The NCAA tournament has barely started — if you’re counting the play-in game, and let’s do that — and the madness is already in Elite Eight form.
Granted, Winthrop and Arkansas-Pine Bluff didn’t really dazzle all that much, but it is notable that Arkansas-Pine Bluff started off 0-11 and is now one of the 64.
And we had our tasty morsel a few weeks ago with the A-Sun tournament.
But here we are, with the first day upon us, and it’s the NIT that has inspired a buzz.
Top-seeded Arizona State is done, courtesy of heartbreaker Ben Smith, who apparently thought he was playing Mercer or most anybody else in the A-Sun.
Jacksonville’s devastator from Dublin made ESPN’s No. 4 play of the day Tuesday by simply doing what he has done for four years: calmly dribble downcourt, finding an opening, getting a good look and dropping in a game-winner.
This time, he banked it in from about 25 feet, and no replays gave any indication he called glass. It came with 1.9 seconds left in the first-round NIT game in Tempe, and it flattened Arizona State, a 22-win team that lost five games by 10 points or fewer and had an RPI of 63.
And now Jacksonville — which got 10 points and 10 rebounds from Crawford County’s Lehmon Colbert — faces Texas Tech, so let’s pull for the Dolphins, because a win makes the father of Texas Tech head coach Pat Knight unhappy, as if one could tell the difference.
The NIT almost gave us Northeastern over Connecticut and William and Mary over North Carolina. It gave us the cheap shot of Jackson State’s Phillip Williams, who smacked Mississippi State’s Dee Bost with a belt below the belt.
And it helped us get past the mind-numbing excess of analysis from Sunday’s selections.
ESPN’s Jay Bilas says that teams shafted by the NCAA should schedule more good teams and win some of those games.
Did somebody think scheduling was a difficult process? Not really.
Whoever thinks that the big boys are just waiting to play Gonzaga, Dayton, Davidson, Belmont, Butler, Rhode Island and Company needs to rethink.
“Schedule games against good teams and beat them. It’s not that hard.”
Somebody needs to fill in as a schedule-maker and deal with coaches, athletics directors and budgets as well as fluctuating rosters and early departures.
True, the NCAA committee should stay put for a few years so there’s consistency in what the priorities are when choosing the field. One year, it’s about wins. The next year, strength of schedule. Next year, uniform color coordination.
And yes, whoever the NCAA lackey is on Selection Sunday discussing the field should be a little more specific as to the whys and wherefores on who got in and left out.
But scheduling is a mess, which is why it takes so long. And what if you get a dud?
Two years ago, Mercer beat No. 19 Southern Cal. So say Lipscomb had scheduled Southern Cal for this year.
The Trojans have NCAA issues and a first-year head coach and went 16-14 with a 112 RPI.
Among the BCS conference teams Mercer has played recently, many didn’t fare well this year: Boston College, 15-16; Colorado, 15-16; UCLA, 14-16; Iowa State, 15-17; Auburn, 15-17; Alabama, 17-15; and Providence, 12-19.
And those who took on the likes of LSU (11-20), Oregon State (14-17), Arkansas (14-18), Rutgers (15-17), Iowa (10-22), or Indiana (10-21) didn’t get much help bolstering their mid-major resume or RPI.
Bilas said that none of those teams shafted were going to win the national championship.
Well, Sparky, it’s the NCAA tournament, not the NCAA Who We Think Can Win It tournament. It’s not a fluctuating-by-year field based on legitimate contenders — thus George Mason couldn’t have made it to the Final Four a few years ago — it’s a 65-team event. You think you deserve an invite, think you’re among the top 65, yes, you’ll grumble.
It isn’t about winning; it’s about going. That’s what the NCAA tournament is. It isn’t a three-weekend candidates-only gathering.
And conference play and conference tournaments — and yes, even the NIT — help make the NCAA tournament what it is — a fantastic month.
Thanks to the likes of Smith, the national postseason is off to a rollicking start.
Contact Michael A. Lough at 744-4626 or mlough@macon.com
