If Duke over Kentucky (see below) was the best college basketball game I’ve ever seen, NC State over Houston was the second best. I remember the ending vividly. I should have hated NC State for how they broke my Ralph Sampson and Virginia-loving heart twice in the previous two weeks. They were impossible to hate though, the way they scrapped and fought and seemed to always get the breaks at the end of the game.
In that game, the perfect Cinderella met the ultimate Goliath (I’m mixing the hell out of those stories, but you know what I mean). Run and gun and win versus shoot and fight and scrap. It’s games like that that turn people into sports fans.