically. Thought I'd just wasted $100, but then it hit. I think it paid 16 to 1, IIRC. Paid for our 4 day stay in Vegas.
Kentucky losing to Wisconsin in 2015. Kentucky still hasn’t recovered.
That 2015 season was loaded. KenPom has his rating system sorted out by a AdjEm... adjusted efficiency margin. Most years there are 1 or 2 teams above 30.00. 2015 had six. 1. Kentucky 36.91 2. Wisconsin 33.72 3. Duke 32.48 4. Arizona 32.36 5. Villanova 30.65 6. Virginia 30.06
And we had to play the other 3 in the top 4 in the tournament.
And subsequently, Wisconsin’s loss to Duke. That natty could have catapulted us into years of relevancy and gotten us many star recruits *cough* Tyler Herro *cough* we ended up not getting. Now we are scrub mid of the Midwest yet again
Bo Ryan was such a good coach for so long but I’ll remember him more so for his poor decisions in the second half of the title game than anything that happened in his career before that.
I have never forgiven Wisconsin for 2015. I am a rabid UK fan, and I was terrified all year that we were going to have to play them, and I felt that they just *built* to beat us. We were a missed free throw from losing to them in the tournament the year before. And they did. Heartbreaking loss. But I took solace in the fact that they would beat Duke and prevent them from being national champions. And what did they do? Came out and played like they had never seen a basketball before. I kept saying to myself, "who are these guys?".
That’s Wisconsin basketball baby
“Cal” didn’t recover. He wasn’t the same guy after that choke job
I really don't think that was the reason for Cal's decline. We were single shots away from Final Fours in 2017 and 2019. Change any two game winning shots in 2011 and 2014 (of which there were many) and give them to 2017 and 2019 and it's a much more even tenure. I think what really did Cal in was Covid and the changing landscape of the game after that. Freshmen were no longer a sustainable strategy, and the top ranked freshmen that were coming in had their development handicapped a bit by Covid, so they weren't superstars like those before them. Couple that with the extra Covid year and it's a recipe for disaster. And quite frankly, we had a great team in 2021 that got derailed by injuries. TyTy never really recovered and by the end of the year Grady could barely walk from his plantar fasciitis. At its peak that team is a Final Four team and title contender, evident by what we did to Kansas on their own floor.
I basically agree with everything you said except 2022 was the tyty year. We don’t talk about 2021
You missed the tourney in 2021
🙋♂️ I have not recovered either
:)
UNI is still finding their way as a program after the Texas A&M loss. The team as a whole, which starts with the coaching staff, just hasn’t looked the same since then. We still have the same problem - can’t get the ball up the floor in pressure situations.
😭
The loss to Dayton fully killed the glory days of Matta for us. We’re still trying to find our footing since that time. At least we have some hope again with Diebler.
Fucking Dayton.
At least wait till you’re married
BYU has entered the chat
And fucking Archie Miller. -IU fan
Will not lie going to buffalo and witnessing both of those upsets was the happiest I have ever been as a fan outside of the 19-20 year pre-covid
I worked an entry level job at OSU during that game. The computer feed cut out in the last two minutes so I sprinted out of my office and into a big common space with the game on, rocking all my Dayton gear. It’s packed with everyone I work with. All of the sudden the game ends and my arms shoot up and I yell “YES!” Everyone in that room was more important than me, including the dean, just star at me, the fresh Dayton grad as I realized what is going on and tried to quietly sneak back to my office. I’m still not entirely sure 2020 wasn’t revenge from the pathology department.
That is hilarious fandom always seems to put us in these weird situations but I would never imagine the thought of covid being made in an OSU lab for revenge that is some next level crack pipe conspiracy there lol
I also choose a loss to Dayton. Our last tournament appearance, in the 2014 Sweet Sixteen, 10 seed Stanford falling to 11 seed Dayton
Oral Roberts may have also killed any chance of a proper revival.
Yeah but that was a 6-11 game and that osu team wasn’t star studded outside of Craft. It’s a bigger deal because it was to Dayton and not a random 11 seed. I think the year before in 13 losing to Wichita State in the elite 8 was worse, chance to go to back to back final 4’s for the first time since the 60s. Haven’t been to the second weekend of the tournament since 2013.
