Sometimes signs need time - time to be absorbed, analyzed and, ultimately, understood. Lightning hit the plane carrying the Temple Owls basketball team on its way to New Orleans last week for the first round of the NCAA Tournament. There was some doubt originally, Quincy Wadley said, but now he is sure. The flight attendants said we definitely were. At the time, this did not seem good.
Lightning is equated more with death than life.
But that was before the lopsided victory over sixth-seeded Texas. Before the lopsided victory over third-seeded Florida. The immediate thought after the lightning hit was that this was the ultimate dose of bad luck in a season already full of it, one last shot at an exhausted fighter who had pushed himself to this point but seemed destined to go no further. Now the lightning is something else. It is a source of empowerment, an emblem of entitlement, a sign, even, of invincibility.