In Big Sky, Winning Still Has Meaning

It may be the Big Sky Conference to you, but I like to think of it as the Ivy League of the West.

OK, I like to think of the two lottery tickets I bought this week as an investment portfolio, too. Life’s no fun without a little self-delusion.

In any case, the context here is college basketball and not tweedy academics. And in the college game, the results of January and February have become so ridiculously devalued - sandwiched between the great RPI safari of December and the ca-ching of conference tournaments of March - that the Ivy and the Sky may as well be blood brothers.

The Ivies have no postseason tournament - preferring to preserve the sanctity of the conference schedule and a couple of days of class time. Naturally, they have enough wiggle room to accept the automatic NCAA berth and the accruing receipts. Boola-moolah.

They are not alone in their abstinence - the Pac-10 has no tournament either. But that policy has nothing to do with purity or academics and everything to do with Lute Olson not wanting to blow a No. 1 seed in the West by losing a first-rounder in his own league to Washington State.

The Sky, of course, has a tournament. But there’s a good chance we won’t know until maybe 10 o’clock on the night of March 4 where it will be played.

So when first-place Eastern Washington met last-place Idaho State at Reese Court on Thursday night, the Eagles’ 87-64 victory was every bit as meaningful as some interlude of March Madness - even if this message was lost on the oil painting that is EWU’s student section.

It wasn’t lost on the Bengals, who were the aggressors for better than half the game.

“It wasn’t the typical first place-last place game you’d see in the Big Ten or ACC or Big 12,” said EWU coach Steve Aggers. “They still have a berth to play for, and obviously we have a lot riding on every game.”

In stubborn defiance of the marketing gods, the Sky clings to the central decency of letting its regular-season champion host its tournament. The sheer fairness of it all is a staggering upset, like an NCAA committee opting to convene in a hotel with a view of Duluth and not Diamond Head.

So had Thursday’s score been reversed, it could have been a tangible disaster for the Eagles - whereas, say, Gonzaga slipping on a banana peel at home against San Diego was merely an embarrassment, though not one without other possible ramifications.

Win or lose, the Zags are spending the first weekend of March in Santa Clara.

“If you win the conference title, you should get something for it,” contended EWU guard Ryan Hansen.

Except that the Sky has become a dinosaur in its willingness to mete out such rewards.

None of the other 28 conference tournaments adheres to such a hang-fire format. Indeed, 25 of them were booked into designated cities a year in advance. The America East plays its first three rounds at Delaware, then sends the title game to the highest surviving seed. The Mid-American and Ohio Valley both play their opening rounds at campus sites before adjourning to Cleveland and Nashville, respectively.

In every case, what’s fair competitively has been overwhelmed by what’s prudent (or expedient) fiscally.

“It’s absolutely huge,” noted Aggers. “I get comments from other coaches around the country who wish their leagues were like ours.”

Why has the Sky held out?

“Tradition, as much as anything, I guess,” he said. “I think our schools want to see the teams rewarded for what they achieve over the course of 16 games. You want those games to be meaningful.”

Of course, the Sky isn’t in the business of going out of business, either.

If the Eagles should hang on and win the regular season, the league will be sending its showcase event to a school that is sixth among nine in average attendance. Montana draws twice as well, Weber State almost four times better.

So as a hedge against bankruptcy, the league requires the host school to put up a $205,000 net guarantee - meaning EWU athletic director Scott Barnes has been doing a lot of cold-calling of potential underwriters.

“The preliminary responses have been good,” Barnes reported, “but it’s one of those things where it’ll take the whole community to help. We’re doing our best to lay the groundwork, but the fact is we literally might not know if the tournament’s at our place until the five days before it’s supposed to come off.”

It was last week when the schools in position to host the tournament had to let Big Sky commissioner Doug Fullerton know whether they wanted to tackle it, or pass. If the regular-season champion didn’t think it could meet the guarantee, the runner-up would get the next crack at hosting.

“I was talking with the athletic director at Portland State last week,” Barnes said, “and he was saying, `I feel for you. At least you have your ducks lined up. Last year, we were there in the hunt and thank goodness, we didn’t get it - we couldn’t host it.”’

The price tag made Barnes flinch, but not flee.

“You have to do it,” he said. “It’s a tremendous opportunity, not only for the Spokane community and Eastern, but just for the sake of our basketball team.”

As the sentry of the bottom line, Barnes understands the advantages of bidding out the site a year in advantage - the better to plan, to market, to simply sell tickets. The former player in him, however, seems to like this way better.

“If it’s an outright bid, then the haves dominate,” he said. “A school with a big arena and a large fan base just bids it up. And for us to be as representative as we can be in the NCAAs, then the best format is hot team hosts. The team that’s playing the best is going to represent the conference the best.”

And with a half-game separating EWU from Montana at the moment, the host will have to finish hot.

“We’re in a position now to do something the university has never accomplished before,” said Hansen. “That’s in the back of our minds. You want to take it a game at a time, but how sweet that would be for the community, the university and the basketball program to get that tournament. That would be a huge advantage for us as far as going to the Big Dance.

“It seems like these last three weeks can’t go by fast enough. We know how close we are.”