A salute to the…losers?
Here’s to the teams that fall to the wayside on the road to the Final Four.
One of the beauties of the NCAA Tournament is that it doesn’t matter how much you win by, just that you win. At the same time, though, that is also one of the Tournament’s cruel realities.

Losers in the NCAA Tournament are usually gone and forgotten faster than Dick Vitale can change subjects. All the goodwill generated when a UNC-Asheville or Vermont makes its first NCAA appearance, it’s all an afterthought on the national scene as soon as they fall behind by double-digits in their first-round game.
Five years from now-and probably less-no one will remember that San Diego actually led Stanford by three points with three minutes left in a game in the NCAA Tournament this year. Heck, they won’t even remember that Stanford lost a round later.

The tournament doesn’t so much as pause for a breath when a team loses by one point, or on a buzzer-beater. It doesn’t care if a team is making its first-ever appearance or its tenth in a row. When you’re gone, you might as well be thrown on in a landfill and buried, for all most people care.

That’s just how it works, and it’s not incorrect. Like life, winners are celebrated in the tourney. Losers are old news.

Sometimes, though, maybe we shouldn’t forget them quite so quickly. It just seems so unfair that a team like Southern Illinois can lose by a single point one day-and under terrible circumstances, no less-and be completely forgotten the next.

While there’s a huge difference in whether a team advances to the next bracket spot or not, many times the line between winning and losing is much, much thinner. To paraphrase a particularly wise comment read recently on a message board, sometimes teams aren’t beaten, they just lose the game.

Teams like Oklahoma, Syracuse, Michigan State and the rest playing this week deserve all the credit they get. Still, as much as it may seem odd and against our nature, those teams left behind on the way to New Orleans shouldn’t be forgotten.

There will be 63 teams in this tourney that don’t win it all, and every single one of them still has a story. More relevantly, many of them could still be playing this week just as easily as the teams that did survive.

Remember UNC-Wilmington, which had the defending national champions beaten if not for an absolute miracle shot.

Remember Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which was just a 50% conversion rate on two final minute layups from beating Notre Dame. Panther fans are still waiting for Dylan Page’s final shot to roll into the basket, not off the rim like it did in such tantalizingly slow fashion.

Remember Southern Illinois, which was hosed by a horrible call against Missouri. So much for letting the players decide the game-what a terrible way for a super basketball game to end. Even two days later, no one was remembering this game ought to have gone to overtime, but they should have.

Remember Missouri, too, because the Tigers nearly took that break all the way to the Sweet 16. Marquette needed perfection in overtime to send the Tigers home.
Remember N.C. State and St. Joseph’s, both of who also lost in overtime in the first round but on the whole aren’t any worse than some of the Sweet 16 teams left.

Remember California, which beat N.C. State in overtime, and then, for the second year in a row, was stuck with what was essentially a road game in the second round. Pittsburgh last year, now Oklahoma this year. It’s just not fair the Golden Bears seem to always be the ones reminding us how stupid the pod system is.
Remember Gonzaga…wait, that shouldn’t be a problem. The Zags and Arizona played one of the all-time classics, and it’s too bad both can’t advance.

Remember Colorado State, which had more than one chance to take the lead on mighty Duke very, very late in their first-round game.

Remember Tulsa, which was certainly the better team than Wisconsin but didn’t finish the deal. The Badgers made the Golden Hurricane pay for it dearly.
Remember Arizona State and Central Michigan, two teams who won’t complain a bit that their seasons ended in the second round of the tourney. They took preseason expectations and slammed them out of the ballpark. Now let’s hope Chris Kaman stays in school another year, and Ike Diogu sticks around three more years.
Remember Creighton. The Bluejays lost to Central Michigan, but put on a second-half comeback that would’ve been one for the ages if successful. And how appropriate was it that Kyle Korver ended his final game hitting a three-pointer?
Remember Holy Cross. The Crusaders were edged by Marquette and just can’t get over that hump for a first-round win, but we still enjoy watching them try.

Remember Western Kentucky. The Sun Belt Conference champs, minus arguably their two best players for virtually the entire season, stood toe-to-toe with the Big Ten’s best team in Illinois. When the best teams in the Sun Belt and Big Ten are this close, doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about these so-called “mid-majors”?

