An inexplicable Horizon League tournament championship was held at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena Tuesday night. It was flat-out one of those games where both teams have such cool stories that it sucks they can't go dancing together.THE FAVORITE: The Northern Kentucky Norse, the plundering herd from Highland Heights, were a longtime D-II stalwart. The Norse won multiple Great Lakes Valley Conference championships, made the D-II NCAA tourney 12 of 15 years from 1995-2000, and appeared in back-to-back title games, losing the second one in heart-wrenching fashion. As Stewart Mandel wrote for the Cincinnati Enquirer at the time:"It took a few seconds for the shock to wear off, but when it did, Andy Listerman sank to the floor face down and stayed there for almost a minute.Had Listerman's short jumper gone in with less than 2.5 seconds remaining, his Northern Kentucky University team would be the Division II national champions today."Northern Kentucky moved up to D-I following the 2012-13 season, spending three years in the Atlantic Sun Conference before moving on up to the Horizon. This was the first year the Norse were eligible for D-I postseason play. Qualifying was going to be a fairly remarkable feat since they were 9-21 last year and don't have a player over six-foot-seven.THE UNDERDOG: The Milwaukee Panthers were bidding to be the most unlikely squad to ever make the NCAA tournament, a team so seemingly ill-suited to postseason festivities that making the play-in game in Dayton would be as amazing as some rando No. 11 seed getting to Phoenix. The tenth-seeded Panthers finished last in the Horizon regular season, coming into the game with a record of 11-23 (4-14 in conference play) under first-year coach LaVall Jordan. Milwaukee lost its top six scorers from last year, closed out with a nine-game losing streak, and were ranked 286 out of 351 teams in ESPN'sCollege Basketball Power Index. As Jimmy Carlton of OnMilwaukee.com wrote:"Fun fact: The Drake song 'Started from the Bottom' is about the UW-Milwaukee Panthers men's basketball team and its improbable 2016-17 late-season run. If that were true, it would be pretty cool. But even though it's not, there's still an even cooler, crazier and actually true fun fact about this team: It's somehow, unbelievably, playing in the Horizon League Championship on Tuesday night."CUT TO THE CHASE: It was a competitive game, but the Panthers could never quite scale the mountaintop. There was a single-digit lead throughout, and a wild finish in which Milwaukee twice got it down to a single three-ball in the final minute, but the Norse were able to ride it out to Valhalla. The Panthers' dream of being the NCAA tournament team with the most losses in history died, but as far as dope, out-of-nowhere sports things go, it was a hell of a ride.Back in Highland Heights, the first-year-allowed, first-year-in Norse are partying like Jötnars. It's already a large hoedown, and it's only Wednesday.[ESPN]
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