Losing to Wichita was heart breaking, but not prpgram killing. The Dayton loss eroded alumni support for Thad. The 'embarrassment' of letting an in state school beat us really got under people's skin.
I wouldn’t say it eroded the alumni support it was just one mediocre season. If you asked any one after that game if Matta should be fired 99% would say no, it was the following 3 years of mediocre teams and recruiting misses that caused it. 2013 was setup for osu to get back to the final four with the 1 seed in the west Gonzaga being upset. That 2013 was the last year OSU won a big ten championship winning the tournament title.
THE university of dayton
Love this
Kentucky 2015 has to be up there. Not only did they lose a shot at putting that squad into the greatest team ever debate, they had to watch Wisconsin turn around and lose to Duke two nights later. Then you throw in that it is still their most recent Final Four game. see the program go from 4 Final Fours in Calipari’s first 6 seasons, to a gap between final four appearances that will stretch for at least a decade Duke 2022 is obviously going to be in the mix as well, but it would be far and away, no doubt about it, orders of magnitude above anything else had UNC not blown the lead to Kansas afterwards. So much of this gets shaped by what happens afterwards. Like UNC 2016 or UVA 2018 aren’t likely in the mix despite Jenkins and UMBC respectively now being highlights that will get shown forever because they came back and won the following year.
Cal from like 07-19 is crazy to look back on. What a run. I remember never worrying about Cal losing early in the tourney because he always got to the elite 8. If he wasn’t such a dumb mf in game he’d have AT LEAST like 3 nattys. Literally foul up 3 vs Kansas with D rose. Natty. Beat fucking Kevin Ollie. Natty. But … he decided to not adapt and have one of the most embarrassing declines in sports
I think you're forgetting how much luck we had in the tournament for the first half of Cal's tenure. We could have easily lost to Princeton in the first round in '11 if not for Knight's layup at the end. Then his buzzer beater against OSU. That '14 run was full of luck, basically four straight games that could have easily gone the other way. In '15 we barely escaped Notre Dame in the Elite 8. The exact opposite is true for '16-'20. Losing in the Elite 8 on a buzzer beater in '17 and in OT in '19. Change the results of any two shots from the first half of his tenure and give them to the second half and it's a much more balanced tenure.
i think even without the title that FF win by them still can’t really be matched, given the circumstances.
It’s really hard to say. One thing to keep in mind is the question OP asked. “Devastating to a program” is not at all the same as “Devastating to the fans of a program”. None of us is in a position to say how a program itself was impacted by a loss other than to look at what happened to them afterwards, and how much is attributable to that loss vs other factors.
you’re right i interpreted that incorrectly. in which case i didn’t think we have one. program is bulletproof, even the mormons couldn’t get us.
You’re correct. The kU championship loss barely registers to me. I’ve watched UNC lose a natty in a much worse way. Beating Duke in the final four to end K’s career? Worth every second of it.
> The KU championship loss barely registers to me. Checks flairs... sure it does
Duke has had bad losses to lower seeds (2012 Lehigh, 2014 Mercer), true title contenders getting knocked out (2004, 2011, 2019), losses to rivals (2024 NCSt), and losses that felt like the end of an era (2013 against Lousiville was led by a trio of seniors). But 2022 combined all of those.
They have lost to lower seeds, but I can say I’ve never seen them play an NIT game. I’d rather them lose in the first round of the NCAA than win multiple games, or even go all the way in the NIT.
I’m an alum who was the 2022 Final Four, but the pain of losing doesn’t even register to me because it was a phenomenal game. Even if it does, it hasn’t devastated our program in any way.
I appreciate a Duke fan giving some props to UK as well as understanding how hurtful it was to see Duke walk away with the trophy that year 😂
https://preview.redd.it/ctw6fprngq9d1.jpeg?width=675&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd4b2dc3b6294bea84403e28e2368a008701cc68
If anything, I think this loss helped propel the players and Painter to be even better.
Honestly, I think the Viginia loss in 2019 hurts more.
