After Losing

Charlie Pierce writes about the 24-1 Murray State Racers:

There are college basketball fans of a certain generation — OK, it's mine — who grew up watching the game when it was an immutable physical law that UCLA simply did not lose. They won the NCAA championship every year. They beat teams long before the ball went up for the first tip. There was the Alcindor Dynasty, and then the Wicks-Rowe Interregnum, and then the Walton Dynasty, when the Bruins won 88 games in a row. I still remember being in the Gym Bar in Milwaukee on a snowy afternoon in 1974, when Notre Dame finally beat them, and feeling that something in the great tectonic plates underlying the sport had shifted. (Maybe it was the schnapps.) Two months later, I watched them blow an 11-point lead in regulation and a seven-point lead in overtime to lose to North Carolina State, UCLA's first tournament loss in eight years. They'd dropped what was precious, and they played like just another really good basketball team that had David Thompson dancing on its head.
In 1976, Indiana won every game, defeating along the way the best team Al McGuire ever had at Marquette and the best Alabama team that ever took the floor. On their way to the title, the Hoosiers defeated nos. 2, 5, 7, and 9 — something that is unlikely ever to happen again, now that the tournament is seeded. Fifteen years later, UNLV almost got there, but the Rebels got fairly well rogered for most of the game against Duke in the Final Four and, at the end, when they had a chance to win, they'd forgotten how. Being undefeated is an illusion, more fragile than most.
"It was a great experience, especially for this school," Canaan recalled. "We rode it out as best we could, and we got a lead chip off our shoulders. Now we can go out and play the game we love without having to worry about how it'll feel if we lose."

I remember when UNLV made it to the Final Four undefeated before Duke knocked them off.  The only other team I remember getting through the regular season undefeated was the 2003-04 edition of the St. Joe's Hawks.  That was a team I loved to watch play ball.  Plus Phil Martelli is never dull.