Conference Tournaments Give New Life to Meek and Weak

Don’t tell anyone where you heard this, but the NCAA’s Y’All Come Postseason Run for Basketball Glory is under way.

It won’t say so on tickets or programs or banners, but I swear it’s true.

I suspect that neither the NCAA nor Dick Vitale knows it, although it would not be out of character for either to be unaware of such a development.

What’s wonderful is that virtually anyone can win this least-exclusive of postseason exercises.

If you suspect that this is another whining lament to the fact that the NCAA field includes 64 teams, you are wrong. It’s not that exclusive.

Remember the reaction when the NCAA went to the Not-So-Sweet 64? One writer noted that it was almost as easy to get into as a telephone directory . . . and probably more difficult to manage to be omitted.

It has since changed. It is almost impossible to enter the postseason without a chance at winning the NCAA tournament. I’m not talking about a reasonable chance, but rather an opportunity.

By my definition, San Diego State played an NCAA tournament game Tuesday night in the Sports Arena against Hawaii. No one knew it, of course, and very few cared.

Why?

No one understood the impact of the confrontation. It was erroneously billed as, take your pick, a preliminary to this weekend’s Western Athletic Conference tournament or a pitiful excuse to drag two sad-sack teams onto a basketball court when they should have been put out of their misery long ago. Didn’t anyone realize the consequences of such a showdown? What has happened to fantasy and fantasizing?

This game should have been hit by an avalanche of hype and hoopla. There should have been news conferences to introduce the coaches and key players, red carpets and poinsettias at the airport and pep rallies on campus. After all, this was an event.

You’re still lost? You don’t understand? You’re sleeping?

For these teams, this was the first step on the road to New Orleans and the Final Four. The winner would keep its hopes alive, and the loser would be finished. It should have been sudden-death drama at its finest.

Forget that SDSU’s record was 4-24 and Hawaii’s slightly better at 7-20. It was time to consider where these teams could be going rather than where they had been.

Going where? Home? Nowhere?

Not exactly. Remember that this is my idea of the beginning of the NCAA tournament trail. All either of these teams had to do to win the NCAA championship was go unbeaten between now and the end of the month. Piece of cake.

Far-fetched? Of course.

It would be a matter of winning Tuesday night and winning three straight in the WAC tournament this weekend in Albuquerque, then winning six straight in what is formally billed as the NCAA tournament.

That’s all. Ten straight victories.

Veeeeeery far-fetched.

However, such a second life is afforded almost every Division I university because of the proliferation of postseason conference tournaments. To the winners go automatic NCAA berths. Last-place Maryland (0-14) could represent the Atlantic Coast Conference rather than regular-season champion North Carolina (14-0), although North Carolina probably would get an at-large bid. Thus, to the Marylands, San Diego States and Hawaiis, these conference tournament games are NCAA games.

Not everyone gets an entry in this second-chance lottery. The Big Ten and Ivy League have no conference tournaments, and independents have no conferences, thereby depriving the likes of Northwestern (6-20), Brown (9-18) and Eastern Washington (5-23) of that last dream of glory. It hardly seems American.

Shouldn’t the meekest and the weakest have just one more fling?

Now for the flip side of the issue: Let’s visit the University of San Diego.

The Toreros’ record--24-4--is the opposite of San Diego State’s. They won the regular-season championship in the West Coast Athletic Conference with 13 victories in 14 games.

However, this happens to be the season the WCAC has adopted a postseason tournament. USD has to prove itself all over again.

It’s no fun trying to win anything twice.

As Father Patrick Cahill, USD’s athletic director, explained, “I think 14 games should be enough to let a winner be shown.”

USD’s problem is that it has to win the WCAC tournament or be subject to the whims of the NCAA computer, which completes the tournament field with at-large entries selected according to some mysterious formula. A regular-season record of 24-4 should be good enough, but USD had better not count on it. The NCAA’s Not-So-Sweet 64 will likely have as many teams from the Carolinas as it has from west of the Rockies.

Consequently, USD had better approach this week’s WCAC tournament as if, you guessed it, the NCAA tournament already is under way.