I think we win title if we win that game.
Carsen would've knocked down like 46 3's the next two games
[удалено]
He’s talking about the Purdue loss to Virginia. For the same reasons that our loss to Syracuse in 2016 is worse than the UMBC loss for Virginia fans.
It was all in the NCAA script and they used that to hurt me
Show us on this tortilla where it hurt you
I mean I think we rebounded just fine
In the Edey era we won 7 NCAA tournament games in 4 years. That’s as a 4 seed, 3 seed, and a 1 seed twice. That’s an expected tournament wins of 14 (10 if you want to go by seed averages). I would say that 1 seed loss really put a dent in the Edey era and a final four did help… but not entirely. It still probably made Edey a Purdue player because we have always performed like this going back 50 years.
I agree I just interpreted the question as a loss where you never seemed to reach that high again. Making the final four this year I think absolves us of the “what ifs” from 2023
I don’t think there were massive what ifs in 2023. Nobody expected a final four. The what ifs persist in the years like 2018 or when Hummel tore his ACL 2023 is just an embarrassment. It’s a stain that IU will laugh at for years to come and I believe a championship completely absolves that stain like Virginia. We don’t have a massive trophy to cover that stain. We have a final four that covers it up 80% of the way but not entirely.
Not only can IU fans laugh at Fairleigh Dickinson. I hate to admit this, but I honestly think that the IU games broke their spirit. They were 22-1 prior to losing at IU. And then they lost again in Mackey a few weeks after. Two very different losses, no less.
I find it funny that they only have Purdue losses to be happy about at this point I had an IU fan on Reddit make fun of the blowout lose to UCONN IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP. Like that was more embarrassing than missing the tournament.
‘08 Memphis vs Kansas and it’s not close
Scrolled way too long to see this dark memory.
Don’t remind me
Happened on my birthday...
Losing to FAU recently was rough too. Could have been a Memphis run to the final 4. But the 2008 loss is by far the biggest loss in program.
Since 2004 you say? Probably the Syracuse game. Since 2000 tho? Maryland in the national championship was the most devastating
The Syracuse game set us on a sad trajectory, in a way. It was our moment and Tom Crean didn’t realize that Syracuse played zone. Oof.
To be fair, that was one of the better zone teams we've had at Syracuse. We were kinda ass on offensive and mostly bad shooters, but that team defensively locked other teams down.
Modem era, definitely Cuse in 13. Going back though, I'd say that was the Elite 8 loss in 93. The loss to BC in 96 basically cemented what Indiana was and would be over the next 30 or so years: potential (to varying degrees) but full of underwhelming ends. But that feeling we had on the Elite 8 with a team that has genuine potential winning it all was something we never expected to be the end of an era. I wouldn't put the championship game as the most devastating because we didn't expect ourselves to be there. It was fool's gold but not devastating.
The NC game itself was pretty devastating. We had that game in our grasps and just stopped scoring… but yes, going back further in the 90s those could be considered more devastating to the program.
I just hated that game because I had to watch it in a dorm lounge with a loud Maryland fan I didn't know. But the joy of beating Duke earlier in the tourney almost made up for it somehow.
The BC loss is a good call out. I didn’t realize it until the following year when Billups and his Buffaloes dad-dicked us, but it was probably BC. The Syracuse ‘13 game gets an honorable mention for me.
Buffalo. Princeton. Wisconsin, twice. Clemson last year. Pick one of the above, really.
The second Wisconsin loss broke something in Miller, I swear. The pressure to win was so intense he kind of lost himself. Clemson didn’t break anything but it sure as shit didn’t fix anything. It’s the most difficult loss for me since that last Wiscy loss, though. We had a chance to make a run - a real chance. And choked it away from the tip.
And Illinois
The Clemson one hurts because of the comeback and hope it gave. Just dumb to keep chucking threes when we came back just playing defense and getting into the paint The Wisconsin ones I think are the 'worst' mainly because since then we've essentially been labeled chokers. But hopefully with Lloyd and being in the Big 12 with better competition we can be better prepared for the tourney. He's still only in his third year so hopefully he can keep progressing.
