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Column: Remembering the losers

Some of the most fascinating words of advice I’ve heard came from a veteran professional photography editor. He said, “Winners are boring — they all look the same. Losers make the best photos.”

This sounded weird to me at first because as a writer and fan, it is easy to focus on the victors. Winning teams are joyous and inspirational; losing teams are gloomy and heartbreaking. Winners get front-page spreads and thousands of page views; losers are bumped below the fold. But as I look back on my four years covering Princeton sports — a period of time that has included 48 Ivy League titles and nine national championships — I’m struck by how many of my most vivid memories involve losing teams.

The 2011 Ivy League men’s basketball playoff, in which the Tigers held off an emerging Harvard dynasty and returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in seven years on a buzzer-beater, will go down as one of the great moments in Princeton history. But for me, the indelible image of that season is not Doug Davis ’12 buried under a pile of fans and teammates; instead, it came five days later, in the bowels of the St. Petersburg Times Forum, after the Tigers were on the other end of a game-winning shot against Kentucky. Then-head coach Sydney Johnson ’97answered questions with tears in his eyes. To his right, Kareem Maddox ’11 couldn’t take his mind off of one play; the Ivy League’s top defender, who had helped bottle up Kentucky’s slew of NBA-caliber perimeter players throughout the game, thought about what he could have done differently to stop Brandon Knight on the final shot.

For months and months, Johnson, Maddox and the rest of that team had spent every day looking ahead to the next game, checking off a series of goals throughout the season. One moment, the Tigers were one possession away from upsetting Kentucky on a national stage; the next, their season was over, and there were no more goals in sight. Maddox’s Princeton career was over, and as we soon learned, Johnson’s was as well.

That is why I think losers can leave more powerful images, especially in college sports, where careers are shorter and teams change more every year. Winners’ reactions are an expression of pure joy, the same moment we all imagined (or still imagine) when shooting hoops or swinging Wiffle bats in our backyards. No kids grow up thinking of the moment when their seasons or careers will abruptly end, and when it happens, I don’t think anyone really knows what to expect. So while winning teams get to live out their childhood fantasies and then, more often than not, focus on the next game, losing teams have to deal with more complicated emotions — especially when there are no second chances.

The following season included several milestones anda court-stormingat Jadwin Gymnasium, and yet my memory sticks on one moment that didn’t even involve Princeton directly. After a brilliant four-year career in which he stuck with the team through its darkest season ever, Penn guard Zack Rosen had improbably led the Quakers to within one game of the Ivy League title — but those hopes weredashed by Princetonin the final game of the season. Rosen was practically lifeless in the postgame press conference; when asked questions, his responses were brief and spoken softly, and the rest of the time, he stared straight down through the table below him, until ordered to pick his head up by coach Jerome Allen. Even as a Princeton student with the proper allegiances, I could only feel terrible for the unanimous Player of the Year, who had just seen his best — and last — shot at a championship slip away.

I’ve seen women’s basketball head coach Courtney Banghart after many of her 96 wins in the last four seasons, but the losses stick out even more. In 2010, she sat at the podium after Princeton’s first NCAA tournament game, perplexed at how one of the nation’s top shooting teams made just 28 percent on the biggest stage; in 2011, shecomforted a tearful Addie Micir ’11after her college finale while disappointed in the Tigers’ play; and in 2012, she showed a mixture of pride and sadness after losing a toss-up game to Kansas State, 67-64. I wasn’t able to make it to Waco this year, but with two program-changing seniors by her side after another season-ending defeat, I’m sure the scene was even more powerful.

Even when the stakes are lower, losers’ reactions can be illuminating. Afterthe football team’s miraculous victory over Harvardlast fall, I was extremely curious how Crimson head coach Tim Murphy would react. Would he be irate? Disappointed? Calling out his players? Instead, he seemed just as confused as the rest of us in the media room, still wondering how a Princeton team that had been dominated for 48 minutes pulled off a four-touchdown comeback.

While losing teams are often memorable in their own right, sometimes they make the winners’ stories even better. That was certainly the case for my most unforgettable Princeton sports moment, which doesn’t fit the same pattern as the others. I was lucky enough to have a good view of the deciding match of the 2012 College Squash Association team championships, watching Kelly Shannon ’12 take a 2-0 lead and go ahead in the third game. Still, the Jadwin crowd held its breath, thinking of Trinity’s 13-year championship streak and the seven times Princeton came in second — including 2009, when Princeton lost a 2-0 lead in the final match.

Shannon, who had been a part of that heartbreaking loss, finallystruck the deciding blowand turned to the crowd. He didn’t yet realize that his victory was Princeton’s fifth, but the hundreds of fans that had squeezed into the Jadwin viewing area quickly let him know. As his teammates spilled over the railingand onto the court, they were celebrating not just for themselves, but also for the generations of Princeton teams that had suffered heartbreak before them.

In that moment, the winners were pretty interesting, too.

 

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