RU Cinderella?

I used to hate walking around Rutgers campus and seeing all the lousy attempts at good marketing using the term RU. RU Hungry. RU Sad. RU Listening. You get the point.
But here I am using one myself and admitting to being enthralled by Saturday's Rutgers-Duke game.
Actually, I saw two great basketball games on Saturday and neither involved Ohio State or UCLA.
The Division II men's national championship and the Rutgers women's basketball game had exactly what the men's tournament has been missing this year: Heart-stopping, unlikely endings.

Rutgers victory over Duke was a game for the ages as far as school history goes.
I should know. I attended Rutgers from 2001-05 and saw hundreds of games in everything from field hockey to football while working as a writer for The Daily Targum.

The special thing about this game is that it is exactly the kind of game Rutgers usually loses -- in every sport. Duke was not just any No. 1 seed. The Blue Devils beat Rutgers by 40 just a few months ago. They were playing a virtual home game (at Greensboro) in the NCAA Tournament. Rutgers had a litany of excuses to fall back on if it lost. No one would have said a word except, "Congrats on another great season, ladies."

The women's basketball team has had better teams in recent years that never reached the Elite 8. The Scarlet Knights have had opportunities to win big games against big-time programs in March and they kept losing. They probably couldn't beat Tennessee if the game was played at a site as neutral as the moon.

But for one day -- and these days are becoming increasingly frequent after what the football team did last season -- Rutgers was again near the center of the sports world.
Why? Because it was Duke -- yes, untouchable, magical, blessed Duke -- which choked in a big moment.

Free throws win games. Again, I should know. My high school basketball team lost 42 straight games when I played on it, and I was a 50 percent free-throw shooter. Probably not a coincidence.

Look back at my last blog entry for a list of examples on free-throwing mistakes from just the first two rounds of the men's tournament.
Missed free throws cost teams games every day. But the person missing usually is not an All-American. A conference player of the year. A dedicated senior whose career will be tainted by a final image of her crying on the hardwood.

Lindsey Harding was at the line with 0.1 seconds left needing to make one to force overtime, two to make RU fans cry "What if?"
Harding, a senior with a storied career, bricked both shots. She shot long -- twice. It was as if Harding knew the ending before it happened and refused to be short on her free throws. As if she saw into the future and said, "If I come up short on these, people will say the pressure got to me." So, she overcompensated and the rest is history.

The win got me thinking. I know I'm a young Rutgers fan. There are plenty of grandmas and grandpas there who could spin a yarn about pain and suffering in the school's athletic history. But here is my list of the best Rutgers victories since the day I first put on a Scarlet Red T-shirt, Sept. 2, 2001.

1. Nov. 9, 2006
Football beats Louisville to move to 9-0. The sea of red-clad students on the field was an ESPN classic.

2. March 24, 2007
Women's basketball upsets top-seeded Duke to reach Elite 8. Savor this one. Where else can Rutgers beat Duke?

3. Dec. 28, 2006
Football routs Kansas State for first ever bowl game victory. A statement to the bowl committee that Rutgers deserved better.

4. March 30, 2004
Men's basketball defeats Iowa State in overtime at MSG to reach NIT. This was supposed to be the game that turned around the program. That never happened. But what a rowdy train ride home it was from the Big Apple to the Big Pizzeria (New Brunswick).

5. Jan. 5, 2005
Women's basketball defeats top-ranked LSU in overtime. The RAC was packed and the fans went home happy. Newspapers ate this story up at the time, but the victory did not have staying power. Many of the fans who said they would go to more women's games after this exciting one still have not been back.

6. Nov. 18, 2001
Women's soccer blanks rival Princeton 1-0 to advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Six days later, the Knights gave perennial power North Carolina a big-time scare.

7. April 12, 2003
Men's lacrosse scores an overtime victory at Syracuse. This is the one that got that program back on the map after four straight miserable seasons. It also led to the first of two straight NCAA Tournament berths.