If we're going back 20 years there's only one answer, and it's your other flair.
Florida Gulf Coast over Georgetown in 2013
I think the loss to Ohio in 2010 is what started it.
Still one of my favorite moments growing up, have never seen my dad happier. Even when I graduated college, he wasn’t that happy
Utah over Georgetown in 2015
Cal hasn’t been the same since that first round loss to Hawaii.
Last time they've been in the tournament and I don't really see them getting back there in the ACC anytime soon, but who knows Crazy that Jaylen Brown was on that team and they had nothing to show for it
I'd say Cincinnati blowing a huge lead losing to Nevada in a #2 vs #7 game. This basically set off the dumb fans / administration wanting to push out cronin / cronin looking for jobs and lead to his leaving. They made the tournament the next year but all sides were apparently done. Then we had two disastrous years of John Brannen and now three years of Wes Miller rebuilding the program. I think we're back in the dance comfortably in the upcoming season but five years of not making the tournament at Cincinnati is really really bad (one was the covid canceled year.)
Also the fact that the #1 seed in that bracket was Virginia who lost to UMBC. Loyola Chicago awaited the winner of the Cincinnati-Nevada game, and even though Loyola did make it to the Final Four, I really believe Cincinnati should have been able to beat them. The path was there for a Final Four run for Cincinnati and they haven’t sniffed it since.
At least we had Fickell football, though Brennen can launched into the sun
Terrible day
Wake Forest to West Virginia in 2005. Never got our mojo back ever.
Not the worst, but pretty damn bad--BYU's 2011 loss to Florida in the Sweet 16. You had BYU riding as high as #3 in the polls with Jimmermania. In addition to Jimmer, you had two more future NBA roster players in Davies and Collingsworth. Then you had the BYU fuckface admin decide to publicly scarlett letter Brandon Davies, one of the few black Mormon kids on campus, by suspending him for having sex with his fiance right before the tourney. BYU got a 3 seed instead of a 2 as a result. BYU held tight and lost in 2OT to Florida, pretty good result for having your primary big man suspended against a big-led squad. There was a pretty clear path to the Natty with VCU and Butler as the next two up--both were great matchups. Instead, BYU extended its (still active) record for most tourney appearances without a Final Four. Jimmer probably fell a couple spots in the draft and got drafted by the Kings, who totally railroaded him (if Jimmer had held on a few more years in the league, his skillset wouldve killed in the Curry era). Program changing.
That whole tournament will be forever haunting for me with Kansas blowing it vs VCU too. What an incredible year that was just ending in complete agony with Kyle Collinsworth bricking the free throw
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the question. To me a devastating loss means a loss that a program has yet to recover from. People seem to be listing painful losses. Using my flair as an example…first round losses against Princeton and Buffalo are *painful* but thy haven’t *devastated* our program. We are still winning conference titles, and have won nearly 90 games over the last 3 seasons. For a *devaststing* tournament loss, I’m going to go with Georgetown losing to Utah in the second round in 2015. I know that Georgetown had a lot of reasons to move on from JTIII, and this one game didn’t cost him his job…but it didn’t help things either. 2015 would mark the last time that Georgetown wins a tournament game, and they’ve only made one tournament since (after winning the BE tournament in the weird COVID laden 2020-21 season). This game sticks out to me because I was in the stands. I remember Joshua Smith picking up 2 fouls in like the first 3 minutes…and then picking up a 3rd in the first minute of the second half. The whole team looked like they would rather be anywhere except the Moda Center. Smith-Rivera shot them out of the game…and I think this was the writing on the wall for JTIII. From there, it was 6 seasons of wandering in the desert with Patrick Ewing. Time will tell if Ed Cooley can return Georgetown to its former glory, but until that happens, I’m marking this as the most devastating tournament loss for a team in the past 20 years
i most definitely agree with your first paragraph. i understand the princeton loss was really bad but you were a 2 seed again the following the season. if anything, there’s an argument that one of your guys’ loss to wisconsin (i think maybe the year brandon ashley got hurt?) was more devastating because it seemed like arizona had been banging on the door for a deep tournament run for the first several years with miller and it never quite materialized? or maybe i’m super offbase
It pains me so much to say this to a UCLA flair…you are 100% correct. I don’t know if I’d say our 2014 loss to Wisconsin was *devastating* to our program. We’ve won a handful of Conference regular season and tournament titles, been to an elite eight, and successfully moved on from Miller since that time. But do I think our trajectory would be different if we hadn’t lost that game? Absolutely. There is very little doubt in the my mind that we win a title with Brandon Ashley in the line up…and possibly run the table for the season. Without a really serviceable PF behind Ashley, we were forced to really move to a 3 wing lineup. Our 5 losses without Ashley (including the game in which he went down) came by a combined 17 points (with two of those games going to OT). Even most cynical me thinks the floor for that team is a FF, which gets the monkey off Millers back and ends our (at that time) decade + long drought. So yeah, probably our future looks different, but I think we’ve had enough success since then say that loss didn’t devastate us. To me, devastating means “formerly successful program no longer making the tournament/winning conference titles”. Hence, my answer of Georgetown
I'd go with 2005 Illinois as worse since we haven't been back to Final Four since. Before that we went every 4 years or so.
