Ledyard

And suddenly, from the self-inflicted rubble the Eastern Connecticut Conference has created, the league infamous for bickering, opt-outs and ducking competition, rose this spectacle Thursday night.

Once again, the kids. Always the kids. They showed us the possibilities. They showed us, during a two-hour production of passion and perspiration, that this is still a league that can achieve excellence before mediocrity.

Maybe the best place to begin was at the end. Or close to it. Ledyard 70, New London 70. Nine seconds left. Everyone inside cozy Standish Gym, the broiling passion pit, was standing, screaming, waiting. The Whalers were about to inbound the ball. The scene looked like something we see on television. But in our corner of the world?

What a time to hit the cosmic pause button. And just savor it for a second. Look around. Listen. Appreciate. That it's possible here. In this league. With these teams.

You were wondering what New London coach Craig Parker drew up in the timeout. Parker, in a tie game once with a few seconds left, decided to forgo X's and O's and opted for brevity. His plan: "Hey, guys," he said. "We're the Whalers."

It was a line that drove all the non-Whalers out there to distraction. What kind of strategy is that?

But darn, if Torin Childs-Harris didn't win the game at the buzzer.

It's a New London thing.

And it was again Thursday.

Collin Sawyer, the young man with the shooting range into the hallway, had the ball. Vegas would have made him a seven-point favorite to launch. The din in the gym rose to levels it hadn't reached all night. But now Sawyer was driving to the basket.

After the game, Sawyer deadpanned that it was just another win. He used that calmer-than-a-lagoon demeanor to quietly slip a pass to C.J. Parker for the game-winning layup.

The Whalers won again.

Only their celebration wasn't aimed to belittle Ledyard. They knew. They knew it was a game befitting its hype. Maybe that's why the handshake line after the game featured actual handshakes. The kids looked each other in the eyes. So did the coaches. Coaches who haven't exactly sent each other Christmas cards lately.

Sometimes, the competition is so good, all you do is exhale and respect the other guys even more. Plus, who knows if they meet again in the ECC tournament?

"Even if we had lost," Craig Parker said later, "I'd be OK with it. It was a great high school basketball game."

Parker, who joined counterpart Dave Cornish in the Belichick-like "just another game" theory before the game, wasn't so Belichick-like after.

He actually ranked this one among the program's regular-season greats.

"I remember when we lost to Lincoln, N.Y. (in the Rob Sanders-Tom Poblete era) and the game Kris Dunn's senior year when he beat Cardozo (of New York)," Parker said. "I remember in 1996 we were 12-0 and NFA was 11-1. They had us by 16 at halftime in a full gym and Isaiah Curtis got 26 in the second half and torched them. This one is right up there."

This was the best atmosphere of them all at an ECC regular season basketball game. Hundreds of fans were turned away at the door. The line formed at about 4 p.m. for a 7 p.m. tip. It was hotter than Calcutta. An unforgettable night.

And perhaps the opportunity to ask: Do you really want to throw away this league? Because this league should be founded on games like this. We should see more of them. We can. Instead, we cave to the whiners.

The passions inside Standish Gym gave us all a reason to think Thursday night.

Meantime, there's the recurring story of green and gold. Do the Whalers win every big game? Nah. Just most of them. That's why their shooting shirts say one word: tradition.

"We're the traditional program around here and one of them in the state, I believe," Parker said. "Some schools have a good run - and I'm not implying this about Ledyard - but some schools come through, maybe win a state title. But we've been there for many years. There's a distinct difference there."

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

Twitter: @BCgenius