You can love the league or hate it. Worship it or rip it to shreds. But you can’t ignore the Big East’s postseason.

The league that brought us massive TV influence, brilliant coaches everywhere and the needless six-foul limit in the eighties also brings us the winners of the NCAA Division I men’s AND women’s basketball champions in 2003, as well as the National Invitation Tournament winner.

After taking its share of shots during the season, take a bow, Syracuse, Connecticut and St. John’s. Even you, commissioner Mike Tranghese. Despite all your chirping on Selection Sunday, you still deserve to soak in some accolades.

No matter what the final results say, Syracuse, St. John’s and Connecticut winning national titles STILL doesn’t mean the league deserved more bids in the men’s tourney. The teams that got in were the right ones; the teams left out deserved to be. In fact, if anything, the league had too many bids to the women’s tournament.

When it was time to perform, though, the league shut its mouth and did the job. And boy, did it. The Orangemen finally got Jim Boeheim his NCAA title. St. John’s took what seems like its 27th NIT title. And UConn…well, Geno Auriemma, you have a machine that Styx would be proud of.

As much as it might seem like the Big East won enough to deserve to be booed by bored fans, you just can’t do that here. Maybe it’s because the league wasn’t the toast of the regular season (a la SEC, Big 12), or maybe it’s just because the teams winning were fun to watch.

Syracuse was one of those sexy darkhorse picks in the men’s tourney. Still, anyone who claims they REALLY thought the Orangemen would win it all apparently was floating a little too close to the Carrier Dome ceiling. No matter how good Carmelo Anthony is, this was unexpected.

St. John’s winning the NIT is about as much a surprise as hearing the term “dynasty” thrown around in the NBA. In reality, St. John’s hasn’t won the NIT that many times, but when you don’t have to leave home once to win a championship, maybe it’s a bigger upset if they didn’t beat out 39 other teams for the title. Of course, that would be ignoring the mini-Jimmy V-type run this team went on late in the year, transforming itself from painfully mediocre into a very tough out.

Connecticut winning anything in the women’s game isn’t a surprise anymore, either. In fact, the Huskies might be the best advertisement for bullying since. But come on, at least it looks like UConn has fun when it plays. And I don’t care if you think women’s basketball has all the TV appeal of jai alai; if you can’t appreciate Diana Taurasi’s game, you’re missing a lot.

For its postseason, the Big East deserves credit. You can’t judge a whole league by just one team. When teams from the same league keep coming out on top, though, it’s awful hard to argue against them.

-Just a superb men’s championship game. In the end, the margin of victory was probably right, despite all the ebbs and flows. Syracuse was simply flawless the first 15 minutes and deserved every bit of that 19-point lead. However, the last 25 minutes of the game really belonged to Kansas. Even before the half, it was obvious the Jayhawks had rattled Syracuse, and that continued for a good part of the second half. Still, the Orange had just enough runs in them to maintain the lead, and when you take into account KU’s barfy free throw shooting, the outcome was probably the way it should’ve been. All in all, congratulations on terrific seasons by both teams. It’s a shame Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich didn’t get that final senior reward, but if there has to be a loser, you couldn’t

have picked ones who represented the college game better.

-Here’s hoping Carmelo Anthony comes back to Syracuse and stays a couple more years with the Orangemen. More like wishing. No matter what you hear, he’s gone to the NBA next year. You can just tell by watching him play. Anthony has an NBA-style game, and even though he fit in well and obviously had a blast at Syracuse, you still got the feeling he’d feel more comfortable in the pros. In some ways it’s disappointing, because despite his talents, there are parts of the game he could use work on, particularly mentally. It all came too easy for him this year; even in a second year in college it would be tougher. It’s also too bad because some of us still hold this apparently cryptic idea that guys should be going to college for an education as well as playing ball. The college experience as a whole-not just in class, not just in sports-is a life-builder in so many ways it’s undescribable. While there’s nothing wrong with Anthony leaving school to get what will surely be a high-paying job, there’s always that question of what happens when the ballin’ is done.

Here’s hoping Dwyane Wade sticks around at Marquette. The analysts were right; he needs to be a little more aggressive on offense. He’s an incredible athlete and player, but he also might be in danger of being classified as a “tweener” in the NBA. T.J. Ford could use another year, too, to work on that jump shot. His unbelievable speed and quickness will still get him by if he’s in the NBA next year, but they won’t sustain him for a long career. One guy who should stick around for sure is Chris Kaman of Central Michigan. He’ll probably go into the draft simply because his stock won’t get any higher next year than it is now. Like all these foreign players, NBA scouts love him as much for potential as anything, and if he plays another year it will be just an excuse for scouts to pick his game apart. If he wants to become a better player, though, he should stay at Central. Some are saying he should look at the case of Chris Marcus’s injury as all the incentive Kaman should need to go pro. Other than sharing the same approximate height, though, they couldn’t be more different. Kaman is a guy who has had to bulk up to get to the 250 lbs. or so he is now. What that means is that he shouldn’t be prone to the foot problems Marcus has had as a result of his beefier, Shaquille O’Neal-type build. Kaman is not at a high risk for injury the way Marcus was and is much more athletic, so another year in college would do wonders in improving his game. Certainly more than sitting on the bench in the NBA.