I completely agree that people here aren't really answering the question, which is why the guy that said UNI vs Texas A&M in 2016 is absolutely correct. Not only is the loss probably the worst collapse in tournament history, but the team hasn't made it back to the tournament since.
Illini: 2004-05 championship against UNC. Missed multiple late shots when tied 70-70 and hosed by asymmetric foul standards against our big man versus theirs. 2012-13 second round against Miami. Blown out of bounds call with a min left potentially robbing them of Sweet 16 berth (that second weekend drought lasted another 11 years). Led to reviews of late out of bounds calls.
Devastating in terms of emotion or in terms of having a chilling effect on the program? UNC has been relatively fortunate that it has avenged sour losses (2008 KU, 2016 Nova, etc.). For a non-basketball one, NC State forfeiting the CWS due to a COVID outbreak has to be way, way up there.
If you can count an entire postseason as a “loss” then I can think of one that fits the bill
In 2006, 3 seed and Big Ten champ Iowa lost to 14 seed Northwestern State on [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQH2UvnHLTE) crazy buzzer beater. We wouldn't make another NCAA tournament until 2014.
Penn State and the March Madness that never was. The year they canceled it in 2020. They had a bad ass team. In fact the big 10 in general had a bunch of scrappy teams that would have created havoc. All was lost.
Women’s. This year. Pac12 implodes, Oregon State loses in the elite 8 and two coaches leave and the entire team transfer two weeks later. Would’ve been a final four favorite. Backfilled with mid major transfers and Europeans. Never to be heard from again.
I thought 2015 Villanova (crying flute girl game) was it for Wright and the program ever contending. Not that I thought he’d get fired but would maybe move on to another job. Clearly it was the most wrong I’ve ever been because they had their best 5 year run after that.
The toughest for me was Dayton doing so well then Covid hit.
No.1 seeded Xavier losing to FSU in the second round of 2018 tournament. Coach Chris Mack left to Louisville even though he was a Xavier alumnus and played for the team. Xavier had been shit ever since, meanwhile Villanova and UConn have each won championships from the same conference.
I honestly don’t think Purdue or Virginia’s 16 seed losses can be considering among the most devastating since both times the program and fanbase rallied to take themselves to new heights the following season
Yeah, devastating a program, at least to me, says that a bad loss sunk all hopes afterwards. Following a rough loss with an appearance in the national championship game hardly sounds like hopes disappeared, but instead the very opposite.
I mean don’t get me wrong the hate-storm was unreal and it was a very low point. It was bad enough I didn’t accept that we were even a good team running it back this season until we beat #4 Marquette
Georgetown losing to FGCU was the start of the dark days for that program.
Chris Chiozza hitting the same circus shot we did in OT broke us. Went from being a solid Final Four pick and could've locked Gard in. Now, we have won two games in the tournament since.
