Little Guys Stand Tall

There were nine upsets (based on seeding) in the first round, ranging from No. 9 Bucknell to No. 14 Northwestern State. But beyond the actual victories were the near-misses: No. 15 Winthrop easily could have beaten No. 2 Tennessee; Murray State fell just short against North Carolina and No. 14 Xavier gave Gonzaga a scare. There were even a couple of scares for No. 1 seeds: Monmouth hung with Villanova for most of the game, and Albany actually led Connecticut by 12 with less than 12 minutes to play before the Huskies finally got their act together. There were very few embarrassing blowouts.

While Packer's exchanges with Littlepage and, later in the week, MVC Commissioner Doug Elgin may have brought the whole mid-major vs. power conference debate into sharper focus, it is far from a new issue.

"When I was the coach at Detroit and we had a pretty good team, I could never get Digger [Phelps] to play me at Notre Dame," Dick Vitale said yesterday. "That's what the power conference guys don't want to hear about: They won't play the good mid-majors. They certainly won't play them home-and-home, and then they think the mid-majors should be left out of the tournament because they haven't played enough good teams. That's just not fair. Having said that, I don't think the committee takes the best 34 teams. If they did, the power conferences would get just about all those bids. I don't mind that, but the committee shouldn't be claiming that they take the best 34 teams, because they don't."

Or maybe they do. Most people would tell you that George Mason can't possibly be as good as Maryland or Michigan or Florida State. Don't tell that to Michigan State, which was thoroughly outplayed by the Patriots even in the absence of suspended point guard Tony Skinn.

What's more, the smaller schools always arrive at their tournament site with a chip on their shoulder. They've been told they aren't good enough to play with the big guys and, in some cases, they've heard all week that they don't belong in the field. Do you think Jim Larranaga brought that up to his players once or twice before they played Michigan State?

Everyone knows that when the dust clears a week from today and the Final Four is set there won't be any sign of Northwestern State or Bradley or George Mason. The power schools always end up in the Final Four. The last true Cinderella to make it to the last weekend was Pennsylvania in 1979, and the Quakers were crushed in the national semifinals by Michigan State and Magic Johnson. But Cinderella has a role to play this week and, perhaps next week. Most teams that pull first-round upsets are gone two days later. Some sneak through to the Sweet 16; Wisconsin-Milwaukee did it last year. Back when it was still a "little," Gonzaga made it all the way to the region final in 1999. So it does happen.

Right now, the committee's decision to give the mid-majors more opportunity looks very good. The eight non-power conference teams given at-large bids were 4-4 in the opening round -- even though only two of those eight teams were higher seeds than the team they played.

What's more, perhaps what the committee did will have long term benefits for the sport. Maybe Maryland will start a series or two with Missouri Valley teams. Maybe George Washington, which got stuck with a No. 8 seed because of a weak nonconference schedule, will reconsider that approach. Maybe Mike Brey, now the coach at Notre Dame, will start a series with Detroit-Mercy, which is what Vitale's old school is called now.

If Florida State had been given George Mason's spot and had beaten Michigan State, the ACC's fifth-place team would have beaten the Big Ten's sixth-place team. Big deal.

George Mason's victory was a big deal. So was Bradley's. The first two days of the tournament were a joy to watch. All the evidence is now in. The jury has reached a verdict: It finds the committee victorious over Packer and the power conference apologists.

Which, in the end, is a victory for the sport.