-In contrast to the final game, has there ever been an uglier performance in a Final Four than that by Marquette? The one mentioned most frequently as comparable to the Warriors/Golden Eagles’ clunker against Kansas is the 1979 Pennsylvania-Michigan State game. While I admit to being a bit young to remember that game (1 ½ yrs old, to be exact), it seems even that one doesn’t stack up. All historical accounts seem to suggest Michigan State was EXPECTED to beat Penn. Maybe not by 34 points, but the Spartans were still prohibitive favorites. The Marquette-Kansas game was expected to be a toss-up, yet the only things in question in this one were whether KU would score 100 (they mercifully took it easy at the end) and whether Marquette could keep the margin under 40. One can only hope the Golden Eagles are remembered more for their sparkling season and getting to the Final Four than they are for their bad game in New Orleans.

-So, for those who downplay the importance of free throws, did THIS game reinforce the importance of making foul shots? If Kansas’s meltdown at the stripe in the title game didn’t show the world that making free throws is imperative if you want to win in organized basketball, then the message just isn’t going to go through.

Keep in mind this game was somewhat of an anomaly, because Kansas was never this bad a foul shooting team all season. Still, in another way it wasn’t, because this was far from the first NCAA tourney game decided at the charity stripe this year. In fact, if Holy Cross hits a reasonable amount of free throws in the first round against Marquette, we’re guaranteed a different Final Four than we had last weekend.

Here’s a thought: part of the problem of why FT % keep spiraling is that many don’t understand the root of the problem. Percentages are going down because of the increasing emphasis on the “city game” mentality in all levels of the sport, every bit as much as because of young players’ obsession with the half-moon line.

In “playground” ball, the style that wins is “taking it strong.” If you can’t do that, you’re less of a player for it. Either way, you don’t dare ask for free throws; streetball doctrine implies they’re for wusses.

This is important because the city game isn’t played just in the cities anymore. Streetball has been popularized all over the country in the form of 3-on-3 tournaments and pick-up games everywhere, to where it’s what every young player learns now, not just guys at Rucker Park. It hasn’t been slowed, either, as it has seeped into the way the game is played in levels from grade school on up.

For those of us seemingly always decrying a lack of fundamentals, it’s too bad. While obviously part brawn, indoor basketball is still supposed to be a finesse game with an emphasis on skill. Teams are supposed to be rewarded for fundamental skills like free throw shooting, setting good screens, and making precise cuts. Instead, now teams are rewarded for weightlifting and sticking legs out to “check” cutters to the hoop.

They do these things because that’s what’s rewarded now, but if they had the incentive to, maybe teams and players would spend some of their lifting time shooting foul shots instead. Then we wouldn’t have scenarios such as those we saw so often in the NCAAs.

In order for fundamentals like free throws and screening to become valuable again, some of the playground mentality needs to be phased out of the high school and college games. It needs to be realized by everyone involved at all levels that organized indoor basketball needs to reward skill, not Darwinian, “strongest survives” principles. Then there will be more incentive to improve skills like foul shooting.

This isn’t a put-down of the city game. Streetball is still legendary, superb for building toughness and showcasing incredible athletes. Legends like Earl Manigault and Lloyd Daniels ought to be every bit a part of basketball history and lore as the Larry Birds, Michael Jordans, or any professional or college leagues and teams. There are just some aspects of street ball that should be left on the blacktop.

-On the subject of fundamentals are some excellent observations by Billy Packer on Final Four weekend. Love him or not as an announcer, Packer made a super point about Carmelo Anthony during the Final Four, wisely noting how Anthony saves his dribble after catching the ball and doesn’t put the ball on the floor unless it is really necessary. Packer is absolutely correct; in fact, if you watch Anthony enough, you see he gets a good amount of his baskets by simply squaring to the basket, faking a dribble or a drive, and then either passing or pulling up for a jumper.