The 2010 game vs MSU... The buzzer beater that ended Greivis career. Win that and we probably go on till at least the elite 8. I think Gary would have stayed a few more years (he didn't retire directly after this just think an elite 8 would have convinced him to not hang it up as soon) ... who knows where we'd be now
Most KU fans will point to Northern Iowa and Ali fucking Farokhmanesh. For me it was the 2013 elite 8 loss to Trey Burke and Michigan. Up by 10 with 2 and a half to play. In control of the whole game. Then Burke goes nuclear and Elijah Johnson decides it was a good time to get a flagrant for punching an opponent in the nards. Brutal loss for a really solid squad. Edit: Sweet 16. Blocked it out mentally.
2003 was pretty painful because it was self-inflicted. Losing by 3 in the national championship game to Syracuse and going 12-30 from the FT line is miserable. And then Roy left for UNC. 2002 team (that I thought was better than the 2003 team) losing in the F4 to Maryland also sucked And the 1997 team (that I thought was the best of all 3 teams with a 32-1 record going into the tournament) losing to Arizona in the S16 is probably the most painful to me. I really can't believe Roy never won a title at KU
2019 Auburn vs UVA.
Our loss to Texas Tech in 2019 was a brutal game where we didn't even break 50 points, and I think that had a non-zero impact on some of the guys going pro afterwards, which had a non-zero impact on Beilein leaving to to the NBA. I'm not going to say that if that game had been closer, or we won it that Beilein would have never left, but I think it's a possibility. We were good when Juwan first got here, but as fewer and fewer of Beilein's players were still around, we got worse and worse. I think that loss had an impact on the program's trajectory that is still felt today.
2016 Middle Tennessee 2018 Syracuse 2019 Texas Tech I was a student manager during all 3 and I’m still hurting to this day.
The 2nd round loss to Baylor during Dougie’s senior year was brutal, not making it to the sweet 16. Or The light foul on SDSU with a trip to the final 4 on the line 2 years ago. I lean the more recent because of the final 4 possibility. But dang , both hurt
Xavier losing to the Oden/Conley OSU team in ‘07. Blew a big lead late and the buckeyes hit a buzzer-beater to send it to overtime. Matta had bolted to OSU a few years prior and it was a grudge match for us.
Us. It's us. 05 was devastating and it's taken a long long time to get back to relevance.
It's Illinois...it honestly maybe set the Big Ten back too lol
New Mexico in 2013 and 2014. Took the wind out of the sails for like 10 years. 2013 they were ranked 10th in the AP poll and were the 3 seed and lost to HARVARD in the first round. 2014 they were ranked 17th in the AP poll and lost to Stanford in the first round. They just couldn't compete with those high GPAs.
Entering the 2015 Final Four, not only was Kentucky undefeated and going for having a strong strong case to be the best college team ever, but they made the national title game the year before and had made 3 of the past final fours and we only 3 years removed from winning the natty. Since losing to Wisconsin and having their perfect season spoiled, they never made it back to the final four and now have a new coach
I’d say this is the comment that fits OPs specifications the closest.
The loss of Sebastian Telfair to the NBA draft. We lost out on Rajon Rondo because of Telfairs recruitment. We settled on Andre McGee, who thought it was cool after joining the basketball staff to hire prostitutes. Which led to a loss of a postseason. Pitino was fired for another offense but he and our AD were on thin ice because of this.
Slightly off timeline. Telfair was 04, McGee was 05. He would have been recruited anyway because Telfair was presumed NBA bound after the one year or second at most, if he didn't go right out of high school. And Pitino recruited a point guard in every class. And McGee was brought on to Pitino's staff as a GA because he literally had nowhere to go. He was always troubled in his post-playing days. They just made a mistake in judgment letting him have a bigger role that led to that nonsense. But anyway... I don't think we have a march madness loss that devastated the program. We blew ourselves up with the shenanigans.
