It sure was fun to watch the big-conference shills trash the little guys last weekend. Digger the Dog watched one Missouri Valley Conference game all year, yet he was able to declare the whole league uglier than Charlize Theron's recent movie characters. Then again, the man does know bad hoops, as anyone who saw his last two squads at Notre Dame will attest.
Meanwhile, Jay Bilas, evidently pumped up on announcing supplements or something, nearly pulled a tongue muscle arguing that Michigan belonged in the tournament. You can bet he was never on the debate team. Jay, the mutts from Ann Arbor lost seven of their last nine and showed as much heart as the French army did in spring, 1940. If the selection committee had found sufficient hallucinogens to work itself into a state from which it offered U-M an invitation, the school should have turned it down on principle.
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| Maryland coach Gary Williams couldn't back up his own challenge to the MVC. Sad, so very sad. (Getty Images) |
According to that logic, UTEP, Loyola (Chicago), La Salle and CCNY should be getting high seeds. The tournament is a snapshot of one particular season, not a referendum on tradition. Of course, when your avowed goal is to pump up the more popular teams and keep the foot on smaller schools' throats, you tend to employ a twisted sort of logic.
But enough about the whiners. It's time for El Hombre's gala NC2A tournament preview. Stay tuned for upset forecasts, Final Four predictions and plenty of insightful analysis. And insults. Plenty of insults.
Show us: After Terrapins coach Gary Williams strafed the MVC by saying that none of the teams play strong non-conference opposition, every conference coach called Maryland requesting a game. No call was returned. True story. Guess Williams was busy firming up dates next season with the Terps' 2005-06 non-con giants Nicholls State, Western Carolina, American, Delaware State, VMI and Texas A&M-CC.
That was a strong stunt by the Valley Guys, but now they and their mid-major brethren had better get to work. A first-round washout of the four MVC schools -- as well as George Mason, UNC-Wilmington, Utah State and Air Force -- will spawn a storm of criticism and put inordinate pressure on next year's committee members to go big. Plus, it will make the aforementioned Status Quo Crowd happy, and nobody wants that.
The great pretenders: Tennessee absolutely deserves a No. 2 seed -- if the brackets were based on play in December and January. But given the Vols' late-season slump (losses in four of their last six), it would appear as if UT grid coach Phillip Fulmer had taken over for Bruce Pearl on the sideline.
And stop all this talk about Gonzaga getting hosed. Unless Bill Russell and K.C. Jones are coming back to play for San Francisco, the West Coast Conference is softer than an Ahmad Rashad interview. The Zags play no D and were a blown layup away from losing their conference tourney –- at home. Gonzaga wins a round and then bows down before San Diego State -– provided Steve Fisher's Aztecs know how and when to call timeouts.
Finally, there's Iowa. Congrats to the Hawkeyes for winning the Big Ten rugby tournament last weekend, and Greg Brunner is a hero to all middle-aged hoop players everywhere, but this team can't score and doesn't deserve a three seed. Beware the Mountaineers.
G-Dub, no love: And deservedly so. The Colonials' non-con schedule was easier than Oak Hill Academy's. GW then went out and dominated a tepid Atlantic 10 bunch, whose championship tourney looked like an NIT warm-up. The knee injury to Pops Mensah-Bonsu didn't help things much, either. Yet, when the Colonials' eight seed was announced, a firestorm of criticism ensued. Who cares if GW won 26 games? It did so against the 244th-toughest schedule in the country. When a matchup with St. Bonaventure actually helps your RPI, you have a problem. Look out for the Seahawks and John Goldsberry, fellas.
Lazarus on the hardwood: Who would have thought an F-bomb could mean so much to a team's tourney hopes? When Jim Boeheim unloaded on the interview room in defense of Gerry McNamara after 'Cuse's opening-round Big East tourney win over Cincinnati, he launched a renaissance the Medicis would have envied. By Sunday afternoon, the Orange had gone from an NIT first-round host to the fifth seed in the Atlanta bracket –- less than two weeks after a 39-point loss at DePaul. And we're not talking Mark Aguirre's or George Mikan's Blue Demons. We know CBS loves showing shots of Boeheim's wife on TV, but this is unprecedented.
Pepto-Bismol all around: Upsets. We need upsets. That's why the first two rounds exist. The drama and unpredictability make for great TV. (Not that something as important as the NC2A tournament would ever make itself beholden to television.) So, you close your eyes and hope that the half-dozen or so shockers that you choose are the ones that come in, rather than a completely different group. Here goes:
