Six inches to the left and this would be an entirely different conversation.

It’s easy to obsess about. If D.J. Cooper’s desperate (yet somehow not so desperate) 50-foot  heave as the buzzer sounded to end regulation in Ohio University’s NCAA regional semifinal against North Carolina on Friday night had been just six inches to the left, it would have settled into the cylinder instead of gently kissing off it.

And instead of tumbling into an overtime session in which the exhausted and overmatched Bobcats finally ran out of magic against the mighty Tar Heels, OU would have advanced to the Elite Eight after perhaps the biggest basketball upset and greatest buzzer-beater of all time.

Six inches. 

The difference between disappointment and immortality was the length of a slice of late-night pizza.

Not unlike Butler’s half-court ka-THUNK off the glass and rim at the conclusion of the national title game against Duke two years ago. We were that close.

The Bobcats came within six inches of making Cinderella herself look like a three-dollar hooker. But alas, the glass slipper wouldn’t fit. They tried everything they could think of to keep their paws inside the transparent footwear they’d slipped into following dazzling back-to-back upsets, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Not that part, anyway.

What was meant to be was everything that happened before that - the part that hopefully nobody forgets.

OU’s remarkable run to the Sweet Sixteen will be long remembered - partly because of what Cooper and his teammates accomplished over the past two weeks, but mostly because of what those accomplishments led to off the floor.

In the strange way that only sports can, it united a nation of relatively disparate alumni and - for the first time - made them one. 

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If D.J. Cooper's final shot of regulation were a mere six inches to the left we would be talking about one of the biggest upsets in NCAA Tournament history. However, the Ohio Bobcats will have to live with a moral victory.

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Jamaal Bass should never play another college football game.

The freshman linebacker for Northern Illinois was recently indicted in Ohio for felonious assault. This indictment stems from a pre-game incident that happened when the Huskies squared off with the Toledo Rockets last November in the Glass Bowl.

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NASHVILLE – That sound you heard a little after 9 p.m., a sound that echoed across the country except the small portion of Florida south of Orlando, was a simultaneous sigh of relief from every basketball fan in America.

No, we will not have to sit through a South Florida game again.

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