Each week, RTC columnist David Harten will profile some of the week’s biggest upcoming games by taking a look back at some relevant history relating to the match-ups. This is Back And Forth.

We’ve reached the point in the college basketball season when things are in transition. Non-conference games are nearing a close and conference play is about to begin. The Diamond Head Classic in Honolulu provides one last non-conference tournament to watch into the wee hours of the morning, and Christmas week has produced some solid games and individual performances over the years. As we all wind down the year with holiday obligations this week, let’s take a look at a few memorable college hoops moments of the yuletide season.

December 24, 2010 – Christmas Eve Brawl

Renardo Sidney’s career in Starkville was an absolute disaster. He had attitude problems throughout his two-plus years on campus and was a major factor in head coach Rick Stansbury eventually losing his job. On Christmas Eve of his debut season, he added to that list of problems. While he and his teammates were watching a game from the stands of the Diamond Head Classic, Sidney and Elgin Bailey decided to go after each other. It ended with both players serving suspensions and depicted Sidney as a hothead at that point. Bailey eventually transferred out of the program to Southeastern Louisiana, while Sidney lasted another painstaking year in Starkville before going undrafted in the 2012 NBA Draft.

December 25, 2012 – A Block Saves Arizona

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Few college basketball fans are born with their love for the game. For most aficionados, at some point on the way from infancy to college hoops fan, there is a moment. A single play, shot, player, game, or event at which point they say to themselves, “I will always have this in my life.” Because it is the time of the season that carries the most gravitas, these things often happen in March. We asked some of our friends and correspondents: what was the thing that turned you into a lifelong college basketball fan? What was your…March Moment? We’ll be posting some of their answers for the rest of the month.

In this submission, RTC Big 12 correspondent Patrick Sellars illustrates one of the great aspects of being a college basketball fan — how a team with which you have no rooting interest or affiliation can somehow find its way into your heart:

It was my freshman year in high school, and I would say I was a modest college basketball fan at best. I watched the big games, the conference tournaments, and of course the “Big Dance” but I wasn’t a diehard like I am today. The team, but more importantly the player, that changed this all for me was Adam Morrison and his 2005-06 Gonzaga Bulldogs. The first game I watched the Zags play was the 3OT thriller against Michigan State in the EA Sports Maui Invitational, Morrison put up 43 points in the Gonzaga win. After this game I was hooked on Morrison, this shaggy haired, awkward, lanky, peach fuzz mustache flaunting kid with diabetes was draining NBA range threes over athletic guards, and he did it with passion and intensity that I haven’t seen in college basketball since.

Over the course of the season I saw every single game they played, I even talked my parents into buying the Fox College Sports West TV package so I could stay up late for all of their WCC contests. I lived and breathed Gonzaga basketball, and as a kid from Wisconsin with no affiliation to the school all my peers called me a “fair-weather-fan”. However, I didn’t care, because I was so enticed by the Gonzaga team.

As the rest of the season unfolded there were many great moments. Everyone remembers the Oklahoma State game with Morrison’s bank in three, Gus Johnson screaming at the top of his lungs “LARRY BIRD!!!! BABY!!!” I was euphoric, ironically Gus Johnson would make another call later in the year that still haunts my dreams to this day.

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