Best day in Maui Invitational history? Comebacks, fireworks and college basketball at its best

LAHAINA, Hawaii — Where to start?

Maybe at the end: at 9:38 p.m. local time, with the Hawaiian sky already a blanket of black, save for a few patches of starlight. That 12-hour time slot — four college basketball games, one after the other after the other — was finally done. As palm trees swayed in the breeze, Polynesian Adventure bus no. 261 engine around the loading lane behind the Lahaina Civic Center and waited for its last passenger. A second later, Dayton coach Anthony Grant descended the stairs from the second-floor gymnasium and emerged from the shadows. He then climbed the few steps onto the bus before sinking onto the front row of seats diagonally from the driver.

What a night. What a day. What a sport.

For the past 40 years, the Maui Invitational has become a mainstay of college basketball, easily the most celebrated of the early season’s bountiful array of neutral-site events. Why? The magic of Maui – and no, that’s not referring to the beautiful black sand beaches or the stunning sunsets framed between volcanoes. The Maui magic explains how a 2,400-seat high school always seems to, somehow, spur spectacular basketball games. And while there are too many of them to count, the fine folks of Hawaii have at least tried to memorialize many of the classics with black framed pictures that hang in the gym’s double staircase. Some of the biggest names in the history of sports adorn these walls: Kemba Walker, Adam Morrison, Bobby Hurley.

But after Monday they will have more space.

In many ways, it’s fitting that the 40th anniversary of the Maui Invitational opened with arguably the best single game day in the event’s history, possibly one of the best days outside of March that men’s college basketball has seen in some time . How good was it? Two top-five teams (No. 2 UConn and No. 5 Iowa State) lost by a single basket. Two other ranked teams (No. 4 Auburn and No. 12 North Carolina) completed second-half comebacks of at least 18 points. (UNC went the extra mile to fall behind by 21 against Dayton; it marks the Tar Heels’ biggest comeback since 1993, or a year after current UNC coach Hubert Davis last played in college.) Not enough? What about two buzzer beaters, the end of the nation’s longest winning streak and UConn coach Dan Hurley calling the officials a “f—ing joke” on national television?

Again, all in the space of 12 hours, inside the same small building in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

No other sport is capable of the same high-stakes drama that college hoops is, especially not packed into one locale. The shift from infuriatingly awful basketball to the highest level of hoops, sometimes in the span of a single possession, can induce whiplash. But that’s what makes it fun. This is how you end up with a magical Monday in Maui.

Memphis and UConn, two former American Athletic Conference rivals, kicked off at 9:30 local. Memphis came in as the nation’s third-best 3-point shooting team, while UConn had a top-five offense of its own. So fireworks. Points. Lots of them. When Memphis guard Tyrese Hunter sank his career-high-tying seventh 3-pointer with about eight minutes left, it put the Tigers up 10 and the two-time defending national champions upset. With four minutes left, Memphis’ lead had grown to 13; interesting, but not worldwide. That part came next — as UConn closed out regulation on an 18-5 run that was capped by a game-tying Solo Ball 3-pointer with 1.2 seconds left. Of course, Ball had only made one shot the entire game before going foul. Maybe we should have known what the rest of the day had in store.

In overtime, hangers gave way to the theatre. Evening out technical fouls at the halfway mark — after UConn’s Samson Johnson shoved Memphis center Moussa Cisse to the ground, prompting Cisse’s teammate Dain Dainja to push back — swung the scale from chippy to confrontational. Then Hurley kicked it all into hyperdrive, melting (and falling) down on the sideline after one of his players was called for a perfectly standard over-the-back foul. Then came the obscenity, the (due) technical foul and seven consecutive Memphis free throws to cap off the upset. By noon, food trucks outside the Civic Center could have made a killing selling cigarettes: to fans, team managers, coaches and sportswriters alike.

“When we first got picked to play them,” Memphis coach Penny Hardaway said after his team’s 99-97 overtime victory, “I was OK. Starting with a bang.”

To lower everyone’s blood pressure again, Colorado and Michigan State — the Spartans missed their first 14 3s but somehow saw their national 3-point percentage increase — took the court for 40 minutes. A 16-point snoozer. Aaaaaand on.

