Little Guys Stand Tall

By John Feinstein
Sunday, March 19, 2006

With less than a minute left late Friday night and No. 3 seed North Carolina trying to hang on against 14th-seeded Murray State, John Thompson, the Hall of Fame coach turned radio sage, was asked by his broadcast partner if he had an explanation for all the upsets that had taken place during the first two days of the NCAA basketball tournament.

"These aren't upsets," Thompson answered. "Seeds are just numbers. There are just a lot of good teams out there playing ball."

That's a pretty good description of what college basketball has become in the 21st century. There are a lot of good teams out there playing ball, and plenty of them do not come from the so-called power conferences. It's unfortunate, almost unfair, that CBS's Billy Packer has become the symbol of power conference arrogance. Packer publicly and vehemently disagreed with the NCAA tournament selection committee's decision to give three at-large bids to the Missouri Valley Conference; one to the Colonial Athletic Association; one to the Mountain West and one to the Western Athletic Conference as at-large teams. Because his sharp exchange with committee chairman Craig Littlepage was witnessed by just about anyone who cares about college basketball, Packer has been taking a lot of heat all week.

The first round certainly didn't make things any better for him. Two of the Missouri Valley's four teams advanced, including 13th-seeded Bradley beating fourth-seeded Kansas in the Oakland Region; George Mason, one of Packer's big targets, stunned sixth-seeded Michigan State in the Washington Region, and automatic bid winners Northwestern State (a 14th seed) and Bucknell (a ninth seed) beat power conference teams Iowa and Arkansas, respectively.

"You have to wait for more complete results," Packer said Friday morning after the first 16 first-round games had been played. "Let's see what happens today."

What happened Friday didn't help the case made by Packer and others who believe that 26 of the 34 at-large bids going to the power conferences was not enough. A lot of coaches, including Maryland Coach Gary Williams, have complained about the rise of the mid-majors.

"The problem is, coaches in the major conferences get fired for not making the tournament," said Williams, who doesn't have to worry about that in spite of yesterday's National Invitation Tournament loss to Manhattan. "You can't tell me that the committee is taking the best 65 teams. There may come a time when the power conferences get tired of going though this and break away like they did in football."

That is unlikely and would be extremely unfortunate. While Williams's frustration is understandable, two facts are undeniable:

· The little guys can play.

· The better the little guys play, the better it is for the tournament and college basketball.

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.