Throwback Thursday: George Mason's Underdog Run To The Final Four

_(Editor's note: Each week VICE Sports will take a look back at an important sports event from this week in sports history. We are calling this regular feature Throwback Thursday, or #TBT for all you cool kids. You can read previous installments here. This feature is also part of_ VICE Sports' March Madness coverage).

Louisiana Tech assistant men's basketball coach Tony Skinn is sitting in his office, rooting for underdogs. No. 15 seed Middle Tennessee has just pulled off a stunner, knocking off powerhouse No. 2 seed Michigan State in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. Brackets around the country already are busted, many beyond repair.

Still, you'll have to excuse Skinn if he isn't overly impressed. Ten years ago this month, he and a group of unknown teammates from a commuter school in Fairfax, Virginia pulled off a string of upsets that make Middle Tennessee's win look cute by comparison: Four straight surprise wins en route to the Final Four. They left in their wake a trail of shell-shocked future NBA stars and campus coaching legends, all wondering how George Mason University—a school from a mid-major conference that had never before won a tournament game—derailed their respective dates with destiny.

"I have a bunch of friends that played collegiately and you realize it's so hard to make the NCAA tournament," Skinn says. "Guys go in there just trying to win a game."

How did George Mason pull off the most unlikely run in modern March Madness history? Credit a compassionate coach, Jim Larranaga, who preached that basketball is fun, and a cast of overlooked, mostly local talent that played with unselfish grit and an unshakeable belief in each other. A decade on, George Mason's own date with destiny is never far from Skinn's mind, especially this time of the year. "It's something you really can't run from," he says. "It was a historic moment."

Fittingly for the ultimate Cinderella story, it almost didn't even begin. After finishing 22-6 in regular season and 15-3 in the Colonial Athletic Association, George Mason lost to Hofstra in the CAA tournament semifinals. The loss was compounded when Skinn punched Hofstra guard Loren Stokes in the groin in the game's waning seconds, and Larranaga announced he was suspending Skinn for the team's next game—even if it was an NCAA appearance. "Heat of the moment got the best of me," Skinn says today. "Me as a coach now, I would do the same thing with one of my guys if something like that happens."

Going into Selection Sunday, the Patriots were on the bubble. No at-large bid had ever been given to the CAA. And even if the conference made history, there was no guarantee that bid would go to Mason. Hofstra finished the year with a 24-6 record and two wins over the Patriots. "I wish I had a crystal ball," Larranaga wrote in his regular column for the DC Examiner. "The waiting is killing me."

The team gathered at Larranaga's house to watch the selection show and await their fate. The coach's wife, Liz, made a home-cooked meal.

"Tony had that burden on him because he thought he was going to be the reason we didn't get into the tournament," says former George Mason guard Tim Burns. "But there was still excitement because of the season we'd put together, so we were hopeful."

The group sweated it out as fellow bubble teams Texas A&M, Bradley and Air Force heard their names called. Finally, CBS's Greg Gumbel announced the No. 11 seed in the East Region would be George Mason, and that the Patriots would face perennial title contender Michigan State. "We started screaming and cheering," says former George Mason forward Sammy Hernandez. "That's when I realized, 'Wow, this is a big thing.'"

No one was more relieved than Skinn.

"I didn't want that incident to be the reason why we didn't get in," he says.

Most college basketball observers figured George Mason would be one-and-done in the tournament. But Skinn and his teammates felt confident going up against Michigan State. They had taken the Spartans to the brink of upset the season before, and believed they could finish the job. "We're not scared at all," George Mason guard Lamar Butler told the Washington Post at the time. "We're not intimidated."

The Patriots traveled to Dayton, Ohio and promptly handed it to their heavily-favored opponents, a team that featured three future NBA players. Mason shot a blistering 59 percent from the field. Sophomore guard Folarin Campbell had an 8-for-8 night, scoring 21 points. The big man duo of senior Jai Lewis and sophomore Will Thomas combined for 22 rebounds in a ten-point win.

It was just the beginning. "Nobody was happy to be like, 'We made it to CBS, we made the tournament, we can go home," says Burns. "We weren't scared to play anybody around the country."

Two days later, with Skinn back, the Patriots knocked off reigning national champions North Carolina 65-60, overcoming an early 16-2 deficit. Upon returning to Northern Virginia as a Sweet Sixteen squad, the Patriots were greeted with fanfare they couldn't have imagined just a week before. "Campus was wild throughout the whole tournament," writes former George Mason guard Gabe Norwood in an email from the Philippines, where he's enjoyed a long pro career. "Camera crews following us around, video interview from the locker room and the growing popularity with our fellow students had us feeling like mini-celebrities."

