St. Louis ? “I love the fact that Holy Cross is in this tournament,” said Kansas University coach Roy Williams, sincere in what he was saying and yet not meaning it literally.

He was applauding the concept of a 28-point underdog getting its chance in the NCAA’s “Big Dance,” but still shaken by the reality of it.

“Can you imagine how excited those kids were leading at the half?,” Williams asked. “Can you imagine how excited their fans were when they were up by five in the second half? I think it’s great. I’ve seen the movie ‘Hoosiers’ 10 times, and I still get cold chills when I see it.”

In the movie, Jimmy Chitwood sinks the last-second shot as tiny Hickory wins the Indiana high school state tournament.

The would-be Jimmy Chitwoods playing for Holy Cross against mighty Kansas on Thursday night came close to getting the chance to make the shot of a lifetime. The only reason one didn’t was because they all wore out just an agonizing few minutes before the end of the game. Kansas survived, but Holy Cross made Williams and Jayhawks fans sweat.

Sports provides the opportunity for athletes  and for us  to thrill to surprises. It gives us the chance to pause and witness the magnificence of the unlikely, to celebrate others’ triumphs, to rejoice sometimes as if they even were our own.

Each March, the three weeks of the NCAA tournament reminds us of what sustains us  possibility.

The NCAAs do the work for us. All we have to do is watch. They give us Holy Cross. They give us UNC Wilmington, which upended Southern Cal in overtime. They give us Creighton, which toppled Florida in double overtime. They give us Tulsa, which shocked Marquette. They remind us of what we seek  joy  and what we struggle to keep  hope.

To sit behind the Tulsa bench here Thursday when the team managed its shocker by two points on a last-second shot was to almost feel what those winning players felt and to know they will never forget the experience: the look of the reserves as the winning shot floated in the air, their unchoreographed but gorgeously ragged leap, the coach’s face in the recognition of sweet victory  big-eyed, open-mouthed, a smile on his lips.

“This team thinks they can beat anybody, and I’m not going to tell them different,” Tulsa coach John Phillips said. Of course Tulsa can’t win every game  but it needn’t. How many trips does anyone get to take to the moon?

And, yes, Williams was right: Holy Cross’s players felt it in their hearts; they could win. You could hear the Holy Cross players shouting encouragement to one another as they jogged back to their locker room after warm-ups, then noisily rushed from the room a few minutes later, down a corridor, past a blue curtain and into the searing light as if certain they could beat the lavishly praised ones standing out there awaiting them. And repeating that short trip to and from the locker room at halftime, with even more feeling.

Holy Cross almost did it.