DJ Newbill and the strange emotional finality at conference tournaments

DJ Newbill will never be in “One Shining Moment,” and given what Newbill has been through during his life and his career at Southern Miss and Penn State, that’s a damn shame.

The CBS video that wraps up the season every year gives us some of the best #sportsfeels of the season in a creative genius that blends the highs and lows of the sport. There’s the celebration by the winning team, and there are the buzzer beaters that stun the nation, but perhaps the most emotional part every year is the agony on players’ faces when they realize their careers are over. We get the tears, the hugs and the heartbreak from players whose teams come up just short. But there will never be DJ Newbill.

In the waning moments of his team’s loss to Purdue, Newbill was taken off the court to a standing ovation by the three-quarters full United Center crowd, a mix of Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin fans. Newbill — one of the best players in the conference, All-Big Ten awards be damned — went to the bench unable to participate in the postgame handshake line while trying to collect his emotions.

It was a strange scene, in a stale environment with none of the pageantry of the NCAA Tournament. But it was where Newbill, after all he’s been through in his short career, came to the realization that his college basketball career was over. But that’s how it goes in the early rounds of conference tournaments, where the best players on mediocre teams get an unfitting goodbye after senior nights have already passed.

The same was true for Northwestern’s JerShon Cobb, who got a handshake from Indiana coach Tom Crean and an emotional sendoff from coach Chris Collins and his teammates to cap an impressive four-year career, in which he overcame a year-long suspension, a coaching change and too many injuries to count.

(Photo via David Banks-USA TODAY Sports)

Or what about fellow Northwestern senior Dave Sobolewski, who was the best player on his high school team that included Frank Kaminsky, starred as a freshman, lost his starting job to a freshman and was still a productive player as a senior? He and junior Alex Olah embraced for nearly a minute as the clock wound down.

(Photo via David Banks-USA TODAY Sports)

Conference tournaments are one of the strangest things in college basketball. They start the season over, giving anyone a chance to make it to the Big Dance, but on the other hand, they give us send-offs like these.

DJ Newbill’s last game wasn’t on his home floor, and it wasn’t in the NCAA Tournament, where players half his caliber will get their shining moments. Instead, it was in a stale environment in a game in Chicago that will hardly be remembered.

It’s an emotional experience seemingly unfit for conference tournaments, and one certainly unfit for a player as great as Newbill.