10 of the Most Devastating Men's NCAA Tournament Losses

Warning: If "One Shining Moment" makes you cry, you may want to take this opportunity to head for the exits.

For the rest of you, welcome into this house of college basketball melodrama, where each terrifying March Madness tale is more spine-tingling than the last! These are some of the most devastating, most cringeworthy losses ever to befall the men's Big Dance. In this version of the Dance, someone has spiked the punch with sadness. 

Given all the drama this tournament produces, limiting this to 10 took some heavy winnowing. To date, no one has devised an algorithm that can quantify basketball devastation (does anyone in Silicon Valley still work?), so we'll have to apply some subjectivity here.

Common examples of a devastating loss can include individual or team meltdowns, unexpected comebacks and massive upsets.

Reach for the stars. If you dare.

You have to hand it to Adam Morrison: He did not care. 

Morrison ugly-sobbed into his feathery mustache, and there was not a damn thing anyone could do about it.

With an Elite Eight berth on the line in 2006, Morrison's Bulldogs were up on UCLA by 17 at one point and by nine with three minutes to play. But UCLA stormed back, and with Gonzaga clinging to a 71-70 lead, UCLA scored off a steal to take the lead for good with roughly nine seconds left. When the final horn sounded, Morrison, who had been keeping his composure to that point with varying degrees of success, began to sob near half court.

Recall that Morrison wasn't just some guy. He was an All-American who scored 24 points in the game and was considered not just an NBA talent but a bona fide blue chipper. That summer Morrison went third overall to the then-Charlotte Bobcats. And the final piece of the Charlotte puzzle was in place.

So don't feel too bad for Morrison; he played several NBA seasons and won two titles with the Lakers. Still, though, this was quite the outpouring, and his despondence stands as an indelible symbol of tournament anguish.

This one isn't devastating because of an epic comeback or last-second mishap. It's devastating because it was, well, devastating.

When UNLV humiliated a proud but green Duke team to capture the 1990 national championship, the 103-73 box score looked more at home on the early-season cupcake portion of the schedule.

There were stars on both sides, from Greg Anthony and Larry Johnson for UNLV to Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley for Duke. The Blue Devils likely never got over the loss, but they used it as motivation next season to stun Jerry Tarkanian's previously undefeated UNLV in the Final Four en route to coach Mike Krzyzewski's first national title.

So in a manner of speaking, it was this drubbing that arguably gave rise to the Duke era in college basketball.

Quick, name Lehigh's most famous sports alum.

With all apologies to the family of Snooks Dowd, if you said CJ McCollum, you were correct. McCollum, an NBA starter for the better part of nine seasons now, keyed the Mountain Hawks to one of the biggest opening-round tournament upsets ever. 

In 2012, No. 15 seed Lehigh was a 12.5-point underdog to mighty Duke, whose starting lineup featured four future NBA players in Seth Curry, Austin Rivers and the brothers Mason and Miles Plumlee. 

Playing with house money, McCollum and Co. let it fly, as he scored 30 points to lead Lehigh to a 75-70 victory. The Hawks held the Blue Devils to 6-of-26 from three, including 1-of-7 from Curry and 2-of-7 from Rivers.

It's easy to look back on this 1993 upset and conclude that this wasn't that big of a shocker, given that No. 15 seed Santa Clara had a young Steve Nash.

That logic works in retrospect, but Nash wasn't a huge factor in this first-round game. Plus, Arizona was led by its own future pros in Damon Stoudamire and Chris Mills. The Wildcats were a No. 2 seed and had just finished the regular season ranked No. 5 nationally.

By contrast, Nash and the Broncos were unheralded, just another road apple in someone else's path to glory.

So it was no surprise when the Wildcats led by 13 with about 15 minutes remaining in the second half. 

Nash was never known for defense, but that's exactly where the Broncos shone in the upset victory. Arizona went 15 minutes in the second half without a field goal, shooting just 30.9 percent on 17-of-55 attempts for the game.

When the smoke cleared, Santa Clara pulled off a huge upset not just based on seeding but also on point spread, overcoming a massive minus-20 closing line.

In its first Final Four in school history, the No. 3 Maryland Terrapins led the Blue Devils, a No. 1 seed, by 22 points with roughly seven minutes remaining in the first half of this 2001 showdown.

"You're losing by so much, you can't play any worse," Coach K recalled telling his team during a timeout. "So what are you worried about, losing by 40?" 

That loosened up the troops, and the comeback was on. Duke mounted an unbelievable charge that ended with a 95-84 win and a trip to the national final, which it won.

The Blue Devils outscored the Terps 57-35 in the second half. Duke All-American Jay (then Jason) Williams came alive, hitting big shot after big shot to finish with 23 points, including the three-pointer that gave the Blue Devils their first lead, 73-72, with less than seven minutes remaining.

