These Games Count for Something

It didn’t take Dorothy long to figure out she wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

And it doesn’t take Southern California college basketball fans long to figure out they aren’t in the Bigs this conference tournament weekend--they aren’t at the Big East, Big 12 or Big Ten. They aren’t at the SEC or the ACC either.

We’re the postseason poor relations. At Madison Square Garden there’s the Big East tournament. At the United Center there’s the Big Ten tournament.

We have the Big West at the Anaheim Convention Center and the Big Sky at the Matadome in Northridge.

At the Garden and the Center they’re mostly playing for NCAA seedings. There’s not much suspense about who goes to the tournament. Four or five, sometimes six or even seven teams will go.

Here we have teams playing for their tournament lives. It is truly sudden death. A loss, a single loss, an ugly, horrible, blowout 74-58 loss to Pacific made UC Irvine’s gaudy 25-4 record meaningless in the sense that the Anteaters probably won’t see their name on the NCAA draw Sunday.

When teams play at the Big 12 or ACC tournaments, that sudden-death sick feeling in the pit of the stomach only applies to teams seeded No. 8, for the desperately talented squads that squandered their regular season like Seton Hall. Here it’s the No. 1 clubs such as Irvine and Cal State Northridge that must win, win and win again.

This weekend in Southern California for Irvine and Utah State, Northridge and Weber State, is something like a walk across a frozen lake at spring thaw time. That crackling sound you hear is fear. The ice cracked for the Anteaters. Northridge is still skating.

North Carolina and Kentucky, those teams aren’t worried about stubbing their toes. They’re more concerned about keeping Joe Forte and Keith Bogans from spraining a knee.

For Irvine and Northridge, a loss is a chance gone forever. It’s the cover taken off next year’s media guide. It’s a moment of memory that might have lasted forever but instead will be excised by Sunday.

At Madison Square Garden the teams take the same freight elevator that has hauled Frank Sinatra and the elephants from the Ringling Brothers Circus. And that’s after they have pushed and shoved their way through lines 10-deep of ticket scalpers and autograph hounds.

At the Convention Center you hear the facility manager talking hopefully of needing to open the second level of seats.

When you’re an administrator for the Big West or Big Sky, you fight that sense of sheer desperation. Can you get enough people into the lower levels so the TV broadcast won’t make your tournament seem pathetic?

Will the fans show up? Will they make any noise?

Two feet of snow buried New York City a few years ago on the night before the Big East semifinals. But even with only the subway and a few brave cab drivers to offer transportation, and even with water leaking from the roof to the court, the games were played and the Garden was two-thirds full.

This is a happening, after all. The Big East tournament is a destination, a vacation, an event planned by alums and fans a year in advance. The ACC tournament is as important as a family vacation, an occasion not to be missed, to be saved for, to be planned as carefully as a baptism or wedding.

And yet you’ll find more honest-to-goodness college basketball fans in Northridge and Anaheim. Utah State brought nearly 1,000 people to the Big West. The folks from Logan love the game. They are attached to their school. They may not have attended Utah State, but they live in Logan and so the team belongs to them. These same people, these regular folks who just love the game and their town and their school, could never get a ticket to the ACC.

So the Convention Center isn’t full of people in the seats. It is more than full of enthusiasm.

It is this way because these fans, all of them, at the Big West and Big Sky, know that what they see will be so real.

At the Big East, top-seeded Notre Dame played listlessly and lost its first game. So did the Big 12’s Iowa State and defending national champion Michigan State to Penn State at the Big Ten.

When Northridge loses, it won’t be because it was listless. It will be gut-wrenching and heartbreaking and the worst thing that has happened to a group of college kids in their lives. That’s what they’ll think.

And it will be the best thing that’s happened to some kids from somewhere else, maybe Pacific. It will be the prime moment of their lives. That’s what they’ll think.

At the Matadome and the Convention Center you won’t have a coach like Denny Crum walking into forced retirement, a little bitter even though he is getting a $7-million golden parachute. There won’t be any Rick Pitino sightings.

But what we have isn’t so bad. We have hallways outside locker rooms clogged with moms and dads and grandmas and brothers who want to hug their ecstatic or distraught Anteater or Matador instead of hallways clogged with agents and autograph salespeople who have bribed the Garden ushers while the parents wait outside in the snow.

You won’t hear Final Four talk here. Maybe you’ll catch the words of dreamy Irvine fans who, for a moment, lose themselves in thoughts of Anteater magic continuing so long that the team wins two early-round games and comes home to the Pond for the West regional finals in a couple of weeks.

But that was before the game started. Dreams end hard and they end fast at places like the Convention Center.

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

BIG TEN

A Seedy Loss for Spartans

Penn State surprised Michigan State, which was looking for its third conference tournament crown in a row but had 17 turnovers. D5

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BIG 12

Cyclones Fizzle Out

Big 12 player of the year Jamaal Tinsley scored only eight points before fouling out, and the Cyclones shot 31% in a 62-49 loss to Baylor. D5

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THE NATION

What’s Up, Red Raiders?

James Dickey was fired at Texas Tech, clearing the way for the possible hiring of Bob Knight, who has already met with the school president. D5

BIG SKY

Matadors Need One More

Cal State Northridge is one home game way from its first NCAA tournament berth after a rousing 91-74 victory over Weber State. D6