Remember San Diego, which fought back from a 19-point deficit to take the lead against Stanford. The Toreros just about gave the West Coast Conference two teams playing in the second round.

Remember the Vermont Catamounts, who, as if their task wasn’t tough enough in playing Arizona, barely made it to the game on time because of travel problems. That didn’t stop them from giving the Wildcats a hearty effort for a while.
Remember Texas Southern, the school that the NCAA will say was in the tourney when it really wasn’t.

And remember Utah State and East Tennessee State, two of the best number 15 seeds you will see in the Tournament in your lifetime.

This may seem like a lot to remember, but these aren’t even half of the 48 teams eliminated from the tourney so far. Every one of them, though, has done itself proud before exiting.

None of these teams will be playing this weekend. We know that for sure. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t good enough to be there. Too bad history won’t be as kind in remembering that.

Early rounds marked by near-misses, but still exciting
Many may dispute this, with so many higher seeds advancing, but the number of close games in the first-round only confirmed that this year’s tournament was as balanced as any in recent memory.

The only thing missing from the tourney has been true upsets, but we won’t let that take away from the excitement of the games. Eighteen of 32 first-round games were decided by 10 points or less, and several others were much closer than their final score. That shows that lower seeds were more than able to hang in their games. It’s just that the underdogs were almost as a rule unable to close the deal.
Why? Well, for one thing, the higher seeds just played so doggone well. Look at some of those shooting percentages. Missouri shot 54% in beating Southern Illinois by a point. Pittsburgh hit for 56% against Wagner. Syracuse made 58% of its attempts in beating Manhattan.

Kentucky made 62% in their blowout over IUPUI, while Maryland shot 62% in their dramatic win over UNC-Wilmington. Wisconsin? 53% shooting versus Weber State. Even a poor offensive team like Oklahoma State shot 54% against Pennsylvania. To make a long story short, it’s tough to beat teams shooting that well.

Shooting numbers don’t even tell the whole story when you factor in offensive rebounds. Wake Forest had 18 offensive caroms against East Tennessee State. Louisville had 14 against Austin Peay. Stanford had 12, which was one less than San Diego, but that number is magnified when you compare shooting percentages (Stanford’s was 45%, USD’s was 33%). Between hot shooting and strong rebounding, higher seeded teams just weren’t going hungry on the offensive end much.

Free throw shooting also cost some teams. Tapes of Southern Illinois, Western Kentucky and Holy Cross doinking numerous freebies in first-round games should be distributed to every basketball player in this country as an example of why players NEED to work on free throw shooting. SIU shot 11-21 on free throws against Missouri, while Holy Cross was 15-25 against Marquette. And Western Kentucky may well have beaten Illinois, if not for missing the front end on several one-and-ones late.

The games were still very, very competitive, though, and that’s why we watch the tourney. If there was anything boring about the first round, it was how the underdogs seemed to be losing the exact same way all the time. Many, many times the low seeds were right there in the final minutes, but every time it seemed the favorites would hit clutch and sometimes even ridiculous shots. The games followed a pattern, and after seeing teams come so close so many times, it was almost predictable how teams like East Tennessee State and Pennsylvania were going to stay close but lose at the end. It would’ve been nice to see a little more variation in how the games played out.

Give credit where it is due, though. The higher seeds played some terrific games on the first weekend and, whether it was caused by their opponents or self-inflicted, most lower seeds didn’t play exceptionally well. Maybe, though, that more than anything else is a testament to how narrow the gap is between teams in the NCAA Tournament. Most underdogs didn’t play anything close to perfect games, and they were still right there in many games.

More agony of defeat than thrill of victory
March is typically full of both excitement and heartache, but this year seems to have more of the latter than the former. Obviously that depends some on what point of view your watching games from, but from a neutral standpoint, it seems there have been more examples of teams being tantalizingly close but losing than there are of heroics to win.

It was tough watching Holy Cross come so close to a first-round upset-again-and just miss for the third year in a row. It was heartbreaking to see Southern Illinois robbed of a possible overtime on a horrendous call, and even worse watching Wisconsin-Milwaukee have two layups to beat Notre Dame-and miss them both. And those weren’t even the worst.

