Jim Larranaga likens it to the four-minute mile. That mark stood as track and field's unbreakable boundary until a spring day in 1954, when a Brit named Roger Bannister ran that distance faster than any human before him. Bannister's official time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds was a revelation -- and it would last for all of 46 days. By 1960, 20 other men would break that previously insurmountable barrier.
In 2006, Larranaga's George Mason Patriots became the Roger Bannister of the NCAA tournament. Since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, programs such as Utah (WAC) and UNLV (Big West) rose out of smaller conferences to reach the Final Four and even claim a national championship. But they did so as high seeds with top-shelf talent. Before 2006, no true underdog had ever reached the tournament's final weekend in the modern era and only LSU, in 1986, stood as a double-digit seed to progress that far.
Oh, a couple came close. Loyola Marymount reached the Elite Eight in 1990; Gonzaga got there nine years later. Temple advanced to the regional final as an 11-seed in 2001. Kent State did it as a 10-seed in 2002. But none could take that final step -- until George Mason.
This coming weekend marks the 10th anniversary of the Patriots' run to Indianapolis, and it is fitting that Syracuse has marked the occasion by advancing to the Final Four as a double-digit seed. Of course, if Mason had been a program of Syracuse's stature, its accomplishment never would have resonated as it still does today, with oral histories and retrospectives filling Twitter timelines for the past month.
Much has already been written about the Patriots' astonishing journey, from makeshift whiffle ball games at open practices to Jim Larranaga's "Kryptonite" speech before Mason beat North Carolina. Mason's journey was set against the backdrop of Selection Sunday, where Jim Nantz and Billy Packer ridiculed the selection committee for taking the Patriots over several programs from bigger conferences.
"It was perfect," says Larranaga, now the coach at Miami. "It was exactly what we needed. We needed people to doubt our capability so that our players would be so focused on proving the critics wrong. And we did."
The Patriots' response could not have been stronger. As an 11-seed, they beat Michigan State (a 6-seed) and North Carolina (3) in Dayton. They returned home to Washington, D.C., and easily toppled Wichita State (7) in the Sweet 16, setting the stage for their mammoth upset of top-seeded Connecticut in the regional final. As George Mason arrived in Indianapolis for the Final Four a week later, Larranaga's phone was buzzing with messages from other mid-major coaches. One said, "Hey, you broke the four-minute-mile barrier."
Larranaga embraced the comparison. And just as with Bannister, others soon followed. VCU, another 11-seed from the CAA, advanced from the First Four to the Final Four in 2011. Butler reached the national championship game in both 2010 and 2011, and while it was not a double-digit seed on either occasion, it was unquestionably an underdog. The same held true for ninth-seeded Wichita State in 2013. To a man, those teams will tell you that their paths became much clearer because of the trail George Mason blazed.
"I think it showed everybody that it's possible," says Will Wade, who was an assistant coach on VCU's Final Four team and now is the Rams' head coach. "Until something's done, nobody thinks it's possible. It's just all talk. Once they saw it was done, I think everybody saw that this can happen anywhere. I think it led to us and Butler and Wichita and everybody else."
Without George Mason, there would be no Giant Killers. We created our metrics-based method of forecasting tourney upsets back in 2006. The original math was laughable -- Big Data had not yet revolutionized basketball and tempo-free stats were impossible to find-but the project still honed in on George Mason as one of the top underdogs in the tourney. The Patriots' success provided enough validation to stick with the project -- and keep improving it. Today, a team of Furman professors uses advanced techniques like cluster analysis to help us spot upsets before they happen.
The grand lesson of Giant Killers is that upsets aren't purely random. In fact, most teams that author massive upsets share a common thread: They embrace high-risk/high-reward strategies. Some chase offensive rebounds at the expense of transition defense. Others gamble for steals. Many would-be Davids fire up bundles of 3-pointers. George Mason was what we call a "Slow Killer." The Patriots controlled the tempo and took care of the ball on offense, while at the defensive end, they played a stifling containment system and kept their foes off the offensive boards.
The teams that followed George Mason showed there are multiple strategic routes to the Final Four. VCU was the Patriots' polar opposite in many ways: The Rams pressed all game, pushed the tempo and ran a perimeter-based offense. Wichita State won through offensive rebounding, grabbing a whopping 38 percent of their own missed shots.
Butler most resembled George Mason in terms of style, and that wasn't by accident. The architect of the modern Butler program was Barry Collier, their former coach and current athletic director -- who happens to be a close friend of Larranaga. The coaches that followed him-Thad Matta, Todd Lickliter, Brad Stevens-followed his blueprint.
