The path from the Tigers’ locker room to the Alamodome court was draped with long black curtains. As I was making that very walk after talking to players after that devastating loss to Kansas, I glanced behind me and noticed I was the only one traveling that road at the moment. All I could see from a far were members of the media, there to cover Kansas, waiting outside the Jayhawks locker room with cameras held high, recorders, and notepads ready for use, all looking so gleeful. It was a long, lonely stroll. I could only imagine what the real combatants on the losing end of the equation felt like.

Of course the scene was a bit different in the Tigers’ quarters. The smiles after the UCLA game had all been replaced with long faces, except for Joey Dorsey, who had played his last game as a Tiger while helping them accumulate more wins for the programs than any player in the team’s history. He had every reason to be upset. He didn’t grab a single rebound in the first half of the championship game and he had to watch the Tigers lose in overtime after fouling out late in the second half, in his last game. 

Yet, Dorsey is grinning from ear to ear with encouraging words for the rest of the team, proud of what they accomplished. And to think, he said before the start of the tournament that he had no idea why Tigers’ fans were so infatuated with him.

And although the rest of the team shared their hurt, they took their lumps like champs and answered question after question about the loss. That’s the true beauty of covering the Tigers, watching young men grow into men. Earlier in the season, when the Tigers loss to Tennessee, finding players to talk to afterwards was like “Where’s Waldo?”