UNC-Wilmington’s buzzer loss to Maryland just surpasses Tulsa’s collapse against Wisconsin as being the most painful finish in this tournament to watch. It was sad and ugly watching a senior-dominated Tulsa team blow a 13-point lead in the final three minutes of a game it owned. This was reminiscent of Rhode Island’s 1998 meltdown in the Elite Eight against Stanford; the better team over the course of the game didn’t win, but you can’t blame anyone but the losing team for frittering the game away.

UNC-Wilmington’s loss to Maryland just made you want to cry. Ironically, this was one game decided by a spectacular final shot, but it was hard not to feel for the Seahawks. UNCW played incredibly well against the Terrapins and deserved to win. UNCW took the Terps’ BEST shot and was still better on this night, and don’t let a single person try to tell you otherwise. Maryland shot 62% against UNCW, so it’s impossible to say the Terps didn’t show up, especially since the Seahawks had a double-figure scoring starter suspended right before the game. Down the stretch, it was Wilmington controlling the boards and taking over the game. Only a clutch three by Steve Blake and the prayer shot of the decade allowed Maryland to advance (put it this way: I’m betting if Drew Nicholas takes that shot 100 times, he misses it 95-that’s how tough a shot that was).

What made it really tough was that it was also the final game for several UNCW seniors, including Brett Blizzard, a guy who never received the national respect he deserved. He, Craig Callahan and the rest of this year’s seniors deserve to have their jerseys retired, because they have helped make this program very near the equivalent of a Gonzaga or Butler. The future, though, was on full display Friday night, as freshman guard John Goldsberry scored 26 points and hit 8-for-8 on threes. The beat will go on at UNCW; it’s just a shame it had to end in such fashion. While part of a person says the shot by Nicholas proves that champions don’t die easily, another part of one says that in a just world, if there’s any team that doesn’t deserve to win on a buzzer shot, it’s the defending champions. That’s not a rip on Maryland, and besides, like life, the NCAA Tournament isn’t about fairness. Also like life, once you’re a champion, you’re always a champion.

How do you like them now?
You have to be cold-blooded or even reptilian to not feel good for Butler and Auburn. The two teams that probably took the most national beating for being in this tournament have proven they are certainly worthy of being here and have added some much-needed spice to the list of teams remaining.

Auburn has played with a re-energized attitude in making it past St. Joseph’s and Wake Forest to the Sweet 16. The Tigers have simply been clutch down the stretch in both games, and considering it’s been a few years since Auburn was in the NCAAs, that says an awful lot. Judging by his play in the tourney, Marquis Daniels should be an All-American. Yet again, Cliff Ellis has done much more with a team than he’ll ever receive credit for. The guy has done it at South Alabama, Clemson and Auburn; it’s time he gets more national respect as a coach. While their play now doesn’t cover up their late-season swoon-and thus, it is still fair to question whether they should have been in the tourney-it does prove the Tigers were absolutely better than that. Auburn will give Syracuse a much tougher game than anyone expects Friday. Hopefully for Auburn, the Tigers won’t be the victims in a close game like the ones they have already played.

Butler is an even better story. There isn’t much to say about the Bulldogs that hasn’t been already documented by other media, but Butler’s celebration after beating Mississippi State was really one of the greatest celebrations you’ll ever see in the NCAA Tournament. The jumping on the press table and yelling weren’t grandstanding, showboating or complaining. They were, though, genuine joy, as well as the release of a lot of pent-up frustration. These were players celebrating a win against the odds, while at the same time feeling the vindication of extinguishing past demons. Butler finally had revenge, not only for last year’s ridiculous NCAA snub, but also for the burden carried by a team that is expected to be perfect every night during the regular season and isn’t allowed a single slip-up without hearing about it. After everything it has been through, nothing summed it up better than watching BU senior Joel Cornette, with almost a crack in his voice, tell the press conference after the Louisville game, “We…are…still…here.” The Bulldogs deserve to gloat, at the NCAA, at the media, and at the doubters. This team was robbed last year and has been through so much and been under the microscope for so long that it deserves every single thing it accomplishes this month. This is a fantastic team, has been for several years now. And forget the individual matchups, because the results say the Bulldogs are every bit capable of hanging with Oklahoma this week. NCAA Tournament history doesn’t favor the #12 seed defeating the #1 Sooners. At the same time, though, Butler has the history of “Hoosiers” on its side, as many media have noted. One wouldn’t want to bet against that, either.