"(Collier) told me that our win over Connecticut and our appearance in the Final Four in Indianapolis gave him and the Butler program hopes that one day they might be able to do that," Larranaga remembers.
One of the lesser-told aspects of Mason's story is its analytical backbone. Much of what are now considered modern analytics came naturally to Larranaga, an economics major who began tracking stats like lineup plus/minus three decades ago. That knowledge allowed him to be flexible against more talented foes -- and to know when to dial up the giant-killing tactics as necessary.
Mason played a conservative defensive system for most of 2005-06, but in scouting UNC, he realized that the Patriots could exploit Carolina's freshman point guard, Bobby Frasor. In the past, Larranaga had often relied on "Scramble" -- an extended pressure D that attacks the ball-handler and looks to force traps. So in the second half (to prevent the Tar Heels from adjusting at halftime), the Patriots utilized Scramble, and forced four consecutive turnovers to start the half, turning a 27-20 deficit into a 28-27 lead.
In that way, Mason was a precursor to VCU. Smart, too, has an intuitive grasp of analytics and a recognition that high-risk/high-reward basketball increases an underdog's chance of winning. In 2011, the Rams took that approach a step further by emphasizing different giant-killing strategies in each round of the tourney. Against Georgetown, they forced turnovers. In beating Florida State, their 3-point shooting proved to be the key. Their biggest win, against Kansas, was fueled by their defense beyond the arc.
Wichita State won in a variety of ways as well. No stat may be more telling than what Wichita State did from deep in knocking off the top two seeds in the 2013 west regional: The Shockers scorched No. 1 Gonzaga in the second round, hitting 14 of 28 3-pointers. In the regional final, they made just 5-of-25 shots from deep, but still beat No. 2 Ohio State by four points on the strength of their defense: The Buckeyes hit just 31.1 percent of their field goals. That isn't evidence of a fluke. It's a sign of a damn good team.
Much like early rock musicians built on the work of Muddy Waters, George Mason's successors didn't just emulate its path. They improved upon it. The Patriots remained competitive after 2006, and even won another tourney game in 2011, beating Villanova. But Larranaga left for Miami after that season, and the program struggled to adjust to the more competitive Atlantic 10 Conference. Paul Hewitt lasted just four years as coach, and the Patriots went just 11-21 this year under first-year coach Dave Paulsen.
Now, many of these teams are tournament fixtures, frequently infiltrating the top-25 rankings. When they win a tournament game, it no longer feels like an upset. Their brands have grown in large part because they were able to learn from George Mason.
"I don't think Mason maybe took it to the level it could have been taken to right afterward," Wade says. "And that's to be expected, because it was uncharted territory for them. And I think our folks particularly learned some valuable lessons from them. I think Butler learned some valuable lessons. I think Wichita learned lessons -- they had talked to us. I think everybody had to learn from one another, and since they were the guinea pig they didn't maybe capitalize on it like they should."
VCU built suites in its arena and raised ticket prices. It redesigned the team's logo and marketed "Havoc" -- Smart's moniker for the team's style of play -- for all it was worth. The Rams were no doubt helped by their location: They were the best show in Richmond, a city with no pro teams. George Mason, by contrast, had to compete for attention with Maryland and Georgetown, not to mention four professional sports teams.
Now, Wade can call any high school coach in the country about a prospect and get an immediate response. The additional revenue generated by that initial marketing push in 2011 helps the program buy home games against lesser teams and pay for charters for road games and recruiting trips. That one journey to the Final Four continues to pay off.
At its core, George Mason's story was one of belief; one which still resonates today. Larranaga is a born storyteller, and as publications continue to call about stories celebrating the 10th anniversary of the 2006 team, he has fondly repeated one tale from the beginning of that season.
In the fall of 2005, Larranaga brought friend Bob Rotella, the famed sports psychologist, to campus to talk to his players. At one point, he told them to close their eyes and visualize the upcoming season. When he asked Lamar Butler what he'd envisioned, the senior guard said, "I dreamed we could make the Final Four."
It was an audacious statement at a school of George Mason's caliber, but inside that room, it made sense. The Patriots knew they were good, knew that all five starters could score and defend and pass, knew that being overlooked didn't make them unworthy. As adversity mounted, from injuries to suspensions to crucial losses, that confidence didn't waiver. Ultimately, their greatest accomplishment was not reaching that Final Four, but that they passed that belief down to future versions of themselves.
"For young players today, it's so recent," Wichita State Gregg Marshall says. "You know by watching it, growing up -- with George Mason, Butler, VCU and Wichita State -- that it's possible and can and will happen one day. But 10 years ago, if you were a young player, you did not realize that.
"George Mason showed us all it was possible."