Who's Up? Mid-Majors Or Middling Majors?

Think back to the moments you most remember about the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. Seven-10 games between at-large power conference also-rans, right?

Either that, or 14th-seeded Old Dominion, an automatic qualifier from the Colonial Athletic Association shocking Villanova from the Big East in a three-overtime 1995 thriller. Or a pair of automatic qualifiers from the MEAC -- 15th-seeded Coppin State and 15th-seeded Hampton -- knocking off big boys from the SEC and the Big 12. Or Valparaiso, the Mid-Continent Conference winner in '98, taking down powers from the SEC and ACC in a three-day span. Or San Diego, the surprise winner of last year's West Coast Conference tournament, shocking fourth-seeded U-Conn. in the first round.

"All you guys that like that stuff, that say, 'Isn't that great?' Well, it's great, except half those teams couldn't win a game in the ACC," Gary Williams said of the automatic qualifiers during a radio interview yesterday.

You have to wonder which half of these sorry automatic qualifiers he's referring to. Does the sour half include 15th-seeded Morgan State from the MEAC, which beat Maryland at Maryland this year? Or 14th-seeded American from the Patriot League, which beat Maryland at Maryland a year ago?

Or maybe 16th-seeded Radford, which won the Big South decisively over, say, Liberty, which in turn won at Virginia. Or 14th-seeded Cornell, which did five games better in the Ivy League than Harvard, which in turn beat Boston College. Or 16th-seeded Chattanooga, which won the Southern Conference, whose most famous member beat N.C. State.

"You look at Auburn, you look at some teams that really played well down the stretch that didn't get in," Williams told WJFK's the Junkies, while discussing his belief that the tournament field should be expanded. "I think there's room for teams like that to play."

Ah yes, Auburn. The Tigers lost to Northern Iowa, the 12th-seeded automatic qualifier from the Missouri Valley. Northern Iowa being another team that, presumably, would go winless in the ACC.

"And they're not gonna embarrass themselves," Williams said of these aggrieved teams. Meaning, in other words, that if they were put up against an ACC power such as Duke, they wouldn't lose by 41. Just for example.

Look, this is all probably unfair. Williams, who has done his part to keep the newspaper industry afloat this year, was just speaking off-the-cuff, and he was arguing for more inclusion, not less. He was saying that ACC teams such as Miami and Virginia Tech were hardly any different from the Terps, that when you look at the NIT field you can't help but wonder why some of those teams won't be playing today.

And anyhow, not of all of his shots were directed at Cinderella. Like, when discussing his own team's surprising finish, here's what he had to say.

"Our recruits are good enough to go to the NCAA tournament," he said. "There's a lot of schools that supposedly got great recruits, but they're not in the NCAA tournament. So that's the bottom line."

I'm trying to think whether there are any schools in the immediate vicinity of College Park that supposedly got great recruits but missed the NCAA tournament this year, but for the life of me I just can't think of any. Nope, no idea what he was talking about there.