Speaking of Bulldogs
We can only hope that some day soon this “mid-major” label will go away from college basketball, particularly for teams that have proven time and again the label doesn’t fit them. In addition to Butler, that also especially goes for Gonzaga. If the Bulldogs’ play Saturday against Arizona didn’t show the Bulldogs are NOT mid-major, nothing will. Gonzaga didn’t even play a perfect game, and the Bulldogs were still one shot away from defeating the Wildcats in a classic for the ages. That wasn’t a fluke, either. This program has sustained itself too long to be subject to monikers that stereotype it as a “cute” underdog.

Instead of comparing the Bulldogs to the Montana States and Samfords of the world, a fairer comparison is to UNLV. More than 20 years ago, Jerry Tarkanian started making national ripples with the Rebels when they were a member of the unknown and unheralded Pacific Coast Athletic Association. The Rebels became a national power in the eighties, and capped it off in 1990 with an NCAA title. Anyone who remembers UNLV knows the school was a perennial top 20 program, and never, ever, EVER was UNLV once referred to as a “mid-major.” UNLV was a national powerhouse. It’s conference was occasionally jabbed at, but the team was still always respected and usually favored when it took on foes from more prominent conferences.

The same respect UNLV garnered needs to be given to Gonzaga. The Bulldogs haven’t made a Final Four yet, but this program is building that kind of empire. Any of the past five Zags’ teams would’ve been near the top of any conference in America. And fortunately for all of us, the Bulldogs seem to have followed a much cleaner path to college basketball’s elite.

Ten years ago there was no talk of mid-majors. There weren’t “power” conferences, no perceived limits on how many teams certain leagues could get into the NCAA Tournament, and you could actually see Missouri Valley Conference teams on ESPN during the week. There were stronger conferences and weaker conferences, good teams, decent teams, and bad teams. That was it. That’s how it was, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be that way now. A number of the class distinctions that have come about in college sports and particularly basketball are cases where terms were used by a few people, and the media, for some reason, has completely run with them, instead of using some judgment.

Good basketball is still good basketball, regardless of conference, school size, whether it has a football team, or anything else. It’s time for the media to step up and quit labeling every non-BCS school with the condescending “mid-major” term. Especially those who have been good for a while. UNLV never was a mid-major. Neither was Gonzaga.

Letting off some steam…
This will probably sound like poor sportsmanship or whining or whatever else, but after watching 50-some hours of basketball over four days last weekend, it has to be said: no other major sporting event in the world has worse officiating than the NCAA Tournament, and it isn’t even close.

It’s not just that whistles seem optional for most officials in the tourney. Even though some of us despise it, we’ve gotten used to how it usually takes bloodshed to get fouls in the Tournament. What is a huge problem and is absolutely unacceptable is the inconsistency of the calls in the tournament.
There were many examples over the first few days of a) whistles blown right after the same or even a far worse violation was just allowed a possession or two beforehand, or b) a call made that wrongly took a game out of the players’ hands. The example from the Southern Illinois-Missouri game has already been mentioned here, how the Salukis were jobbed on a totally bogus blocking foul call that should have been either (by the book) a charge on Mizzou or (the politically correct call) a no-call. That game should have gone to overtime.

But there were plenty of others, too. Particularly peeving was a terrible hand-check call for Ronny Turiaf’s fourth foul in Gonzaga’s game against Arizona. That came about three possessions after a Bulldogs’ guard was all but uprooted by a Zona defender hedging out on a screen-with no whistle. The foul paved the way for the Zags’ star to foul out before regulation even ended.

Maybe the worst came at the end of the Tulsa-Wisconsin game. No one was stewing about it, because it was technically right, but they should have been. Down 61-60 and with one second on the clock, Tulsa needed to go 94 feet in one second and had an in-bound play from under its own basket. Before the Golden Hurricane could in-bound the ball, though, the Tulsa player was called for stepping over the end line.

