Keeler: CSU Rams, America’s March Madness Cinderella, went from One Shining Moment to One Shining Mourning

From One Shining Moment to One Shining Mourning. In a blink.

“I’m telling you,” Jeff Hoffmeister, CSU Class of ’93, whispered to me Sunday while watching his beloved Rams fall to mighty Maryland in the second round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. “This is when legends are made.”

Four seconds and an eternity later, Jalen Lake rose to the rafters and hit one of the biggest shots in CSU history.

Three seconds after that, Derik Queen kicked him in the stalwarts.

The Maryland freshman drained a jumper off the backboard to escape with a 72-71, buzzer-beating victory that took the Terrapins to the Sweet 16 in San Francisco.

“But the last month,” Hoffmeister said, “has definitely been the most exciting month of CSU basketball.”

And the Rams might’ve saved their best for last.

While CSU was leaving it all on the floor in Seattle, Hoffmeister was pacing the floor in West Washington Park. The Rams alum was one of about 65 faithful packed into the northwest corner of the Blackbird Public House, living and dying with each wild momentum swing.

As Bowen Born drove and kissed the rock off the glass, giving the Rams a 14-8 lead six minutes into the game, back at the Blackbird, Hoffmeister rose with him.

Actually, Hoffmeister didn’t so much rise as spring giddily from his seat, hopping with such ferocity that the black chair he was sitting in hit the floor and split into three pieces.

“Gotta pace myself,” he said with a grin.

So did CSU. After taking a 37-30 lead into halftime, the Rams came up on the wrong side of a 9-0 Terps run over the final five minutes.

And none of it, Rams alum Alexa Ferry said Sunday, took away from the journey. Not Queen’s dagger. Not Maryland’s 10 treys. Nor the fact that the Terps ended CSU’s 11-game win streak in just about the cruelest way possible.

“It’s just cool,” said Ferry, a Lafayette native and a ’22 CSU grad. “I think since the football program never really got super exciting while we were at school, it’s nice to be considered kind of a basketball school. And to have something to get excited about in terms of school spirit.”

While the Rams were knocking, the party along East Alameda Avenue was rocking. The Blackbird did it right, with grabable piles of green-and-gold pom-poms and beads waiting for patrons at each booth and table. The CSU corner of the pub had shamrocks in the windows and a bouquet of green balloons tethered to the table in the middle of the room. It was as if Saint Patrick had never left.

“It’s a good crowd. It’s a fun crowd. We have a great time,” Peter Harnisch, CSU Class of ’87 and a co-owner of the Blackbird, told me. before the game. “So other places are a little bit more subdued because it’s not necessarily an exclusive CSU crowd. This is a CSU crowd, and we’re cheering for CSU. We get fired up.”

These Rams (26-10) weren’t just busting brackets of strangers. They were ruining office pools of friends and alums, too. Taylor Crump, CSU Class of ’20, confessed Sunday that while she predicted her alma mater would knock off Memphis, she actually picked the Rams to be eliminated in the second round.

“But it’s been great redemption after last year, losing to Texas (in the first round),” Crump said. “That was rough.”

This season? Not so much.

“It’s awesome,” said Crump, a Rock Canyon alum who was a member of CSU’s Golden Pom squad. “Each year, you worry that the seniors leaving, you’re like, OK, are we going to be able to keep up like the excitement? But this year, obviously, has blown every other year out of the water.”

No kidding.

But when you’re kind of a basketball school, Sunday March heartbreaks can happen. So can Big Ten schools with deep pockets trying to poach your coach.

“We’re definitely a hoops school,” Hoffmeister laughed. “But I’m a little bit worried that we’re going to lose the guys who made us a hoops school.”

Several Twin Cities news outlets are reporting that the University of Minnesota has targeted Rams coach Niko Medved as its No. 1 candidate to replace the fired Ben Johnson. Medved grew up about 25 minutes from the Golden Gophers’ campus, give or take the traffic.

“Why wouldn’t he stay on and stay with the team that you built,” Ferry asked. “And potentially have even more success with that same group? Because everyone’s bought into (him).”

If the Gophers are smart, and that’s not a guarantee, they’ll come up with at least 3 million reasons — as in $3 million per year — to change Medved’s mind.

Minnesota’s a tough gig in a league that’s deeper than the Mariana Trench. But it’s home.

“There are so many guys on this team that you root for,” Hoffmeister sighed. “I think it’s been the definition of a team, man.”

And if this truly is goodbye, Hoffmeister wouldn’t trade it for all the hogs in the Great White North. He never had so much fun watching his heart bank off the glass.