Giant Killers: George Mason forged the path for Syracuse, others

Jim Larranaga likens it to the four-minute mile. That mark stood as track and field's unbreakable boundary until a spring day in 1954, when a Brit named Roger Bannister ran that distance faster than any human before him. Bannister's official time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds was a revelation -- and it would last for all of 46 days. By 1960, 20 other men would break that previously insurmountable barrier.

In 2006, Larranaga's George Mason Patriots became the Roger Bannister of the NCAA tournament. Since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, programs such as Utah (WAC) and UNLV (Big West) rose out of smaller conferences to reach the Final Four and even claim a national championship. But they…