For Bucknell, The Toils of Victory

Almost everyone in sports wants attention, or as it is called in today's lingo, "exposure." If a team or an individual doesn't receive the exposure they/he/she believes they/he/she deserves, they talk about being, "disrespected." (See Texas football team circa this past week). Nowhere is the desire for exposure more of an obsession than in college basketball, where there are 336 Division I teams -- all of them competing for exposure because it equates to dollars and recruiting advantages.

One might think that teams in the so-called power conferences get so much exposure that one more game on TV or a few extra dollars might not be a big deal. Tell that to coaches in the ACC who have to endure Sunday night games that start after 8 p.m. instead of the old Saturday afternoon games so the league can soak in more TV dollars. Tell that to coaches in the Big Ten, Southeastern Conference and Big 12 who routinely put up with 9:30 p.m. starts on weeknights for TV or, for that matter, to the entire NCAA, which allows CBS to dictate games that end well after midnight local time in return for the billions the network pays for the rights to televise the NCAA tournament.

Imagine then, being Bucknell and suddenly finding yourself a media darling, a team everyone wants to talk to, talk about and write about.

"There's been a lot coming our way," Coach Pat Flannery said Monday afternoon, a few minutes before his team faced top-ranked Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium on national TV with an ESPN camera crew recording its every move for the latest installment of the series, "The Season."

"I told the kids this isn't something we asked for or pursued; it's something we earned because of our play the last two years. There's no reason for us not to enjoy all of this." He paused. "As long as we understand that the important part of our season begins on Saturday."

That would be this afternoon, when Bucknell opens Patriot League play against Navy. A year ago, Bucknell won at Pittsburgh and later defeated Kansas in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but in between the Bison did lose at Navy.

"All of this that's been happening is great," Flannery said. "You can't say no to it. But the success of our season, the memories we take away when it's over are going to depend on how we do in our league. That's the case for any team -- especially at our level."

Last season was a breakthrough for the Patriot League. For the first time since it was founded in 1990, a Patriot League team won an NCAA tournament game. What's more, a league team received an NIT bid for the first time. Holy Cross took advantage of that opportunity, beating Notre Dame on the road.

But the biggest moment in league history was Bucknell's stunning victory over Kansas. It was also the biggest athletic moment in the history of a school.

"I got to the Final Four and people were stopping me in the street to congratulate me, to ask for autographs, to tell me where they'd been watching the game," Flannery said. "It's the kind of thing you might fantasize about having happen, but you can't imagine what it's like until you go through it."

For a school like Bucknell, success can be a double-edged sword. There's no doubt that the Bison are the class of their league this season. With a 9-3 record beginning conference play and an impressive RPI ranking of 12, Bucknell appears to be positioned perfectly. But the game in Durham, N.C., while a chance to bolster Bucknell's RPI standing and thereby earn a better seed, took its toll.

"We're tired," Flannery said before the Duke game. His team had played two games on the West Coast and then flown directly to North Carolina. "I don't think that will affect us today because just being in this place will give us all the adrenaline we need to play. My concern is long term. We've got a lot ahead of us."