Tournament proves college basketball’s talent gap is nothing major

Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim says let this first nip-and-tuck weekend of the NCAA tournament be a lesson to us all.

“The problem with college basketball is there’s not a big gap,” Boeheim explained Sunday of the relative talent levels of the majors and mid-majors. “Everyone wants to make it seem like it’s a big gap. It’s not a big gap.”

Wait an upper-state New York minute.

Syracuse won its first two tournament games by 23 and 22 points — that’s the Cumberland Gap.

Boeheim must be talking about everybody else — his team looks unstoppable — but we’re hip to his general point.

There’s all this teeth-gnashing before the tournament about seeding positions, and which conference is best and worst. And a lot of it ends up being Arkansas hogwash.

On any given day, reputation, tradition, dreams and games can be taken.

The Big East, which earned eight NCAA bids, has one more team in the Sweet 16 than the Ivy League.

People said Washington, without winning the Pac-10 tournament, didn’t belong.

Washington is four victories from winning the national title.

St. Mary’s got left behind last year after going 28-7 in the West Coast (a two-bit conference, never two bids). Gonzaga is the only WCC school anyone knows.

St. Mary’s got in this year as a No. 10 and is in the round of 16, fresh off an upset win over a 2009 Final Four team, Villanova.

Gonzaga, on Sunday, missed 21 three-point shots in a blowout loss to Syracuse.

Kansas earned the overall No. 1 seeding and received the most favorable funneling to the Final Four (via Oklahoma City and St. Louis).

It turns out the Jayhawks will be very well-rested from here on out because they’re sleeping in their own beds after being ousted by Northern Iowa.

Top-seeded Kentucky, a collegiate powerhouse which had won 97 tournament games entering this one, has to get on a plane for next week’s East Regional semifinals in Syracuse.

Cornell, which had never won a tournament game until Friday, gets to take the bus and enjoy home-cooking advantage in the most anticipated matchup of regional weekend.

Kentucky vs. Cornell . . . can you believe it?

It’s the battle of Blue Grass vs. Gray Matter.

Kentucky-Cornell is the kind of serendipitous happenstance that makes the NCAA tournament so uniquely unique.

“This is different from football,” Boeheim said. “We find out in this tournament who the best teams really are.”

Yes and no.

Basketball is different from college football, which doesn’t have a playoff, but no, we don’t always find out who the best teams are — we find one that can win six straight.

You might safely put a house payment on Kansas beating Northern Iowa in a seven-game series, the way it works in the NBA. In the NCAA tournament, though, Northern Iowa only had to beat Kansas once.

The tournament isn’t always fair, but it is phenomenal, with this one already ranking up there with the best.

Two more wily Sunday endings put the four-day capper on it. When Michigan State lost star point guard Kalin Lucas to an Achilles’ injury Sunday against Maryland, it was up to reserve Korie Lucious to fill the huge void.

Lucious filled it by hitting a three-pointer at the buzzer to lift Michigan State to a spectacular two-point victory.

Lucious was dog-piled on the court in Spokane by his teammates and even “Sparty,” the school’s mascot.

“I didn’t see Sparty,” Lucious confessed, “but I’m glad he was part of that too. That just shows you how close we are as a university.”

People had penciled Purdue out after Boilermakers star Robbie Hummel was lost for the season because of a knee injury. No. 12 Siena over No. 4 Purdue was the most popular upset choice of the first round.

Senior guard Chris Kramer, though, took matters (and the ball) into his own hands Sunday against Texas A&M when he scored the game-winner, on a driving layup, with four seconds left.

At the timeout called with 10 seconds left, Kramer entered the huddle and said, “I want the ball.”

Purdue, without Hummel, is headed to Houston, with a Friday night date against Duke in the South Regional semis.

“Sure we might not be as good as a team as we were with Rob,” Kramer said. “. . . But our guys came in and gave it our all, and you just have to keep dreaming. You always got to want more, you can never be satisfied.”

It is the expected and the unexpected in the tournament that keeps us interested. This year’s Sweet 16 is the perfect blend.

Kansas is gone, yes, and Villanova too, but three of the top-seeded teams are still left. And don’t forget two No. 2-seeded schools, West Virginia and Ohio State, who could have been No. 1s.

It is still, actually, shaping up as a coronation for one of those five, but there are enough underdogs left to keep CBS in the shining-moment business.

Eight of the 16 remaining schools are seeded No. 4 or better, but there is also a No. 9 (Northern Iowa) that is going to keep Michigan State coaches up late this week, and a No. 10 (St. Mary’s) that features a point (and quote) machine in center Omar Samhan.

There is a No.11 (Washington) that seems singularly driven by a driven senior, Quincy Pondexter, and a No. 12 (Cornell) that is going to play Kentucky on Thursday in upstate New York.

This isn’t the way anyone drew it up, and it isn’t fair that No.1 Kentucky would be put at such a logistical disadvantage.

The NCAA tournament is not totally fair or totally perfect.

With 49 schools gone and these 16 teams left, though, could it be any sweeter?

chris.dufresne@latimes.com