That’s right, one-point game, a second left, and an official is effectively ending the game on a foot fault. Replays showed that, yes, it was the right call. However, based on the officials’ work in the rest of this tournament, it was wrong, because if anyone watched players in-bounding after baskets throughout the tourney, they would see about 40% of all throw-ins were illegal, with players stepping over the line. Before this, though, it hadn’t been called once, so it’s nothing less than disgusting this game had to end because suddenly the officials decided to enforce a rule.

In college basketball, officials always use the “letting them play” excuse as a reason for being lazy with the whistle in postseason play. Well, in these and some other games, the players weren’t being allowed to decide the game. They were being overtaken by calls that were either incorrect or at the least maddeningly inconsistent with other calls or no-calls throughout the tournament. And that stinks.
This is March, and players, coaches and fans deserve much, much better. Disagreeing on how the game should be called will happen. Inconsistency is inexcusable, though. NCAA Tournament games are too close and too competitive to have officials picking and choosing what they want to call.

Almost all blown calls in the tourney have been so obvious or against the “policy” of tournament officiating, it’s absurd. If refs are going to go freestyle on us and not follow any sort of rules, maybe it’s time to do away with them. The NCAA could really save itself some money and not use officials for the tourney. Instead, just let the players call the game themselves. They couldn’t do much worse.

Obviously, a fair person isn’t going to say a call or two was the main difference in a game. Southern Illinois didn’t help itself by going 11-21 from the free throw line. And Tulsa probably wasn’t going to score in one second and has only itself to blame for blowing a big lead. Most of the missed calls, though, were the result of inconsistency and certainly preventable, and it’s a shame some teams didn’t even get a final opportunity to decide the game themselves because of that.

Charging fouls
-You know Michigan State is playing well when Tom Izzo is happy. This is the guy who ripped his team after a 20-plus point win over Loyola (Ill.) this year. Seriously, though, this team hasn’t played even close to this well all year-talk about peaking at the right time. If they keep it up, the Spartans are a darkhorse threat for the Final Four.

-Most impressive team of the first two rounds? Probably Pittsburgh. The Panthers weren’t perfect, but they took care of business handily in both of their games, never dilly-dallying around against Wagner or Indiana. They were probably the only team that did so. Almost every other team in the tourney had a close call for at least a while-even Kentucky wasn’t dominant in beating undermanned Utah.
-Least impressive? Hmmm…LSU is probably a good choice. The Tigers were on such a roll coming into the tourney and then just stunk up the arena against Purdue.

-Atlantic 10? Ouch. 1-3 is not a good start in politicking for more respect. Granted, all three A-10 teams had difficult matchups, but this league still needs to win more than 25% of its Tournament games.

-What did we tell you about Tim Smith of East Tennessee State? The freshman guard had 22 points and almost single-handedly led ETSU to an upset of Wake Forest in the first round. He is definitely a player for the future in college basketball. Also respect to Zakee Wadood of the Bucs. He had 20 points, 14 rebounds and seven steals against Wake. Not a bad performance for East Tennessee State, considering it had been 11 years since the school’s last NCAA appearance.

-A salute to another 15 seed. Wagner was beaten by 26 by Pittsburgh, but the Seahawks still had a sensational year. Dereck Whittenburg has a class program going there, and we’ll miss seeing Detrick Dye’s set shot and Jermaine Hall doing damage in the post.

-Further salute to IUPUI. The Jaguars lost to Kentucky by 31, or exactly 25 points less than what SEC foe Vanderbilt lost to the Wildcats by several weeks ago.

-I don’t care if there are questions about his shooting, and I don’t even care anymore if he’s too much of a media darling. Luke Walton is easily one of my favorite players to watch in the country. What a pleasure watching a player pass as effortlessly as Bill Walton’s kid does.

-I also don’t care if all four Big East teams still left all make the Final Four: the league STILL didn’t deserve any more than four bids to the Dance this year.

-Don’t let Louisville’s rough finish this year cloud the fact that Rick Pitino is getting things done with this program. The Cardinals will be a serious Final Four threat for years to come.

-We won’t drill CBS’s coverage too much this year, since the war has disrupted it a great deal. Still, we can only dream that someday we can actually watch an NCAA Tournament game without three-minute commercial timeouts every four minutes of game action. Way, way, wayyyyyyy too many commercials during these games.

