Fans disagree, but Zags don’t need validation

SALT LAKE CITY – Such a curious universe, this college basketball and the logic deprived who inhabit its fringes.

On Tuesday night, Stanford won what amounted to a play-in game – to the National Invitation Tournament. That’s right. Had to win just to be part of the round of 32 in a shrugfest. A run of 11 straight NCAA tournament appearances came to an end this year.

Anybody think Stanford has dropped off the basketball map? Become irrelevant.

Or Oklahoma State. Coach Eddie Sutton – legendary Eddie Sutton – is off to an alcohol treatment program and Cowboys struggled home 17-15 this year. They’re in the NIT, too, after eight straight NCAA trips.

Anybody dissing them? Anybody saying it’s all over for OSU?

So how is it that popular opinion suggests Gonzaga must reach, oh, the Elite Eight – Sweet 16 at the least – of the madness beginning today, or never be able to show its face on ESPN forever more?

How is it that failure to do this will make the Zags pretenders, poseurs and all kinds of fake? How does a seed number, a poll ranking, an RPI placement get interpreted as being as definitive as the prime lending rate?

How does a moment of disappointment somehow make six months of achievement irrelevant?

How?

Well, we are talking Americans and their sports.

“Sometime this thing becomes bigger than life itself,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said on the eve of the Bulldogs’ eighth consecutive NCAA tournament appearance. “And it’s not, by the way.”

Easy for him to say.

Perhaps the most perplexing season of Gonzaga basketball yet veers into further absurdity today when the Zags meet 14th-seeded and undeniably dangerous Xavier here in the first round. As the experts – and everybody is, right? – fill out their pool sheets around the water cooler and beer tap, they inevitably come upon this game and pause.

Gonzaga’s deep runs in the tournament from 1999 to 2001 caught the fancy of the nation and made it a sentimental pick. But the first-round flop in 2002 and the second-round exits of the past two years as a second and third seed have left folks feeling burned, so much so that the Zags are now America’s Team … Voted Most Likely to Ruin Your Bracket.

“If you watch any analyst on ESPN, we’re everybody’s pick to lose,” said forward Adam Morrison. “Everybody in America is calling us soft and weak.”

Picking up the thought, teammate Sean Mallon offered that, “Basically, we’re an underdog – that’s what people are making us out to be by saying that. And that’s a role we like and are comfortable in.”

Motivation du jour. Every team can use some. And make no mistake, the earlier outs the last few years weigh on the Zags.

“It’s been tough – tough on our fans and tough on ourselves,” admitted Morrison.

But it’s been tough on the fans mostly because of an incredible naiveté, and it’s tough on the Zags because they’ve become a victim of their own success.

By catching that thunderbolt in a thimble in those early runs, the Bulldogs somehow gave the impression that the next logical – and immediate – step from the rounds of 16 and 8 was the Final Four, or at the very least that playing the second weekend was suddenly a birthright. By that logic, UConn should still be batting 1 for 10, as it did in its first eight NCAA appearances.

Gonzaga’s rise has been delightful and thoroughly impossible, yet the culmination is somehow supposed to come inside of a decade?

The past week, the Wall Street Journal surveyed 50 top college basketball programs, charting expenses, revenue and coaching salaries, among other things. Of all the teams in the current AP Top 25, Gonzaga’s expenditures on its basketball program remain last. Oh, the Zags aren’t po’ folk – think Eastern wouldn’t want their budget? – but they get outspent by Duke five times over, and by at least double most of the perennials.

A budget is a budget. Doesn’t get you a rebound or stick a jumper. Whatever the disparities in dough, the Zags have shown that on any given night they can play and beat the bluebloods – just as lower food chain teams show Gonzaga on those other given nights.

The rankings and seedings assigned so much weight? These are numbers that recognize what Gonzaga has done this year; they are no guarantee of what the Zags – or any of the teams in the bracket – are supposed to do.

There’s no doubt a first-weekend exit would be disappointing both to the Zags and their fans, and dessert for the told-you-so set. But frankly, it won’t say anything about the program – other than that there’s still growing to do and that just the opportunity is something to be treasured..

“Ask Cincinnati,” said forward David Pendergraft, noting the absence of the Bearcats after 14 straight tournaments. “They know you can’t take it for granted. They know every year is an accomplishment.”