The NIT is over.
Let the music play. (Sorry. We can’t get rights to One Shining Moment. At least this is better than the time we accompanied our imagined montage with Ben Folds’s song about a mall cop.)
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Our video opens with grainy 2017 footage of Indiana’s name being announced on the NIT Selection Show. Hoosiers vs. Georgia Tech. At…Georgia Tech? Headlines speculate about the reasons for Indiana declining to host the NIT First Round at Assembly Hall. Our own analysis from that moment is even included (we thought they were preventing an angry mob). The scene switches to a dramatization of Tom Crean moving his belongings from his office to his car, then driving away. To where? We don’t say.
In the modern day, Crean is on the ESPN set. The field has just been announced. The conversation is shifting to opt-outs. Dalen Cuff says some strong words decrying those who declined to play in college basketball’s most historic and selective tournament. Crean takes things a step further.
We never actually show what Tom Crean says (again, rights issues), but we do show the endless crowds piling into Times Square in the aftermath of his speech. A child holds up a sign, sharpie on the underside of an old pizza box. THANK YOU TOM. In the background, another child can blurrily be seen holding a sign on white posterboard. What does it say? What’s that hat he’s wearing? Why is he unaccompanied in Times Square despite appearing to be six years old? Who is this urchin??? We provide no answers. On to the games.
We open in Georgia, because at least adjusted for varying tape and streaming delays, it’s Xavier vs. the Bulldogs which tips off first. We go pure highlights from there. Payton Sandfort canning threes. Aaron Scott scoring on a putback while falling down. Lazar Djokovic blocking a Silas Demary runner only to see it go in the hoop anyway. AK Okereke’s tooth getting knocked out. We really zoom in on this last one. We do a boomerang, but it’s clear we used Instagram to do it and then clicked “save story,” because the resolution is way worse than the rest of our clips.
After an interlude mostly comprised of Kasean Pryor and Thierno Sylla talking copious amounts of shit (Claudell Harris’s stepback three to beat Providence is interspersed in there), we get to the Simas Lukošius portion of the first round: There’s a supercut of Jayson Kent slashing to the rim. Lukošius is shown hitting a three. Al-Amir Dawes knocks down a long one and Walsh Gymnasium goes nuts. Lukošius is shown hitting another three. Another Dawes three is followed by Seton Hall celebrating its victory. Lukošius, again, from deep. Villanova’s seniors walk off the court at the Pavilion, stunned. Lukošius hits the game-winner.
The second round opens with probably six too many shots of Walsh Gym. The timelapse of the urinal lines pregame might have been unnecessary. Can you blame us, though? Walsh Gym is an amazing place. I think they should put a maternity ward in Walsh Gym. Think of the caliber of babies we would have if they came into the world in that level of a shooter’s gym. We would kick so much 2048 Olympic ass.
Kadary Richmond rebounding compilation? Kadary Richmond rebounding compilation. Ross Hodge somberly boards the Mean Green Machine (any plane carrying North Texas is called this—Air Force One situation).
Jizzle James’s second round is cut up with a lot of clips of Edgerrin James nodding. Serious look on his face. This? This is expected in the James family. Earned not given. We mix a clip in here of Sean Pedulla and Dale Bonner getting chippy.
Headlines again. Hunter Sallis is out for Wake Forest. Justin Hill is taking some chirps from the crowd. He looks at them, smiling slyly. We cut to Terre Haute, where Ryan Conwell is burying shots. We cut back to Winston-Salem. Georgia is up big. Hill’s running back down the court. His smile is bigger now.
After a long shot of Ryan Odom staring into his Tampa hotel mirror, hazy visions over each shoulder of his younger self watching his father hoist the NIT trophy, the game is on at the Yuengling Center. The Student Zone is unhinged (we’re really good at cropping clips so any empty seats are edited out). The screaming young adults in neon shirts gradually grow more desperate, though. Sean Bairstow makes a free throw. We see the Huntsman Center next. Lawson Lovering has just pulverized a rim with his hands.
The clips from Salt Lake City and those from Las Vegas run in a splitscreen. Ben Krikke scores in the paint? Jaeden Zackery finishes through contact. Gabe Madsen hits a three to send the crowd into a roar? Kalib Boone throws one down with authority. We end with the UNLV postgame celebration. The child in the air. During a break between the Hoosiers theme loops (this montage is 18 minutes long, by the way), we hear Dedan Thomas say, “We’re going to Jersey, brother.”
Cameras swirl in Columbus as the Schott’s lower bowl fills. Ohio State looks confident. Poised. Jake Diebler has a swagger to him. Mike White sets his jaw.
