TUCSON — With no doubters left to prove wrong, his last long shot taken in defiance of the odds and his time at the NCAA Tournament done, what Northern Colorado guard Devon Beitzel felt was not a sense of loss, but a powerful mixture of peace, love and grace.
“It was weird,” Beitzel said Thursday, describing the emotions pounding inside his heart as he walked off the basketball court after a 68-50 defeat against mighty San Diego State.
Moving slowly toward a locker room where he would strip away his Bears uniform for the final time, Beitzel raised his hands to a crowd of Northern Colorado supporters and applauded them.
“This was not about proving the people who doubted me wrong,” Beitzel said. “This was about proving the people who had faith in me right.”
Here is what sports can teach if you look beyond the TV highlights. And, after leading the Bears to their first taste of March Madness, here is what Beitzel felt:
Gratitude.
It is a quiet word not heard in basketball often, because something as simply beautiful as gratitude gets drowned out in the noise of rim-bending dunks and relentless hype for the next king of the court.
While the box score saluted Beitzel’s 25 points against the Aztecs, what lingers about his performance was bolder than his long-range jumpers fired in the teeth of the defense.
No, what makes you feel lucky to be in the same arena with the Northern Colorado guard was the fact Beitzel dances like there might be no music tomorrow.
Beitzel, who might be 6 feet tall if you credit him a couple inches for feistiness, is a hero for all those kids who grow up hearing Colorado is a crummy state for basketball.
“Beitzel is not unlike Jimmer Fredette. He wears No. 32. And he plays the same way,” said San Diego State coach Steve Fisher, comparing the UNC senior once considered too slow and too small for the big time to Brigham Young University’s Fredette, considered a near-lock to be named the 2011 college player of the year.
While sharing the same floor with San Diego star Kawhi Leonard, expected to pull down big money in the NBA somewhere down the road, the man who stole this show was Beitzel.
Without question, Chauncey Billups is the best basketball player ever produced by the state of Colorado. But tell everybody you know about Beitzel, because his legacy can be powerful for a state looking for hoops respect.
“You know I heard coaches talk that Colorado isn’t really highly recruited, because the basketball talent is believed to be down,” said Bears senior Taylor Montgomery, whose options out of Cherry Creek High School were limited because his 6-foot-7 frame fell short of ideal pivotman dimensions. “I think all the Colorado players on this team have done the state proud. We’ve been those underdog guys. I know I got told by CU and CSU that I wasn’t big enough. But, here we were, in the NCAA Tournament, playing against the best.”
So let’s offer a cheer for everyone who believed in Beitzel.
Let’s begin with kudos to Joan Louth, who opened her home to a 14-year-old Beitzel and cherished him like a member of her own family when the young athlete from Lafayette did not know where to turn as his natural parents were dogged by drug, financial or legal entanglements.
Here are heartfelt thanks to Tad Boyle, the coach who gave an undersized guard a chance at UNC when the Centaurus High School graduate’s offers to play basketball at Ivy League schools proved impractical because, “I didn’t have 40 grand a year — 40 grand a semester — to pay for college,” Beitzel said.
Here is appreciation for B.J. Hill, who took over the Bears program when Boyle took a job at Colorado, and turned Beitzel loose on the Big Sky Conference. Do not be surprised if Hill signs a contract extension with UNC very soon.
And here is huge, unbreakable love for Michellene Lenz, the mother who has fought through personal issues and battled her demons to re-emerge as a welcome presence in Beitzel’s life.
Sometimes, what counts most can’t be measured by the box score.
“To go out with a bang like this?” Beitzel said. “I couldn’t be more grateful to everybody who believed in me.”
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
