Another Amazing Shootout

Some sports rivalries are bitter grudge matches, where each team inherits some mutual hatred and the fans try to run each over in the parking lot. The raging hostility felt between Redskins and Eagles fans seems to fit this category; every new season brings a new atrocity, as D.C. fans - frequently the elderly - find themselves assaulted before, during, and after the game by the ex-convicts that apparently make up most of the population in "the city of brotherly love".

Other rivalries are almost built into the warp of geography, and seem to date back further than Arlo Guthrie America. I'm not from the Midwest, sure, so I'm not qualified to analyze - but perennial matchups like Ohio and Michigan seem to drive fans to the brink of gibbering insanity.

But the rivalry between Xavier and the University of Cincinnati - the fabled cross-town shootout' - is different altogether. Both teams almost always play their A-games no matter what kind of the season they are having that year. Both teams - in a good-natured way - seem to be made better by the occassion. Most Shootouts consist of heart-stopping, at-the-buzzer three pointers, reversals of fortune, and overtime. If a screenwriter turned in a sports movie written this way it would be dismissed as over-the-top. ESPN seems to understand the market value of a spectacular game of basketball no matter what city you come from - so the shootout has rightfully earned national attention.

Last night Xavier took it in overtime, 73 to 71. You can tell in the faces of the people downtown the whole city is tired from staying up to watch another gut-clenching, barn-burner game of college hoops.