I’m guilty of schadenfreude and I’m not apologizing.
Like the Democrats and their lapdogs in the media, who refuse to apologize for Russia, Russia, Russia, COVID-19 or insisting Joe Biden was sharp mentally as president, I will not say I’m sorry for finding joy in the pain of others, which is the condition described by that German word from paragraph one.
This is the roundabout way of telling you it did my heart good to see Houston coach Kelvin Sampson looking like someone had hit him in the gonads with a two-by-four after his team lost to Florida in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament title game Monday night.
What a far cry it was from Saturday, when Duke choked away a 14-point lead in the second half to lose to Houston in a semifinal game.
Afterward, Sampson failed to appreciate that his team would play on only because there was no one to administer a group Heimlich maneuver to a gagging Duke team.
Instead, Sampson had acted like was 69 going on 13 years of age. He was smug, arrogant, boastful, preachy and generally obnoxious in panning Duke and overhyping his team. He called out anyone who had ever doubted the greatness of his Houston team, and presumably of the coach, too.
Well, I’m one of those doubters. I will admit I did not have Houston getting to the title game. I did have Florida winning there.
Fast-forward to Monday night and Sampson’s team choked away a double-digit lead in the second half and lost to Florida, which barely led in the game, except when it counted – at the end.
Karma is a female dog.
Sampson’s team looked lost at crunch time, commiting turnover after turnover and then failing even to get off a shot on its final possession.
It was glorious and all I could think of was maybe Sampson wished he’d just put a sock in his mouth Saturday instead of ranting in one of those oncourt interviews at game’s end.
Sampson mumbled through an attempted postgame explanation Monday and didn’t feel moved to call out doubters of his team.
Again, his distress was delicous.
Somehow, I kept thinking about how a lot of other Texas institutions of higher education refer to Houston as “Cougar High,” a knock on the perceived academic shortcomings that cause them to consider it something less than a college or university.
On another front, an email I received today from CBS sports gave me the final report on my bracket that I’d entered in one of their contests.
Where previously I’d ranked 600,000-something, getting Florida correct as the champion catapulted me all the way up to – wait for it – 286,535 in the pecking order. I got 73 percent of my bracket picks correct, above the national average of 68 percent.
Getting the eventual national champion right was nice. Watching it come at the expense of Sampson was priceless.
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