From Villanova's buzzer beater to Cleveland's NBA championship, 2016 has been a year of fairy tale moments for sports teams around the globe. WTOP counts down the Cinderella stories seen so far.
WASHINGTON — Away from the playing field, 2016 has been a tough year. We’ve lost legends like Muhammad Ali, Pat Summit and Buddy Ryan, and the Summer Olympics are rife with potential impending disasters. But between the lines, this first half of this year has already been packed with fairy tale stories and endings. Flip through the gallery to see our top moments, and let us know if we’ve missed any in the comments.
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Villanova’s championship buzzer-beater
Usually the most dramatic moments of March Madness come early in the NCAA Tournament, with Cinderella teams putting themselves on the map in the opening weekend. But the craziest moment of this year’s tourney may have been the last, after Marcus Paige tied the game for North Carolina with an impossible, double-pumped, off-balance three pointer with just six seconds left, surely forcing overtime. That was until Kris Jenkins buried a deep three for Nova, literally winning the national title at the buzzer.
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Leicester City’s 500/1 Premier League title
Oddsmakers don’t usually bother putting any team’s shot to win a title below about 100/1, because there really isn’t any point. Nobody’s going to bother betting any real money on a team that’s such a longshot, so if you want any action, it has to be reasonable. Yet, Leicester City, just a year removed from earning promotion into the English Premier League, came into the season at 500/1 odds to win the 30-team league. It was unprecedented in every way, from Jamie Vardy’s rags to riches rise all the way to the finish, which saw the Foxes take down the best teams in England to win one of the unlikeliest titles in the history of professional sports.
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Dustin Johnson overcomes history, USGA to win US Open
If redemption is more your kind of story, Dustin Johnson’s US Open victory had it all. A year after melting down and costing himself his best chance at his first major title, Johnson incurred a potential penalty as he clung to the lead Sunday afternoon. The USGA confronted him about it, but did not make a ruling, leaving the question to fester in the air all afternoon. Johnson made sure it didn’t matter, pulling away from the field and conquering one of golf’s greatest mental tests at Oakmont.
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Underdogs crash Omaha for the College World Series
After a number of national seeds were toppled in regional and super regional play, the College World Series continued to be full of upsets, with top two remaining teams Florida and Miami each getting knocked out early. When the dust settled, it came down to unseeded Coastal Carolina and Arizona for the national title. No matter who takes home the third and deciding game in the final series, it will be a Cinderella story.
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LeBron ends Cleveland’s title drought
Sure, the Browns might be more representative of Cleveland’s futility, but if anyone was going to break the city’s title drought, it had to be LeBron James. The native son of nearby Akron, he abandoned his hometown team and watched fans burn his jerseys, only to return once again as their hopeful savior. After coming up short last season, he rallied his teammates from a 3-1 NBA Finals deficit to beat the best team in NBA history and win the title. Even Nike couldn’t have scripted that.
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Billy Hurley’s emotional hometown Quicken Loans win
Billy Hurley III’s 2015 Quicken Loans National experience was as awful as you could imagine. His father had just gone missing, a fact he announced to the public before the tournament began. He was later found, but committed suicide just weeks later. For Hurley, the Leesburg, Virginia native and Naval Academy grad, the 2016 event was always going to be emotional. That he used the emotion and support from Congressional to turn in his first professional win on the PGA Tour was all the more impressive.
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Iceland’s Vikings conquer Euros
As recently as 2010, Iceland was the 112th ranked soccer team in the world. To even make the field at the European Championships this year was impressive enough for a team that has lost fixtures against the likes of the United Arab Emirates this year. But the most exciting team and fan base has stormed through the Euros without a loss, drawing good countries like Portugal and Hungary before dispatching Austria and England to earn a spot in the Final 8.
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Marcus Willis wins over Wimbledon
Stories like these are why we love sports. Self-described as fat and out of shape, Marcus Willis was a former top junior working as a tennis pro and wasting away his prime until his girlfriend told him to get his act together and try to make something of himself. He won six straight qualifying matches to sneak into Wimbledon as a wild card draw, then came out of nowhere to upset the 54th-ranked player in the world on an outer court in front of a couple hundred rowdy spectators, many of them friends and family. That earned him a match with Wimbledon legend Roger Federer in Wednesday’s second round, where he fell 6-0, 6-3, 6-4, but not before thrilling the crowd once again.
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