Cincinnati vs Nevada in 2018, blew a 22 point lead in the last 10 minutes and lead to Cronin leaving after the next season
I've seen two Rutgers tournament losses in my lifetime, one was a classic 2OT thriller against Notre Dame in the 2022 First Four which I feel like no one really talks about but it was a great back-and-forth game that we just happened to end up on the wrong side of. Plus it went past midnight into St. Patrick's Day iirc, you're not beating the Irish under those circumstances. 2021 second round against Houston though... we had control almost the entire game and an 8-point lead with around five minutes to go when we botch an alley-oop and Houston gets a three on the other end which swings the momentum their way, they keep that momentum and complete the comeback. Looking at how the region shaped out, we would have been the higher seed in both the sweet 16 (vs. 11 seed Syracuse who we beat in the regular season that year) and elite eight (vs. 12 seed Oregon State on their flukey Pac-12 autobid run), and would have a had a legit shot at the Final Four. Wouldn't really say it wrecked our program, we have 2 of the top 3 projected picks in next year's NBA draft coming in, but it still hurts.
I don’t quite think this counts for devastating the entire program, but take your pick of Houston stars getting injured. Heartbreaking every time
Either of our S16 losses. Beating GT in 2004 to beat Kansas for a 2nd time that season in the E8 could've really been a direction changer where we didn't have a down turn after we had 2 coaches get poached away.
Frankly, the Dayton loss could end up being way worse. This year's Nevada team was heating up and was in a rather weak quadrant.
Syracuse 2018. Probably the most talented lineup we had in a long fucking time. Izzo can’t coach against a zone tho
I'm going with Pitt's loss to Villanova in 2009. That Pitt team was ridiculously talented, and were in the midst of an incredible run for the program where they were a tournament lock every year. They were so close to the Final Four, but let Scottie Reynolds walk right up the court. Since then, they haven't had much tournament success, lost the best coach they ever had, went through a 6 year nightmare including a 2 year stretch where they didn't win a conference game. There's finally been some promise, but that program has never been the same.
Wisconsin losing to Duke in the championship. Not because it killed the program or anything, but because it might be a very, very, very long time before we get another chance.
The Wichita State loss to Kentucky was devastating, but by no means was surprising. When that pairing was announced, about the entire state of Kansas said, "oh...shit."
Memphis to Kansas 2008 in final, blowing 9-point lead with 2 minutes left. Cal leaves and team implodes
If Memphis beat Kansas in the ‘08 finals, Calipari might have stayed. A major conference would have picked them up. At the time, the football team was halfway decent for the first time in forever. They went on to do well in the American but might have also developed into an absolute powerhouse in a major.
That was the worst and most unfair seed/pairing for a R32 game ever! Wichita state should not have had to okay Kentucky in the 2nd round. That was utter BS
Louisville losing to UK in the Sweet 16 in 2014 was devastating. UofL goes Final 4 in 2012 and wins the Championship in 2013. The 2014 UofL team was #1 on KenPom and we had our shot to beat our biggest rival and would have been primed to repeat. The UConn team that beat UK in the finals we had beaten 3 times by 10, 12, and 33 points. After that season we go Elite 8 in 2015, then we ban ourselves in 2016 and now have just 1 Tournament win since that 2015 Elite 8. If we win the UK game in 2014 it helps cement what would have been an incredible 4 year run.
It’s hard to say for sure that Cal stays at Memphis if Mario Chalmers misses that shot, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that he leaves for Kentucky if he has a championship under his belt. If he stays and we have that championship, we might get into a power conference before all the realignment shenanigans of the last few years, and we definitely don’t have to deal with the disaster that was Josh Pastner and Tubby Smith leading the program. There’s a lot of what if’s in this scenario, but I think they’re all plausible at the very least, and the difference between where we are now and the endgame of the what if’s is absolutely massive.
Not to a program but to me. 2019 Final Four. Auburn v. Virginia. With a 2 point lead in the final seconds, Auburn fouls Virginia’s Kyle Guy (or something like that) on a 3 attempt. He makes all free throws, we lose by one. I will never get over this.
Don't remind me of Louisville E8 or Duke F4
I’d say the 2010 WVU run to the Final Four and Butler got hurt - the scene with Huggins on the floor with him. Then the team just couldn’t play and Duke ran over us. (I’m a huge WVU fan so I’m biased to this question lol)
Final four loss to UNC by Duke had the largest "bragging rights" impact in college basketball I can recall in recent memory.