COMMENTARY

By Tim Dahlberg

updated 9:33 p.m. ET April 1, 2006

Add it to the list because George Mason’s improbable run to the Final Four is one of those feel-good, David versus Goliath kind of stories that don’t come along frequently enough in sports.

But without a title, it's not the greatest upset in sports history, but simply a great run.

By not beating Florida, the Patriots are simply a great story but fails to better the group of college players who beat the mighty Soviet Union hockey team before anyone on the George Mason roster was even born.

Still, it was a great run.

“I can only imagine the feeling they must have on that campus, in that locker room,” Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun said after the Huskies became victim No. 4 on Sunday. “It’s something they probably never imagined.”

It’s something hardly anyone imagined, even the Patriots faithful who saw their team lose twice to Hofstra just days before George Mason got what looked like a very charitable No. 11 seed into the tournament.

Three million people entered an ESPN.com contest to pick the national champion. Just 284 of them thought it might be the Patriots, and a close look at their e-mail addresses might find most of them go to George Mason.

MEN’S NCAA TOURNAMENT RESULTS Championship game Florida 73, UCLA 57 Final Four games Florida 73, George Mason 58 UCLA 59, LSU 45

“We don’t mind being the Cinderella,” George Mason guard Tony Skinn said.

It seems the George Mason players weren't aware of how big two more wins could have been.

How big? Well, let’s start at the top, and work our way down a very elite list. Argue with them if you want, but these stand out:

Miracle on Ice

March Madness slide shows AP   Title time Best images from Florida-UCLA in men’s championship game. AP   Turtle wax Top images from Maryland’s overtime win over Duke for its first NCAA title. Reuters   The Final Four See images of Saturday's games where four teams become two. Getty Images   Eight is great Click to see images from the Elite Eight round of the 2006 NCAA tournament. Getty Images   Super Sweet 16 The best images from NCAA Tournament's second weekend. AP   Round 1 & 2 Best images from opening weekend of Big Dance.

The year was 1980, the Cold War was still going strong and the best players in the Soviet Union still played for the Soviet Union. You know the rest. A group of college players coached by Herb Brooks who had been beaten 10-3 by the Soviets in an exhibition game just a few weeks earlier outplayed the vaunted Soviet team, then held on for dear life for a 4-3 win.

The win, of course, was immortalized by the famous call of Al Michaels, but what many forget is that the U.S. team still had to beat Finland a few days later to win the gold. The Americans did, but needed to score three goals in the final period to win 4-2.

Tyson-Douglas
No one could beat Mike Tyson. No one. He was the baddest man on the planet, so ferocious that opponents sometimes froze just walking into the ring. Not James “Buster” Douglas, who was a 42-1 underdog by the time the two met in Tokyo on Feb. 10, 1990. Douglas took the fight to Tyson, and survived a knockdown before stopping the champion in the 10th round to win the heavyweight title. Tyson only recently admitted he was never the same after the loss.

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