NIT: Needs Interested Teams
Sad to say, but the National Invitation Tournament has been mostly an afterthought this year, as ESPN’s coverage of the event has shrunk dramatically due to its commitment to the Women’s Tournament. Truth is, this isn’t the most appealing NIT field in recent years, either. The NIT went overboard on selecting also-rans from the major conferences. The problem with that is those teams were even more average than like NIT teams in past years. There’ve also been too many rematches of regular season games. Georgetown-Providence, Iowa-Iowa State and Texas Tech-San Diego State weren’t exactly national classics during the season, so why were they playing early in the NIT? Also, we now see so much interleague play between the BCS conferences in November and December that there’s really no desire to see more in March.

There’s still some excitement left, with Texas Tech alive, UAB and Temple continuing their late-season rolls and a possible Georgetown-St. John’s final. But for the most part, this year’s NIT has tested the support of even its biggest supporters. Hopefully the teams left actually care at least. The NIT has also been skunked by some embarrassingly heartless performances. UNLV’s play in a home game against Hawaii was an embarrassment, and any fans attending should’ve received a refund of their money. It’s a dirty shame teams take such an NCAA-or-bust approach to the postseason. Going to Madison Square Garden for the NIT semifinals isn’t the NCAA Final Four, but it’s still a pretty darn nice reward for a season. There’s not that much wrong with the NIT, certainly nothing that couldn’t be fixed by some attitude adjustments. You would think human beings would instinctually be much more competitive than some are in this event. At the least, though, if these teams don’t want to play, then they shouldn’t accept the invitation. It’s an insult to fans and opponents when teams don’t take these games at least a little bit seriously.

Women’s tourney early rounds are severely lacking
As someone who defends women’s basketball frequently, this isn’t fun to say, but the early rounds of the NCAA Division I Women’s Tournament are just plain bad TV right now. There are serious issues with home courts in this tourney, the TV coverage is disjointed, and there is absolutely zilch drama as far as possible upsets.

In the 32 first-round games in the women’s tourney, there were-get this-two lower seeds winning. That’s right. Two. One was #9 seed TCU-hardly the definition of an upset. The other was #11 Notre Dame, which won the national championship a few years ago.

Why on earth would anyone watch this instead of the men’s tourney if the higher seeds might as well receive byes to the second round? The move several years ago from 48 to 64 teams for this tournament was a good one, but upsets have actually been becoming increasingly scarce since then. Why? Well, one is obviously the homecourt factor. In fact, this year’s move to predetermined first- and second-round sites has been disastrous, with almost all of the upsets in the second-round were by lower seeds playing at home against higher seeds.
If you want a better reason, though, look no further than an old friend that has polluted the men’s tourney much. In recent years, the women’s selection committee has stopped trying to pick teams based on their record or actually watching them, and has relied a sickening amount on the RPI. It is so absurd that this year’s women’s tournament has only nine conferences receiving at-large bids-that’s it.

With a few exceptions, the women’s selection committee almost goes straight down the RPI in selecting and seeding teams. Considering how RPI has become so despised in men’s college basketball, that’s not a good thing. It’s for RPI reasons why a perennially strong Louisiana Tech can go 29-2, be ranked in the top 10 in the country, and be a #5 seed. Meanwhile, Virginia can go 16-13, Michigan State and Illinois can go 17-11, and all three are 8 or 9 seeds. RPI is also why teams like Siena, Creighton, Maine, Indiana State and Baylor can win 20 games or more and not make the field.

The women’s tournament isn’t helping itself by living off of RPI in selecting teams. It is ruining the tourney’s diversity and makes the selection committee look like nothing more than men’s tourney wannabes. The women’s game is strong enough and unique enough that it doesn’t need to resort to such weak tactics.

Incidentally, ESPN’s coverage has been a disappointment. The network doesn’t stick to games at all, meaning we usually get to see about 6 half-games and highlights instead of 3-4 whole ones. If you don’t have the Full Court package and aren’t in a home region, good luck trying to follow a whole game. Why it doesn’t follow its old 1980s men’s tournament coverage is a mystery. Just like CBS should for the men’s tourney, ESPN needs to focus on a certain set of games, stagger the times wider apart, and THEN move people around if games stink. This quick trigger thing just doesn’t work.