Somewhere between Friday night and Sunday morning, a melancholy case of deja blue arrived.
It infected those of us whose bracket sheets already had been nuked. They’ll make good coasters for the rest of the NCAA Tournament.
The problem is not that we didn’t watch college basketball all winter. The problem is that we were watching the wrong teams.
Of course, my cable provider doesn’t provide the Bucknell package, and Howard Dean’s voice always seems to scramble the Vermont signal. Southeastern Louisiana’s games are available only on camcorder. Winthrop always gets pre-empted by “Antiques Roadshow.”
But we never learn that big names and logos don’t mean anything anymore (oops! Larry Smith got fired at USC for saying that) and that there are a whole lot of basketball players out there. You don’t need a name to have a game.
Why shouldn’t Bucknell beat Kansas? Four national-rep teams had the nerve to schedule the Bison this year. Only Villanova blew them out. St. Joseph’s and Pittsburgh lost and Iowa State won by seven. None of those games was in Lewisburg, Pa., the charming little Victorian home of Bucknell.
Why shouldn’t Vermont beat Syracuse? The Catamounts had a four-year point guard, a four-year scorer in the middle, and a cause. Vermont lost by nine at Kansas, 10 at Nevada and 28 at North Carolina, which happens to many teams. Last season Vermont lost by two at UCLA in a classic Pyramid-of-Officiating home job.
Vermont couldn’t beat Syracuse and Michigan State within a three-day period, and Bucknell likewise failed to topple Kansas and Wisconsin. So what? Who does?
Wisconsin-Milwaukee did follow up. It beat Alabama on Thursday and Boston College on Saturday.
Chattanooga had the halftime lead on Wake Forest. Southeastern Louisiana pushed Oklahoma State. Delaware State kept dribbling past Duke for 30 minutes. Montana gave Washington an ulcer.
Fairleigh Dickinson stalked Illinois. Eastern Kentucky closed to within eight of Kentucky at the end. Central Florida lost by only six to Connecticut.
The 16th seeds lost to the first seeds by a total of 62 points, an average of 15.5. Last year’s average was 25.
The 15th seeds lost to the second seeds by only 43 points (10.8). Last year the average was 24.
This weekend’s Final 16 includes all No.1 seeds but only two 2s, one 3 and one 4. Three No.6 seeds got through. Add up all the seedings and you get 72. Last year the number was 73.
In 1995, a more formful time, the Top 16’s seeds added up to 51.
The only logical conclusion is that the good teams just aren’t that good.
And it’s not that the NCAA committee picked the wrong ones. The NIT has given us Holy Cross over Notre Dame, Cal State Fullerton over Oregon State, and Western Michigan over Marquette.
Much of it is talent. There is less of it now.
Of the 29 players in the first round of the ’04 NBA draft, only nine came from the top six conferences (Pac-10, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, ACC, SEC).
Again, go back to 1995, when Kevin Garnett horrified the world by jumping to the pros from high school, and the European player was still punch-line fodder for the SportsCenter nerds.
In that first round, 22 of the 29 picks came from the major conferences, and 28 were from Division I colleges.
Add complacency, which curdles into fear, and you get Syracuse coughing up 24 turnovers, Oklahoma State committing 17 and Alabama 19, and Kansas shooting 1-for-11 from three-point land.
The upstart teams share several characteristics. All have excellent guards who shrug at pressure. They also have at least one deadeye shooter.
They are unspoiled. Many of them are used to riding buses through the snow, or rising at 6 a.m. to experience the charm of US Airways. They don’t fly charters and they don’t have DVD players in their lockers.
Don’t compare the results of smalls against bigs in December. For one thing, it’s always Small at Big. The 11 ACC teams played only seven games on the home court of a team outside the major conferences. Duke didn’t play a true nonconference road game all year. Georgia Tech stuck its toe in, playing at Illinois-Chicago, and won by one.
You say Kansas played the nation’s toughest schedule. Maybe, but 16 games were in Lawrence.
Pacific led Division I in true road victories, with 13. Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Nevada had 11 and Vermont was 10-6. The road toughens you up, forces you to play through bad calls, makes you conjure up your own emotion and rely on your colleague. It means something.
Teams also are dangerous when they have to win to get in. UConn, Syracuse and Kansas made the tournament when they made up their RPI-heavy schedules.
But Vermont and Bucknell had to win conference tournaments. UWM might have gotten an at-large bid but was far from assured.
For that matter, West Virginia and N.C. State had to rally from purgatory to get in. They were March-tough because of February.
The selection committee really should consider giving regular-season champions automatic bids, at least in the leagues where theystill play a double round-robin schedule.Davidson and Portland State could have beaten somebody, too.
“I saw Oral Roberts (Mid-Continent regular season champ which beat Georgetown by 18) a lot this year,” Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson said. “They’re really good. And Niagara had several players who could play in the Big 12.”
A dirty little secret came out again last weekend a lot of people can.
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The Orange County Register. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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