Tournament Time Is Something Special

Nothing is better than the NCAA basketball tournament. Except the week before, the week when conferences play their own little tournaments, when all the little guys have big dreams, when the team with one win all season can still have hope.

Because best of all are the conference tournaments for the have-nots. For the CAA and MEAC, the Mid-Continents and Midwestern Collegiates.

And for the Big West Conference, which begins its tournament today at the Anaheim Convention Center.

It’s true. If you’ve been paying attention, the fun has already started.

With apologies to those who think we, as a nation, watch too much television, this is the week to never put down the remote.

Otherwise you’ll miss it all. The buzzer-beaters, the buzzer-misses.

The goal-tending call that gives Eastern Illinois an NCAA spot. The layup 1/10th of a second too late that means George Mason is NCAA-bound and UNC Wilmington isn’t.

These tournaments are where a UC Irvine goes to get real recognition. If you’re the Irvine men’s basketball team, it doesn’t matter if you’re 24-3, have won 13 of 14 games in your conference. That automatic bid, the one that goes to the winner of the conference tournament, is all you’re going to get in the Big West.

So everything the Anteaters have accomplished this season, none of it matters now.

Everything Cal State Fullerton hasn’t accomplished this season, none of that matters either.

The only thing that matters is what happens in Anaheim.

This is the time of year when a player nobody knows becomes a player everybody knows. At least for a week. Because a fantastic, emotional, stunning, impossible, game-winning, season-saving shot will get played over and over again on ESPN during its “Championship Week.”

It happened to a player named Darrick Suber in 1993. Suber played for Rider, which had, as its biggest previous accomplishment, nurtured Digger Phelps and sent him into the basketball world.

Rider was playing Wagner. Any other time of the year nobody would care about an incredible individual battle that was taking place between Suber and Wagner’s Bobby Hopson. On the last possession, Rider was losing by a point. Suber took an in-bounds pass, dribbled the length of the court, bobbing and weaving, swerving, stopping, starting, until, at the last possible fraction of a second, he hit an off-balance, leaning, lunging basket from just inside the free-throw line.

For a week Suber was a superstar. For a week everybody knew about Rider, the Broncs. About the Broncs and their homecourt, the “Broncs Zoo.” About the Northeast Conference.

In 1999 Aubrey Reese of Murray State was that anonymous player having his Andy Warhol moment, his 15 minutes of fame.

Reese swished a running one-hander from 18 feet to beat Southeast Missouri State. The final buzzer went off while Reese’s shot was in the air. We saw that shot dozens of times. It was great.

In the 1997 Midwestern Collegiate Conference tournament final, Butler’s Jon Neuhauser knocked in a baseline jumper with less than five seconds left to give the Bulldogs a 69-68 lead over Illinois Chicago. At the buzzer a desperate three-point fling by Anthony Coomes hit the rim, went up, around and out. Both shots, the good and the bad, were TV highlights played over and over. We saw Neuhauser frolic in victory and Coomes fall to the floor and sob in defeat.

It is what we will almost certainly be treated to at some point this week at the Convention Center. Maybe it will come in the quarterfinals or semifinals. Maybe in the final. But at some point there will probably be tears and there will certainly be hugs.

Men and women will have heard their coaches tell them all those other losses this year, all those stupid fouls and bad jump shots, all those lazy passes that went out-of-bounds and those haphazard rebounds that rolled off the fingers, none of that matters.

What matters is tonight. Now. This minute.

It is the perfect snapshot of our society.

What you have earned yesterday or last week or last month isn’t important.

Fullerton’s 1-21 women can still go to the NCAA tournament.

UC Irvine’s 13-1 Big West team might very well go nowhere.

Fair?

Maybe not.

Fun?

Absolutely.

All those other conferences, the ACCs, the Big Easts and Big 10s, Big 12s and SECs, have their tournaments.

So what?

Maybe some team seeded No. 5 needs one of those “quality” wins to earn an NCAA bid, but it’s hard to get worked up over a Villanova or Virginia, which couldn’t do better than fifth or sixth in its conference and missing out on the NCAAs.

It is easy to want to see an Irvine rewarded.

The turnaround for Pat Douglass’ team has been amazing and unexpected. But it will be nothing but a memory if the Anteaters aren’t cutting down nets Saturday night.

Already this week:

Eastern Illinois overcame a 21-point second-half deficit, then won at the buzzer on a goaltending call (a good call, by the way) to beat Austin Peay for the Ohio Valley Conference title.

George Mason beat UNC Wilmington, 35-33, when a Wilmington basket by Ed Williams was shot 1/10th of a second after the buzzer.

UNC-Greensboro won the Southern Conference championship over Chattanooga when David Schuck took a length-of-the-court pass and scored a layup with 0.4 seconds left for a 67-66 victory.

Winthrop captured the Big South automatic bid by coming back from an eight-point deficit with 5:22 left, then taking a two-point lead, then facing overtime after Radford’s Jason Williams scored on a full-court drive at the buzzer, then winning in overtime.

By Sunday when the NCAA bids come out, no one will remember Austin Peay, UNC Wilmington, Chattanooga and Radford. UC Irvine will be forgotten too. Unless the Anteaters are waiting for their bid. Unless they survive the toughest week in sports in the toughest spot--being the No. 1 seeded team with everything to lose and so much more to gain.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com