Bulldogs are right, they deserve a real dance card
DAYTON, Ohio -- Florida International didn't belong in the 1995 NCAA Tournament. The Golden Panthers entered the TAAC Tournament an 8-18 embarrassment, their fans gone, their coach already fired.
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| Alabama A&M's NCAA fate doesn't seem quite right, particularly for ailing coach Vann Pettaway. (AP) |
FIU lost 92-56 to the eventual national champion, but got to march up and down that blue carpet the NCAA lays down at each tournament site. The Golden Panthers walked past locker rooms with signs reading "UCLA" and "Indiana" and "Utah" until reaching the one that read "Florida International University." They shot on the same rims as Ed O'Bannon of UCLA and Erick Dampier of Mississippi State and Keith Van Horn of Utah. They belonged in the NCAA Tournament, dammit, and they drank their fill.
Alabama A&M won't get to drink. The Bulldogs lost 79-69 to Oakland on Tuesday night in the play-in game, the NCAA's worst idea since the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl.
Alabama A&M deserved to be in the NCAA Tournament -- the real one, not this condescending abomination -- because it won the SWAC Tournament. An automatic bid for every conference champion makes college basketball the best sport in the world. It's college basketball's annual version of Hoosiers. Everyone has a chance. (Everyone but Division I's eight independents, but that's another story.)
But Alabama A&M won't get that chance. And Alabama A&M's not happy about it.
"This was a bust for us," said Alabama A&M's Obie Trotter.
"We shouldn't have been here, man," said Alabama A&M guard Rickey Ricketts. "We should have been in the big tournament."
The big tournament. The real thing, not this Putt-Putt version.
The NCAA field would be fine at 64 -- automatic bids for the 31 conference champions, 33 at-large bids for everyone else. This particular tournament didn't need that 34th at-large bid. What irreplaceable benefit will it get from Alabama-Birmingham? The Blazers were the last team in, rewarded for a season in which they lost to Tulane and Richmond.
Nothing against UAB. It could have been Buffalo, Wichita State or Notre Dame, which fell out of the field because it couldn't beat Rutgers. And Rutgers is lousy. That means Notre Dame, as an NCAA candidate, was lousy.
Just like UAB, which also lost to TCU, Southern California and East Carolina.
But the selection committee needed a 34th at-large team and Northern Iowa was already in ... so UAB, come on down. UAB will get the full NCAA Tournament treatment. The blue rugs, the electric atmosphere, all of it. There was nothing electric about Tuesday night at a two-thirds-full Dayton Arena, though there were blue rugs. It was the least the NCAA could do.