In less than a week, George Mason basketball went from anonymity to the talk show circuit. Associate Athletic Director of Communications Maureen Nasser found herself suddenly arranging scores of national media requests for a team that had struggled to get any reporters to come to its games. Sports Illustrated put Butler on its cover. Larranaga made an appearance on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption.

The Sweet Sixteen matchup against Wichita State game was never much in doubt. Playing in front of a local crowd just 20 miles from campus, at Washington, D.C.'s Verizon Center, Mason streaked to a 16-point halftime lead and beat the Shockers 63-55, holding Wichita State to 3-of-24 from beyond the arc. Butler skipped into the locker room after the game shouting "We're not even supposed to be here!"

The team they faced in the Elite Eight definitely was. The University of Connecticut boasted a starting lineup of four future first-round NBA draft picks and a Hall of Fame Coach in Jim Calhoun. Naturally, the upstart Patriots collective mindset was, we got this. "I remember watching UConn walk off the court after their practice and saying 'these guys are huge, they're talented, they're fast, but maybe collectively not quite the team George Mason was," says Nasser.

Larranaga made sure his team knew some UConn players had said they didn't even know what conference the Patriots played in. He gave his guys motivation by telling them the CAA stood for "Connecticut Assassins Association." The team believed, but their faith would be tested. Mason rallied from a second-half deficit against a Huskies team that featured future first-round draft picks Rudy Gay, Josh Boone, and Marcus Williams to take a late lead. Skinn missed a free throw in the final seconds and UConn's Denham Brown hit a buzzer-beating layup to send the game to OT.

"Usually when you're the lesser seed and you have a chance to knock off a giant and you don't do it, that's it," says Burns. "But Coach L gathered us in the huddle and he was like, 'We're good, we're fine, we're right where we need to be.'"

"He has something about him that's really special," says former George Mason forward Chris Flemming. "He's definitely a leader and people buy into it."

The Patriots were 5-for-6 from the field in overtime and Brown missed a possible game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer. The scene of Butler, Lewis, Thomas and teammates celebrating with unbridled joy amid a bonkers crowd remains one of the most enduring images in NCAA Tournament history.

The ensuing week back in Fairfax was even more giddy and chaotic than the one before. "The spirit of George Mason grew," says former Patriots forward Sammy Hernandez. "Everybody giving you a high five, wanting you to sign shirts. It was kind of shocking. You were their idols."

Guard Charles Makings remembers thousands of people greeting the team at its arena after knocking off UConn. "[We're] coming into the Patriot Center and there's eight or nine thousand people in there," he says. "People were sending pictures of how Patriot Circle was just completely packed with people honking their horns."

By any measure, George Mason just getting to the Final Four was a basketball miracle. But the Patriots didn't see it that way. They had visions of cutting down the nets on Monday night. "Going into that Final Four game, I don't think we had anything less in our mind than a national championship," says Skinn.

Finally, though, the Patriots were up against a true Goliath. The University of Florida boasted a frontcourt of future NBA All-Stars Al Horford and Joakim Noah. Their length mitigated the effectiveness of Mason's big men, and the Patriots seemed to come out flat. Unlike Wichita State, the Gators were hot from outside, hitting a dozen three-pointers in a 73-58 win. Florida would go on to capture the first of back-to-back championships.

While the nation applauded George Mason's unfathomable run, the team itself was deflated. "It's still tough to watch that Florida game," says Makings. "I still haven't seen it. I have the DVD somewhere."

"We definitely thought we could beat that team," says former Patiorts guard Jordan Carter. "We just couldn't get over the hump."

While it took time for the team to get over the loss, the boon for the school was immediate. Sales of Mason merchandise at the campus bookstore tallied $800,000 in the month of March, more than the entire previous academic year's figures, according to a study commissioned by the school and provided to VICE Sports. Average attendance at home games increased by more than 2,300 the year after Mason's Final Four run. Traffic to the school's athletics web site saw a 503 percent increase in March 2006 compared to the previous year, and fundraising improved to the point that the school moved up a planned $5 million expansion of the Patriot Center.

"It really hit home when we had that first game the next season when they actually presented the banner up top," says Carter. "We were just standing on the court looking up at it. It really hit me that we had something special there. I started to tear up a little bit."

In the years since, other mid-majors have followed in George Mason's footsteps. Butler made it to back-to-back NCAA championship games in 2010 and 2011. VCU made a Final Four run in 2011 and Wichita State did it three years ago. It's a legacy the Patriots, to a man, are proud of. "You want to take credit for the success that mid-majors have had in the years after [us]," Skinn says. "The mid-major teams in general know come March, man, neutral floor, anything can happen."

Maybe it's seeing something of themselves in each year's upstarts, or just knowing that the seemingly impossible is anything but, but the veterans of Mason's run still find reason to believe. "Every March Madness I put a bracket together," says Hernandez. "And I always bet on the underdog."