And the Nightmare Continues...

A year after George Mason upset UConn in the NCAA tournament you would think some of their former players, now in the NBA, would have a lot more on their minds this March. But the reality is that the nightmare they faced in last years tournament still dwells within them. Maybe its the reason that Marcus Williams and Josh Boone have had less than stellar rookie seasons to date. Both were first round draft picks by the New Jersey Nets and have 2 combined starts this season. Granted Williams is playing behind one of the best point guards in the game, he still has struggled and even been publicly called out by Jason Kidd. Boone has barely made it off the bench this season despite the Nets being thin in the front court due to injuries. Here's a quote from an article in Hartford:

Just because Marcus Williams and Josh Boone are off living the life of an NBA rookie doesn't mean they have forgotten about their last college game. Hardly. And you know the game.

"I don't think I'll ever get over it ..." Williams said. "I think about it all the time. All the time."

The usual greetings from Williams entering the Nets locker room is "what-up?" or "what's good?" But on Thursday before the Nets-Heat game at Continental Airlines Arena, he was moving his head side-to-side when the first words out of his mouth were "George Mason."

I guarantee no one in Connecticut feels sorry for them considering they now have lucrative NBA contracts. I'm not trying to bash these guys or UConn basketball but I think it really shows a the difference between mid-major players and glamored up BCS school players. Mason saw this game as an opportunity to play on college basketballs biggest stage and could not be turned away from the competition no matter how much they were written off. The UConn squad last year was a team full of super stars who all wanted the spotlight and most likely saw the game as just another showcase to the world before they signed NBA deals. Looking back they now realize that maybe if they burried their egos for a few weeks and forgot about the NBA sweet life for a second they might not have this unsettling feeling in their stomachs about their last college game.