Don’t Be Late For The Dance Championship Week Oftentimes More Exciting Than Ncaa Tournament
If you’re waiting for this weekend - specifically Sunday night - to start March Madness, you’ve missed half the fun.
Getting there is almost as much fun as being there. You know what I’ve come to love a whole lot more than the Final Four? Championship Week. The conference postseason tournaments, the nail-biters in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, Mid-American Conference, Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, Missouri Valley Conference, the gymnasiums nobody ever sees and the 3-point gunners we’ve never heard of until now. I love watching Digger Phelps and Dick Vitale argue like Oscar and Felix in the studio over the power ratings of the Illinois-Chicago Flames.
The cynic in me knows these postseason parties were designed to be money-makers; in fact the argument that the regular-season champions (and not the tournament winners) should get the automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament is overwhelming. No matter the intent, though, the result is some of the best theater going. Some of these games are just as desperate, just as emotional, just as dramatic as what we’ll see in the Big Dance. And I’m convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that just getting into the Big Dance is more important to, say, Butler than it is to some blase fifth-place team in the ACC, Big Ten or Big East.
The real fun in the big conferences is watching the reigning powers, like UConn, fend off desperate teams like Providence that have no Earthly chance of getting an at-large bid. Watching the Georgetowns and Villanovas and Minnesotas in do-or-die situations this early in March is reminiscent of the old days - the 1970s - when conferences got one measly bid and you had to win it all or go home.
And because conferences are usually comprised of like schools, most of these Championship Week games are wars. Every channel you click on seems to have somebody swarming a heroic teammate while the other guys are crying in disbelief. There’s always a ball in the air at the buzzer with somebody trailing by a deuce.
Did you catch this kid, Geoff Billet, releasing a shot with :01 - that’s one-tenth of a second - left to beat Georgetown. Let me ask you this: What Hall of Fame coach has had as many last-second heartbreaking losses than John Thompson?
It’s of no comfort to him, but he did have plenty of company. Navy edged Lafayette to win the Patriot League title. Radford beat North Carolina-Asheville by two to take the Big South final and make the Big Dance. St. Joseph’s beat LaSalle with a pair of free throws with 1.8 seconds left. Richmond kept alive its hopes for a spot by beating American with 3 seconds left, 66-64, in the Colonial Athletic Association semifinal. If Marquette gets in, it will have a two-point victory over lowly DePaul in Conference USA. If Ball State doesn’t get in, it will anguish over an overtime loss to Eastern Michigan in the MAC. If Illinois-Chicago doesn’t get in, it will wallow in sorrow over a 74-73 loss to lowly Wright State.
The MAAC had three overtime contests in its first six games.
It seems the smaller the conference, the wilder the games, the more at stake.
Don’t even talk to me about the big conferences. Given what happens every year, when the NCAA selection committee opens the flood gates and lets in these bloated, overhyped schools from the ACC, Big Ten and Big East, I’m on a crusade against fifth- and sixth-place teams from those leagues. Most of them are too gutless to play small schools on the road or at all. Yet, the committee’s Ratings Percentage Index formula puts a premium on scheduling. The bigger the school the less likely it’s going to play a game against a Murray State. Why? Big School U. might get its butt whipped, which might lower the RPI.
The two schools this year I’m crusading for are 22-5 Illinois-Chicago (UIC) and 24-5 University of Detroit. The big question going into selection weekend is whether the MCC deserves three bids, since Butler has earned the automatic berth by winning the MCC tournament.
The answer is, absolutely.
Does the loss to Wright State undo UIC’s victory over Michigan State or its one-point loss at Illinois? It shouldn’t count against UIC any more than Maryland gets penalized for losing twice to Duke. UIC is said to have been No. 27 in the RPI coming into Championship Week, while Detroit was No. 34. One loss should drop these people 37 and 31 spots, respectively?
UIC and Detroit should be kicked out of the Big Dance so 17-12 Florida State, 16-13 Missouri, 15-12 Wake Forest, 17-12 Georgia Tech should get in? Please. With all their scheduling, recruiting, financial and human-resource advantages, if those schools can’t do better than barely better than .500, they ought to be sent to their rooms, not the field of 64.
Forget the RPI, I’m going with the WPR (Wilbon Power Rating) that says if you lose a dozen games then get out. And if you lose any game by more than 50 points (Mizzou lost by 55 to K-State) or simply are coached by Norm Stewart, then you’re automatically disqualified from tournament consideration.
It would be just fine with me if the ACC gets three bids: Duke, North Carolina, Maryland.
The Big East, which again has the most dreadful basketball imaginable from an aesthetic standpoint, had better not get more than four (UConn, St. John’s, Syracuse, West Virginia). If Iowa can’t win a first-round game in the Big Ten, get ‘em gone.
There’s not one conference anywhere that deserves six bids, if for no other reason than there’s no super conference anymore. Sure, the ACC has two great teams and several other pretty good teams, but this isn’t the 1985 Big East. With the very best college players leaving school early for the NBA, the talent is spread better than ever. A whole lot of schools have one kid who can really play, maybe two. Nobody is the ‘82 Tar Heels or ‘83 Houston.
But it’s precisely because of that that it’s so much fun to watch so many teams. Next week isn’t the beginning, it’s an encore.