With a two-point jumper from Chris Henry. It wasn’t supposed to be like that for the WSU men’s basketball team, but if they’d done what everyone expected all along they never would have found themselves playing the No. 1 team in the nation in the Sweet 16. So it’s been good, and I’ve cared a lot, and it’s fitting that Henry, original “foundation” player relegated to cross-training for longer than I was, scored their last two futile points.

The first few minutes of the game were wonderful. The shame was not in losing to North Carolina, but that we’ll never know what could have happened if the team actually played as well as they’re capable. And the shame is also that no one in history will ever remember that the Cougars’ shooting was abysmal, that Tyler Hansbrough only had two points in the first half, that we annihilated Notre Dame five days earlier. It will just be another team set aside as North Carolina marched toward the national title.

It’s a shame for the seniors, because it wasn’t a dignified, fighting end to the legacy they’ll leave at WSU. If they blame themselves for the loss, no one can justifiably say it wasn’t their fault.

But I did care, more than I have since I was out competing myself. And I remember too being a sixth-grader chanting the fight song like a prayer while we watched the Cougars on TV losing the Rose Bowl in 1998. I don’t remember the score, but I remember that wrenched feeling of the point when hope disappears. It doesn’t get easier.

That’s it, I’ll leave the rest of the sportswriting to the sportswriters and get back to my own job.