The lobs are useful. The lobs are really, really useful. We get a lot of footage of Ohio State alley-oops. We use one of the Felix Okpara ones twice. Different angles, though. Nobody notices it’s the same play if you use different angles in these.
After a Blue Cain three, we see the first hint of concern in a wide shot of Ohio State’s bench. But then there’s Bonner, and there’s Jamison Battle, making shots and throwing down more dunks. But then! But then there’s a Noah Thomasson three, and the game is tied, and tension fills the air. We cut ahead to Blue Cain making his second free throw. The Thornton free throw/Cain rebound/Cain turnover sequence happens. Thornton misses from deep. Battle, at the buzzer, hits the front of the rim. He walks away, head held high. Mike White’s jaw remains set.
In Terre Haute, it’s the Game of the NITe of the Century, and the headlines flashing atop the screen from across sports media highlight this. Anticipation is high. The Hulman Center is boisterous and full. We get a closeup of what appears to be a student yelling, “This shit means something!” He is not a student. He is a plant. We hired him from a crisis actor service. That’s why his yell looks so plaintive, and not as triumphant as it should be.
Robbie Avila, top of the key. Robbie Avila, again from three. Lukošius, answering. Jizzle James dancing between defenders. Sweat flinging from an Indiana State fan’s brow. Avila’s hand on Aziz Bandaogo’s back. Bandaogo going down. No call. Sycamore three. Wes Miller, on the court, cheeks engorged, murder in his eyes. We zoom in on those cheeks—each of them, individually, one at a time—as the Hoosiers theme loops back to its beginning again.
We show a lot of Jayson Kent dunks now. Not all of them even from this game. Not all of them even from the NIT! This is the Jayson Kent dunk portion of the proceedings. This is when we all say, “Man. Jayson Kent has some great dunks,” and think about how much better this NIT was because Jayson Kent had all those dunks. Eventually, the buzzer’s sounding, and the crowd is going wild, and Jay Bilas—upon seeing that the fans aren’t going to storm the court—holsters his revolver and pockets his volunteer sheriff’s deputy badge, receding back into the darkness of the concourse, satisfied.
Walsh Gym! This is even longer than the last Walsh Gym intro. We spend a full two minutes on Walsh Gym. At one point, the music cuts out and a 50-year-old actor we hired last-minute to (poorly) impersonate John Fanta is telling us facts about the building. Half of them are true. A quarter of them can’t be proven false. The Fanta impersonator tries to throw down a windmill dunk on one of those back-of-the-bedroom-door baskets, but he trips and goes straight through said door. We forgot to get workers’ comp for this. Thankfully, he’s non-union, and we have him outnumbered on witnesses. I knew we should have splurged for the real Fanta.
This is a non sequitur, but we realized during the final edit that we hadn’t included anything about other schools recruiting Josh Schertz, so we use fourteen different angles of him ignoring the same call on his phone during an open portion of practice. Unfortunately, it’s clear that this is all the same phone call, because Robbie Avila is doing the same dance move in the background of all fourteen of them. It’s happening in a different place in the background in each clip, because the angles are different, but it’s clearly the same dance move. That boy can sure shake it.
Back to Walsh Gym, Al-Amir Dawes swishes an open look (getting *up* in the process), and a young child falls in love with basketball.
In Salt Lake City, Ryan Odom is getting progressively more exasperated while Craig Smith is looking more and more affable. We stop the music again to play a clearly bootlegged portion of “You Make My Dreams Come True” while Gabe Madsen hits threes and Smith smiles at him and Madsen smiles back. Thumbs up are exchanged by a couple of Utah fans in the stands. Again, they are plants. Our budget is inconsistent. We close the quarterfinals with a big Deivon Smith compilation. In stolen Ring camera footage, we see Jason Kidd tossing a water bottle in anger.
There’s a lot of content from the hotel arrivals, and from NIT Media Day. Avila’s hands on his head while Schertz picks up a phone call from Mrs. Schertz. Avila beaming at the sight of the NIT-decaled IndyCar. Avila quietly rapping Rod Wave to himself. (Ok, it was all Avila content from the hotel arrivals and NIT Media Day.)
We tried to use drones to get some good shots of the Indiana State fans lined up before Tuesday night’s semifinals, but they were all too anti-drone. They made a real fuss about it. An older woman in a wheelchair knocked one out of the sky with the hairbrush she keeps in her purse. The footage of that drone crashing to the asphalt survived, though, and it is *great.*
The crowd is raucous inside Hinkle Fieldhouse. Children in goggles. Adults in Robbie Avila merchandise. That little kid with the pom poms and the Indiana State hat on the front row of the balcony. I-S-U chants start to drown out the Hoosiers theme. Branden Carlson keeps scoring, but it’s not enough to keep up. Ryan Conwell is scorching. The roof shakes. A Pike High School diehard wipes a tear from his 61-year-old eye.