It was an almost incomprehensible comeback that really left the Terrapins "shell-shocked," if you take my meaning. But as with other such embarrassing defeats, Maryland used the loss to get better, coming back next season to win the national title.

This one from 2016 is made all the worse by the fact that it's a beloved Cinderella on the business end of the devastation.

The Northern Iowa Panthers were on the brink of the Sweet 16 after a stirring first-round buzzer-beater win over Texas. Next it was No. 3 seed Texas A&M in the way, but with NIU leading that game 69-57 with 44 seconds to go, it seemed they wouldn't need a buzzer-beater this time.

But that, as you likely suspected, is when the wheels came off.

The Aggies laid down a withering press, forcing four Panther turnovers in those final 44 seconds to close regulation on a 14-2 run. That tied the game at 71.

It took two overtimes to formalize the result, but after that collapse, the Panthers' fate seemed written in the stars.

Was it a pass or a shot? 

People still debate the sequence that won No. 6 seed NC State the 1983 national title over heavily favored Houston 54-52.

When your lineup includes Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, you're heavily favored for a reason. NC State was the epitome of a plucky upstart punching above its weight.

Fast-forward to the final possession, with the game tied at 52. The Cougars played an aggressive half-court trap, disrupting NC State as time ticked down. With just a few seconds left, Dereck Whittenburg heaved it up from Steph Curry range, well before anyone conceived of that area as being a rational place from which to shoot.

With Olajuwon backed off, likely concerned about a foul or a goaltend, the air ball (or was it a pass?) landed in the hands of a jumping and unguarded Lorenzo Charles, who flushed it as time expired. That keyed head coach Jim Valvano's iconic rush across the court, an image that will be replayed in sports highlight reels forever.

As feel-good as it might be, it was still a devastating loss for what is still one of the best college teams ever assembled. Drexler and Olajuwon had to wait to do it, but they finally got their gold together in 1995 as aging pros with the Houston Rockets.

The Villanova Wildcats had the temerity to come in and shoot 79 percent on Patrick Ewing's final night in Georgetown gray.

Many people loved Ewing and the defending champion Georgetown Hoyas. Their head coach, John Thompson, was a national figure in and of himself and was well respected by most respectable people.

And then, that 79 percent.

The No. 8 Wildcats shot 22-of-28 to take the 66-64 shocker from No. 1 Georgetown. It made them the lowest-seeded team ever to win the national title.

Ewing had a solid if unspectacular night, scoring 14 points on 7-of-13 shooting and grabbing five rebounds. But no one could stop the Wildcats, who were led by Dwayne McClain's 17 points and 16 from tournament Most Outstanding Player Ed Pinckney. Both did it on 5-of-7 shooting, while Harold Jensen made all five of his attempts from the field and posted 14 points.

Georgetown never fully regained the heights it reached in 1985, when it was seen as the most dominant force in amateur basketball and beyond (this was back when college teams were far more developed). But it was fun while it lasted.

No. 16 UMBC was a 20.5-point underdog against the No. 1 Virginia Cavaliers. But the Retrievers had two things going for them: hot shooting and a tournament run completely unburdened by anything resembling expectation.

The funniest part of this 2018 opening-round upset is that it wasn't even close. The teams went to halftime tied at 21, but at the 15-minute mark of the second half, UMBC was up 14. With its vaunted pack-line defense, Virginia forces teams to shoot over it. So, that's what UMBC did. Why was that so hard?

The Retrievers converted 12 of 24 three-point attempts but also shot 26-of-48 from the floor. Virginia tried to shoot its way back into it but only managed 4-of-22 for 18.2 percent from three.

After the historic No. 1-No. 16 upset, the only one of its kind, the Cavaliers seemed to be in tatters. But once again a humiliation paid dividends down the road, steeling Virginia for a national championship run and a proper exorcism the following year.

This is the only correct answer. Other examples might carry more weight in the arithmetic, but none match the guttural devastation of the Chris Webber game.

One of the most infamous gaffes in the history of American sports sealed North Carolina's 77-71 national championship victory over Webber's talented but star-crossed Michigan Wolverines in 1993.

Michigan's Fab Five, of which Webber was a member, were watched and loved and hated. They transcended basketball. Strong feelings followed them wherever they went, and you could see them all crashing on Webber's head when he realized that his team was, sadly, out of timeouts. Technical foul.

Who can forget the image? Webber dribbling into a corner, where he was promptly double-teamed. With 11 seconds on the clock and Michigan trailing 73-71, Webber spun and called the fateful non-timeout. Donald Williams sank both free throws for the Heels to make it a two-possession game, and so it went from there.

Afterward, Michigan was numb. Fast-forward to 2017, when fellow Fab Fiver Jalen Rose looked back on the play and encapsulated the situation.

"Then I guess we all agree on that—that we wish it had never happened!" Rose told ESPN. "But honestly, I do think everyone wishes it could have played out on the floor. What would have happened? We'll never know." 

In other words, that's the way the ball bounces.