As Gordon Hayward's half-court heave hung in the air April 5, everyone watching the Butler-Duke national title game was seeing the possibility of history being made.
If the shot goes in, it's the film "Hoosiers" come to life in college basketball form.
The shot didn't fall, but it was still a spectacular run by the Bulldogs to get to the title game. Butler's story is one of many captured in Kyle Whelliston's new book, "One Beautiful Season: Inside College Basketball's Mid-Majority."
Whelliston runs the website midmajority.com, which covers the 25 mid-major conferences in Division I basketball. The book he wrote is a terrific chronicle of the 2009-10.
"Some of the great stories, some of the best moments in our generation of college basketball happened last year," Whelliston said.
While I enjoyed reliving the stories from the NCAA Tournament — Butler's magical run, the Xavier-Kansas State double-overtime thriller — it was the stories people wouldn't know about that I found most interesting.
Whelliston tells the story of spending the night in the "haunted" Palestra in Philadelphia and playing the kazoo in the Northeastern pep band. Those were the tales that I enjoyed. It captured the spirit of small-school basketball that sets it apart from the high-profile schools.
He said it was difficult to know what the book would look like during the season.
"It's real difficult to see the big picture," Whelliston said. "You really don't get a good idea of what's going on until it's over."
He said if he had tried to put the book together in April, it would have been a bad book. Even his first effort to finish the book by August failed, and the book was put out at the beginning of October.
The book is a substantial one, clocking in at just under 600 pages with the appendix and index. Whelliston poked fun at the size of the book, saying it could double at a paperweight or doorstop. In extreme circumstances, you could even eat the book, he said.
I think the book works well because it's easy to pick it up and read in small doses. The chapters often work as short stories, covering a specific team or event Whelliston experienced over the course of the season. You may find yourself tearing through the book in large chunks because you get wrapped up in the storytelling, though.
If I had to nitpick something, I'd complain that the book could have used one more edit. There were a few small factual errors and the like. As a copy editor, those things tend to jump out at me, though. More than likely, you won't even notice and you get engrossed in the book.
A love for basketball was a sentiment he echoed in our conversation.
"It's the greatest sport we've got on Earth," Whelliston said.
Whelliston captures what makes college basketball so great early in the book.
"…this was the first weekend of the college basketball campaign. Each of the 334 eligible Division I teams, organized in 32 conferences, still felt and still believed they had some kind of realistic shot at that prized National Championship," he wrote.
With the start of the 2010-11 season this week, including Ball State's tipoff Sunday against Eastern Illinois, the feeling that everyone has some chance to have their beautiful season and make a run at the title drives the sport.
There's no BCS trying to determine two teams to compete for the championship. Everyone has a chance to earn a NCAA Tournament berth and play for the title. The best team is decided on the court, and occasionally a "Cinderella" story can capture our imagination in March.
That's what makes basketball great and why I think any basketball fan would enjoy reading "One Beautiful Season."
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