Because then came the ridiculously good night session that started with the first opening-round matchup of top-five teams in Maui Invitational history: No. 4 Auburn vs. no. 5 Iowa State. In the first 20 minutes, the Cyclones pushed the Tigers through a pasta machine, and their bubblegum defense created a 16-point halftime lead. If Bruce Pearl’s Tigers hadn’t rattled off a late 10-2 run before halftime, the deficit could easily have been 20 or more.

But then the Tigers and Cyclones went full Freaky Friday and swapped bodies in style and substance. Suddenly, Auburn couldn’t miss, while Iowa State couldn’t hit the Pacific from a sailboat, missing nine of its first 10 shots in the second half. The Tigers didn’t take their first lead of the game until four minutes were left, then Iowa State woke up and the two punched each other in the face until the final buzzer. The Cyclones actually led with under a minute to play and had the ball again with the game tied and 30 seconds left, only for Auburn’s best player — All-America center Johni Broome, who finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds — to force a steal. with 10 seconds left and tipped in a missed layup at the other end to give the Tigers an 83-81 win. Voila: Auburn’s second top-five win in three weeks, and another top-five team headed to the loser’s bracket.

“That’s as good a win as we’re going to see,” Pearl said after the game, “and as good a game.”

Huh.

If only he knew what was coming next.

Now, in fairness, at that point nothing Dayton and UNC could do match what the day had already seen. But as the College Football Playoff committee seems to learn in real time, that’s why you play the games. Except North Carolina only seemed to play one half of the game: the second half. It fell behind by 18 at halftime, in the most frustrating way for Tar Heel fans: The team with the fewest turnovers in the country entering Monday coughed it up 12 times in the first 20 minutes, leading to 19 Dayton points . The deficit got as deep as 21 points early in the second half before Davis told his team directly.

“I told them they don’t make comeback plays,” Davis explained afterward. “You’re just not … If you would change that, this game would turn.”

Spark lit. Before long, 21 became 16. Eleven. Eight. Five. Go back to seven. Down to four. So two. Finally, after taking as many shots as possible, UNC got its head back above sea level thanks to RJ Davis’ stepback 3-pointer with under two minutes to play. Another All-American doing All-American things.

Dayton immediately struck back with another 3 and we had seen this script before. It wasn’t until UNC freshman wing Drake Powell hit a corner layup — his second of the night, after making just a 3 in the team’s first four games — that the Tar Heels took the lead for good.

As UNC’s players headed into their postgame press conference, they walked the line between celebratory and sleepy. Want to enjoy the win, but knowing a date with a top-five opponent is waiting in less than 24 hours. But with today’s full slate behind them, they—unlike Memphis, Michigan State and Auburn’s victorious players—could put the whole scene in perspective.

“It was electric,” said UNC guard Seth Trimble, who scored a career-high 27 points and will likely be the event’s breakout star. “To do it in this type of atmosphere, how loud it was, it was super fun.”

Simple, but so, so true.

Grant, whose team strangled a top-15 win, played the unenviable role of closer.

“We can’t really relive,” he said, rushing out the door, “what happened tonight.”

Maybe he can’t. But the rest of us can – and we must.

It’s impossible to say that this was definitely, absolutely, 100 percent, hands down the best day in Maui Invitational history. Too many memories. Too many good games. Too many generations of highlights to splice, although almost all of them took place on this little piece of paradise.

But Monday was in the conversation. If you want to say it’s at the top of the imaginary list, you’ll find no argument here. Most years we are lucky to get one, maybe two, true thrillers in this event. But three in one day? At the risk of sounding greedy, do we need more in the semi-finals? Another championship classic on Wednesday, worthy of hanging in the Civic Center halls? It seems so. But Monday’s magic was enough to sustain us regardless, and a perfect reminder of what makes this sport so special in the greater athletics landscape.

Back outside the Civic Center was bus no. 261 finally fully loaded. The parking brake released and off it went, up a hill and into the distance, destined to return on Tuesday. It was all quiet now – until a parking attendant started clapping his hands and piercing the crash of the sea in the distance. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and began to walk the way the bus had just traveled, up and away from the Civic Center, the day behind him. But before disappearing into the darkness, he slapped a fellow volunteer on the back and loudly proclaimed what the entire college basketball community was thinking when his head hit the pillow:

“See you tomorrow.”

(Photo: Darryl Oumi/Getty Images)