This part of Anthony’s play should be clipped on tape, shown to young players and pounded into their heads time and again for emphasis. A bothersome characteristic of too many young players now is their first instinct upon catching the ball is to dribble, whether going to the basket or not. In fact, if you watch tapes of games from ten years ago and then from today, that may be the single greatest observable difference between the game then and now, the amount of dribbling.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a guy off the dribble. The game would be dull if the ball never touched the floor. Dribbling is fine, but only if it has a purpose. The only thing that really needs to be said is a repeat of that axiom about how it’s much quicker to get from point A to point B with a pass than it is to dribbling. This isn’t old-fashioned rhetoric, this is the truth. The college game is still far more appealing to watch than the pros because of the teamwork, but if players-at all levels-were taught a less liberal use of the dribble (and taught more about sharp cuts and strong screens) you’d be surprised how far it would go in making the game crisper and more well-played.

-More TV talk. On one hand, CBS deserves applause for taking all the lasers and special effects out of “One Shining Moment” this year. The plays and emotions from the NCAA Tournament tell more than enough stories in themselves, and they don’t need to be over-produced with neon lights and such. On the other hand, the network now needs to take the next step to stopping its treatment of this song as a brand name and return the singing of it to its writer.

For some reason, CBS keeps tinkering with it, but the song has never been done better than the original versions sang by David Barrett, the man who-surprise!-wrote the song. When Barrett sang it, you knew the song came first. You don’t get that feeling now. Like everything these days, the song is marketed like a brand name until we get sick of hearing about it. It also seems CBS feels it needs to keep bringing in big names, as if the song needs to be propped up. But “One Shining Moment” doesn’t need Teddy Pendergrass, or Luther Vandross, or any other big name to “sell” it. The song is bigger than whoever is singing it, although you’d have a hard time telling judging by all the shots of Luther during this year’s version.

With all due respect to soul legends Pendergrass and Vandross, people don’t watch this highlight montage for them. It’s time for CBS to get back to basics and allow the person who did it best to do it again.

-Journalists around the world will disagree, but Roy Williams was not out of line one bit in his reaction after being asked for the eight-zillionth time about if he was going to take the North Carolina job, this time on national television right after the championship game.

First off, the badgering questioning on TV wasn’t a surprise one bit here. In fact, it was predicted in a column here before the Final Four.

Secondly, Bonnie Bernstein’s name will be mentioned in this, but it’s truly unfair to hammer her as if she’s the only reporter who ever would ask such a question. She’s not, and in fact, that’s the major problem.

Most journalists will run to Bernstein’s defense on this and say her question to Williams was one that “had to be asked.” But did it?

The popular opinion perpetrated by journalists everywhere is that asking tough questions is doing the job correctly. Coinciding with that, journalists try to pass the line off that they’re performing a service to the general public.

Journalists need to realize they can’t have it both ways. If they’re going to ask tough questions, it should be because an answer to the question is something the public truly ought to know. If it isn’t, the question shouldn’t be asked.

This wasn’t something the general public cared about at that time. Most logical sports fans realize the answers to these kind of questions aren’t going to be any different fifteen minutes after the national championship game than they were the previous days or weeks before. As such, they prefer to see a little courtesy to the participants.

The only ones who cared were reporters who are always looking to make a story, or couldn’t deal with the fact that all week of the Final Four they weren’t getting the answer about the UNC job that they wanted. Fans know Roy Williams was not thinking about North Carolina one bit before the Final Four. He was doing his job, and if he hadn’t been, it would’ve been noticeable in his team’s play last weekend.

Fans have respect for the job Williams was doing. Even doing its job, the media could have too, but this whole episode just went to show how out of touch journalists are with logic and reality. Fellow journalists might have grilled Bernstein for not asking, but you know what? Most fans on TV would’ve had a world more respect for her for NOT pushing the issue than they do now.

The lack of sensitivity in dealing with this issue was, again, why reporters and the media get a bad name. This profession has long hid behind its “newsworthy” excuse as a passed off its customs with ancient values and hardly a hint of care about whether it is offending subjects or even if it’s doing the right thing. As long as it fits a journalists’ agenda and can be justified by some journalistic value, it’s kosher to them.

Journalists don’t need to go all touchy-feely, politically correct on their questioning. There are still many instances when tough questions DO need to be asked. This wasn’t one, though.

This was a case where it would’ve been better to show some respect for the subject matter, but that was 100% lacking in this instance. Sadly, it happens far too often in this field of work.

-Finally, it is absolutely no surprise here that Missouri may be in hot water over its wooing of Jason Conley from VMI (see “Onions” from January 15). The school deserves to be punished for this, and if Conley ever suits up for the Tigers, the punishment wasn’t stiff enough. Mizzou clearly broke rules in the way it landed Conley and it knew it. The rules are plain as day about not being able to recruit a player from another school. It was fishy the whole time how Conley went so quickly from playing to deciding a place to transfer, and the only surprise was it took any media this long to investigate the story. You can bet if this happened to any school even a little more high-profile than VMI that it would’ve been news almost immediately.