Was Thursday's Big East quarterfinal truly an all-timer?

AP

The pundits have praised Thursday's marathon tangle between Syracuse and Connecticut as one of the all-time great games in the annals of college hoops.

"A true classic," emphasizes Mike Lopresti of USA Today, "not one just to fill a slot on ESPN."

But the folks at Cursed Cleveland aren't so quick to lavish "all-time" praise on the historic sextuple-overtime affair, saying the lack of a signature buzzer-beater and generally sloppy play throughout the extra frames preclude Thursday's tilt from the pantheon of all-time greats.

[F]or a non-NCAA tourney college basketball game to be truly legendary, shouldn't there be at least one buzzer beater? The game devolved into one team answering sloppy, erratic play with the exact amount of sloppy erratic play of their own. Let's take a look at the final plays of each overtime period:

1st OT Kemba Walker taking and missing a horrendous deep three-point attempt

2nd OT Flynn misses on one end, UCONN with a chance to win, but instead gets it in Walker's hands again. He misses from way out, it's his seventh missed three in as many attempts.

3rd OT A.J Price figured his 3-12 from deep must have been a fluke, so he chucks up another, Jeff Adrian gets the follow-up attempt and misfires.

4th OT Paul Harris gets hacked and misses from point blank range twice

5th OT Price figures his 3-13 from deep must have been a fluke, so he chucks up another (I'm guessing the second highest paid employee in the state of Connecticut probably would have drawn up a better play), Adrian gets a last ditch attempt from about 10 feet on the baseline and can't connect

So six total OTs and a combined zero memorable moments.  And in four hours, Eric Devendorf couldn't even muster one cheap-shot?  How is that a transcendent game?

Does a game need a buzzer-beater to be considered a true classic? Do you think the media is going overboard with their praise of last night's game?

An Instant Classic with All the Game-Winning Misses You Can Handle [Cursed Cleveland]
Big East's 6OT classic is a sports moment worth savoring [USA Today]
Kevin Armstrong: Workmanlike Orange punch the clock to outlast UConn in marathon [SI.com]