We get a lot of mileage from the ten-year-old Seton Hall fan flexing and calling Dylan Addae-Wusu “Big Dog” from the stands. We show a few more Dawes threes, as a courtesy to the fans. Then? The Championship.
Will Larry Bird be there? Will John Wooden’s ghost swirl through this sacred building? How does the guy who played Jimmy Chitwood feel about always being The Guy Who Played Jimmy Chitwood? These are questions to which we don’t know the answer. We keep the camera trained for way too long on a guy who only kind of looks like Bird.
Indiana State wins the tip, but Seton Hall scores first. The game gets chippy fast. Shortly before the under-12, Jake Wolfe checks in, and our cameras zoom on him loosely practicing his shooting motion as Julian Larry brings the ball up court. We cut to Wolfe laying the ball in through an Al-Amir Dawes foul. The crowd pop crackles through your speakers above the still-ambling, still-soothing tune.
Seton Hall starts to impose its will physically. Bodies are crashing around. Hands are grabbing. We do a supercut of hard screens on both ends of the court. Contact. Contact. Contact. Richmond gets Kent off his feet with a shot fake. He hits the midrange jumper through the foul. But the next we see, Julian Larry is connecting from a wide-open spot on the wing, and the crowd becomes deafening. We put up a technical difficulties graphic, but it’s just for effect. We come back to the action. When Larry ties it, the noise becomes earsplitting.
We do a long zoom-in on the halftime scoreboard: 39–39. A semi-local jump rope troop (the Firecrackers!) takes the court for an invigorating halftime show that seems to feature a lot of girls who hit their growth spurts early jumping rope over girls who have yet to shoot skyward.
The second half begins, Dre Davis surging and Isaiah Swope answering back. The physicality continues. Kadary Richmond scores through traffic. Xavier Bledson nets an acrobatic heave from the post through a foul. Lots of shots of the crowd roaring here. Whole lot of shots of the crowd roaring. The masses are inspired.
Julian Larry hits a three to give the Sycamores the lead, but Al-Amir Dawes answers back almost immediately, tying the game up. Dre Davis is whistled challenging Swope at the rim. The building is a madhouse.
But yet again, Indiana State can’t break through. Kadary Richmond ties things up, tipping a pass up into the hoop with his right hand while his left side is being fouled. He makes the free throw, taking the lead. Moments later, Avila finds Kent in a hectic moment to put the Sycamores back ahead. When Ryan Conwell hits a three on the next trip down the court, Hinkle Fieldhouse is thrown into chaos. Parents lift their children above their heads like spoils of war. When Swope puts the Trees up seven, the party is on. Hinkle Fieldhouse is naturally a loud building. This is something else. The noise shakes pieces of confetti loose from the rafters.
But! But. But. But.
Seton Hall rallies.
Kadary Richmond scores coming out of the timeout.
The Pirates get a couple stops.
And after two big Al-Amir Dawes free throws, Seton Hall gets a big Al-Amir Dawes three, right in Indiana State’s eye. And after an Indiana State timeout and two missed shots by the Sycamores, Indianapolis native Dre Davis works his way to the hoop to give Seton Hall the lead with only 16 seconds remaining on the clock. Indiana State hustles the ball up the court, but as the action breaks down, Josh Schertz calls a timeout. On the inbound, the ball is tipped around. Isaiah Swope attempts a three, but Jaden Bediako blocks it. And while Ryan Conwell corrals it and hoists one last attempt, it only hits rim, and Jayson Kent—reliable Jayson Kent, there all the way for the Sycamores—doesn’t have the time to put it back in the hoop before the buzzer sounds.
Pirates 79.
Sycamores 77.
Hinkle Fieldhouse empties to the echoes of LET’S GO PI–RATES sung by the smaller crowd. The thousands who came to see Indiana State leave emptied.
The confetti blows. The net is cut down. Al-Amir Dawes takes the Most Outstanding Player trophy. And as the Hoosiers theme winds down one last time, the NIT rests. Until next year, when the first hints of fall send basketballs bouncing upon dusty barn floors, hundreds of teams around the country stepping up in pursuit of one common prize: The trophy of the most historic, most selective, and most noble tournament in all of sports.
God bless you all.
Bona NIT.
