Blanchette: Jim Hayford’s victory boast breath of fresh air

PORTLAND – Look out, bracket: Broadway Jim Hayford is in town.

Eastern Washington’s head coach is either a calculating Barnum who’s found his audience in the NCAA basketball tournament, or making it up as he goes along.

Maybe both.

Earlier this week on a Seattle radio show, the hosts wondered if NCAA scoring leader Tyler Harvey might turn pro next year. Could Hayford hang on to him?

“Heck, yeah,” Hayford said, “as long as those guys down in Oregon don’t try to come recruit off my basketball team.”

Ooh. Direct hit on the school that lured away former EWU quarterback Vernon Adams as a graduate transfer earlier this year.

Later, however, Hayford was having second thoughts about his rapier repartee.

“Oh, crap,” he remembered, “I’m playing in Portland.”

Which is to say he’d rather the Moda Center crowd jump behind his 13th-seeded Eagles as the lovable underdogs against fourth-seeded Georgetown here today, instead of down his throat as the guy who threw darts at their Ducks.

But by Wednesday, the conservative strategy had been abandoned completely. Invited on Jim Rome’s nationally syndicated show, Hayford went all Namath over the airwaves.

“If you’re still in a pool you can fill in, you want to put the Eagles in,” Hayford told Rome’s audience, later adding, “We’re gonna win and talk again, Jim.”

And then he raised his bat and pointed it at the center field bleachers. Or something.

Like salsa and soap flakes, there are many kinds of chutzpah on the market. There’s the shameless kind you’ll get from a politician, the annoying kind you’ll get from, say, Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin, and the why-the-hell-not brand Hayford uncorked Wednesday.

It’s risky. Surely the Eagles have Georgetown’s attention now if they didn’t have it before. Indeed, asked if he’d made his players aware of the guarantee, Georgetown coach John Thompson III said, “They actually made me aware of it.”

But if nothing else, it’s a refreshing departure from the name-rank-serial-number nattering of tournament week. Even if Hayford is saving his best stuff for radio.

Of course, the Eagles have been showered with so much love this week as possible Cinderellas that the roles have almost flipped, no matter how many times Hayford points out that none of his players received a scholarship offer from the Hoyas.

So will sentiment and confidence trump the old seeding math?

The 13 seed lives on the fault line of the bracket. It’s where the upset odds plummet. The 10-12 seeds, collectively, win about 37 percent of their openers, their individual success only percentage points apart.

Since the expansion to 64 teams, 13s are 22-82 – 21 percent. Though last year was the first time in seven years at least one 4 seed didn’t tumble.

Seems a shade unlucky to be assigned a 13. There’s no 13th floor in hotels. Why in the bracket?

Still, upsets happen. So is there a blueprint the Eagles can follow?

“A lot of those teams went and won their league and are coming in on long winning streaks,” Hayford said, “and they’re playing against teams that didn’t have to win eight of their last nine, or whatever.

“We were on a tightrope the last two weeks without a net under us. Big schools have that net. Then they get in the first round of the tournament and look down and think, ‘That’s death.’ ”

True enough. Of the 36 double-digit seeds that have pulled off upsets in the last 10 tournaments, 25 came from single-bid leagues.

But there are metrics that skew against the Eags, too. John Ezekowitz’s model, cited in the Wall Street Journal, has predicted eight of the 10 double-digit upsets of the last four years, based on what has done in high-seeded teams in the past – generally possession-impact numbers like lack of turnovers forced and poor offensive rebounding. By his ciphering, Valparaiso is the 13 seed to watch, not Eastern.

As we all know from our homework, arithmetic can be depressing. Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak, who steered 12th-seeded Montana to an upset in 2006, sees no trends at work.

“Really, it comes down to 40 minutes,” he said. “All these games have different storylines.”

And the storyline here seems to be Hayford’s trust in his team.

“We heard it on the bus,” said EWU forward Felix Von Hofe of Hayford’s prediction. “We said, ‘Turn it up, turn it up.’ He knew we were listening. That was meant for the 15 of us on there.”

Hayford conceded as much – and also insisted, “Let’s quote me right – I did not guarantee a win.”

So, what, he was selling us aluminum siding?

No matter. The coach has called his shot. Now the Eagles have to hit the home run.