Honorable Mentions - Category Five: Fantastic, It Just Didn’t Mean Enough

 Fantastic, It Just Didn’t Mean Enough

Kansas City Chiefs at Los Angeles Rams 11/19/2018

The highest scoring game in Monday Night Football history was anything but a surprise.  The over/under was set at 64, and people expected a full scoreboard. 

They very safely covered the over.

The Rams paced the game, holding a lead the majority of the way, with the Chiefs snatching a few leads along the way.  The offense started early, with a 23-23 score at halftime, and then they proved the first half was taking it easy.  They almost covered the over in the second half only.   Fantasy players all went home happy, the viewing public dreamed of a Super Bowl rematch, and the home fans went home happy with a 54-51 shootout win. 

Cal Bears at Washington State Cougars 10/04/2014

What a decade Wazzu had.  Not in terms of success but in terms of having madness inducing games that kept you glued to your screens until midnight.  This was perhaps the best of the best of “PAC 12 After Dark,” frequent home of the Cougars shootout that makes you ask questions in a exhausted stupor like “is defense even a real thing, or did I make it up?”

Future first overall draft pick, Ryan Gosling Jared Goff threw for 527 yards and five touchdowns and was decidedly the second best quarterback on the field that night.  At halftime, the game sat at 24-13 in favor of the Cougars, a score that felt reasonable and pretty reflective of who the teams were that season. 

Then that darned second half snuck up and got Mike Leach’s boys again.  Throughout the game, on six separate occasions, Washington State took a double digit lead.  They were letting Cal score, but scored right back every single time.  A 52-41 lead heading into the fourth did not feel safe after the teams combined for a 56 point third quarter, and the Bears had some left in the tank.

Cal scored the go ahead touchdown with 3:18 to play, which felt like enough time for the teams to trade two or three more scores.  The Cougs slowed up, paced themselves, and drove down the field with the intent to kill the clock before the seemingly inevitable score. 

With 1:04 second remaining, the Cougars completed a downfield pass and made it to the four yard line.  The 17 yard toss had placed Connor Halliday in the history books, with 734 passing yards in the game to go with his 6 touchdown passes.  The script from there was obvious.

In a reverse Seattle Seahawks move, they run the ball twice.  Being stopped short, with 15 seconds remaining, on third down, they sent out the placekicker for the chip shot game winner……. who missed the kick wide right.  Final score: Cal 60 – Washington State 59.

Golden State Warriors at Oklahoma City Thunder 02/27/2016

I want so badly to push this into the top ten, but a regular season NBA game?  I just can’t justify it.  It comes close though.  If there is any way to sell the value of a regular season game in the NBA, it’s simply this.  The Warriors broke the record for regular season wins in season in 2016, so every game counted.  That said, it doesn’t mean anything else. 

Although I haven’t the faintest memory as to the reason my family had gathered that Sunday afternoon, there was a cluster at my parents home.  My mother, an Oklahoma native, and Thunder fan took the occasion to make one of her semi-annual choices to sit down and get invested into a game that was on the television.  My nephew had been pulling me back into NBA fandom over the course of about a year at this time, and I wasn’t sure if I was a Warriors fan for good yet, but I knew I wanted to see them make history.  The chasing the Bulls 72 win season narrative was alive and well at this point, and I was all in to cheering for the record to be broken.

A clash of family members was set.  The household had stakes on the line. 

The first half was decidedly, although not overwhelmingly, Thunder controlled.  Most of the half was spent with a double digit lead for OKC, with the matchup being managed the way you would expect on paper, with the Thunder using a significant size advantage to bully the Dubs around.  This worked to the tune of an 11 point halftime lead.  The third quarter that game went the way they all seemed to go that season: a flustering surge of Warriors speed with small ball on full display, and a push to close the gap.  By the end of the third, there was no decided advantage for either team.  The Thunder clung to five point lead that felt anything but comfortable. 

My mother, after a tense back and forth final two minutes of the third, which saw the Warriors with opportunities to tie or take the lead a few times, yelled in joyous celebration.  Excited to have the bragging rights for the afternoon, she loudly expressed her happiness over her team’s victory, while my nephew and I quietly negotiated who would be the one to break it to her that there was a quarter left to play. 

The fourth quarter was every bit the tension filled period that the third was. The Thunder wrestled control with a 12 point advantage in the quarter, only to squander it again in the closing minutes, trading blows back and forth until a wild scramble in the closing seconds resulted in a Warriors steal and last second trip to the stripe to force regulation to end deadlocked.  That play alone would have been as miraculous a finish as one could ask for, but on to overtime they went.

Overtime felt more or less the same as the fourth.  Two teams that were committed to giving every bead of sweat available towards the cause of victory that day refused to give an advantage to the other team.  With roughly eight seconds to go, an OKC shot clanked off the rim, a scramble for the rebound landed in Golden State hands and Andre Iguodala did exactly what he should have, forfeited a second of the precious clock to look around the court, locate Steph Curry and get the ball into his hands. 

Curry drives a bit past half court and realizing that the clock is running low, casually (and I mean that, as casual as I shoot a free throw) pulls up from 32 feet, contested, and drains the heartbreaker to the Thunder with 0.6 left on the ticker.  He shimmied his way down the court in celebration and mom slumped into the couch, aware that she was now officially out of quarters.

Kansas City Chiefs at Oakland Raiders 10/19/2017

Mostly memorable to me for taking place a mere four days after my first trip to the black hole in person.  The Raiders saved their best for when I wasn’t around (this is becoming a tradition).  The game culminated in a last minute drive by the Raiders in which roughly eight plays were run in the final 20 seconds with touchdowns being called back on penalties, reviews, and untimed downs being granted for defensive penalties.  It was exhausting and I wish it was the game they’d played four days earlier.  It would have a better chance at the top ten if it weren’t for those awful color rush jerseys.  Please, NFL, make them stop.