As my daughter watched the final seconds tick off the University of Kentucky's overtime loss to Saint Peter's in the opening round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament Thursday night, she could no longer hold back her tears of disappointment.
"This was my favorite team EVER," she sobbed. "It's not fair."
A similar scene no doubt played out in more than a few University of Tennessee at Chattanooga households Friday night, just after this year's "Miracle Shot" Mocs led heavily favored Illinois for all but 25 gut-wrenching seconds of their 54-53 defeat, as well as homes that bleed Tennessee orange after Saturday's 76-68 loss to Michigan.
This is the agony and ecstasy of March Madness, as we've all come to call the tournament. It generates the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, often branding entire seasons as successes or failures based on the outcome of a single game. And it's only not fair if you lose.
It can lead many in Kentucky's Commonwealth to reach out to crisis hotlines and call the overtime loss to Saint Peter's "the worst in program history."
At the same time, the elation of that moment for the underdog Peacocks can lead the New York Post to artfully proclaim "Saint Peter's Day" on its sports front, an apt salute to the school from Jersey City, New Jersey, and its improbable triumph on St. Patty's Day.
As for UTC fans - who did so much this past winter to inch McKenzie Arena back to a point where it at least somewhat resembled the home-court experience of the program's glory days in the 1980s and 1990s - there seemed to be a laudable sense of both pride and pain over Friday's cruel finish.
"It was tough," said lifelong fan Rusty Scott. "Reminded me of 1982, when our best player then, Russ Schoene, missed a shot against Minnesota that would have put us in the Sweet 16. Last night, our best player, Malachi Smith, missed a makeable shot that would have won the game. But I'm so proud of them, too. Now I'm just worried about losing (UTC head coach) Lamont Paris to a bigger school."
Scott Cooper is such a big Mocs supporter that he and his wife Molly took their three daughters - Clarke, Austin and Sidney - to Asheville, North Carolina, to see UTC win the Southern Conference tournament over Furman on David Jean-Baptiste's miracle 40-footer that clinched the league's automatic NCAA bid.
Scott went alone to Pittsburgh for Friday's game, and when UTC lost, he said: "It hurt. I couldn't speak to anybody for 30 minutes or so. I just needed to be by myself."
But he also said: "I love Lamont and I love this team. This was such a good group of guys. This season was so much fun."
AP photo by Keith Srakocic / UTC men's basketball fans hold up a sign after the Mocs hit a 3-pointer during an NCAA tournament first-round game against Illinois on Friday night in Pittsburgh.Fun is what sports were always intended to be. And those understandably happy fans of Kansas and North Carolina, among other teams, celebrating their advancement to the Sweet 16 on Saturday shouldn't be the only ones enjoying this tournament.
Especially against the backdrop of the real March Madness taking place 5,358 miles away in war-torn Ukraine, where a mad man with a sadistic plan to bring a democratic nation to its knees should have us all viewing all sports as a happy distraction rather than a dark drama.
We are so fortunate to have the lives and experiences we do. As Friday dawned, my own thoughts about Kentucky's loss - I was born in the Bluegrass and my parents both went to UK - were not so much on that defeat but that my daughter, a senior in high school, and I may rarely, if ever, watch another NCAA tourney game together.
Ever since her mom and I divorced a few years ago, Julia Caroline and I have watched countless college and pro games on our den sofa, trading high-fives after every big play. But she'll be in college in another state come the fall, and when home for the holidays, she'll surely want to catch up with her hometown friends rather than watch a basketball game with her dad. I knew these moments wouldn't last forever; I just wasn't ready for it to end Thursday night.
But to turn on the news is to learn of far bigger and more tragic hurts in the Ukraine. A theater holding refugees in Mariupol bombed. Apartment buildings blown apart. A baby with the umbilical cord still attached found half-buried in a mass grave. According to the Ukrainian government, more than 110 children have been killed to date. Empty strollers and carriers have been left in a square in Lviv, Ukraine, to commemorate those children murdered by Russia.
This is real madness, not a college basketball tournament.
And if you think this is only about the monster that is Russian President Vladimir Putin and his obsession with destroying the Ukraine - a former acquaintance of Putin described him to CNN as having a "complete lack of normal human morals" - consider the following quote from Saturday's New York Times.
Said a defense expert regarding the possibility this could escalate into a nuclear war: "It's not zero. It's real, and it might even increase."
Let that sink in as you ponder your busted brackets.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy our basketball tournaments, or the return of baseball, or the Masters that is once more just around the corner, or something as simple and peaceful as a sunny spring day.
But every now and then, when we think we're feeling unimaginable hurt over a basketball loss, perhaps we should also take a moment to remember that the true madness of this March is 5,358 miles away in a country that wishes its tourney brackets and championship dreams were the only things in ruin.
Mark WiedmerContact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @TFPWeeds.