The evening of Selection Sunday passed without complaint from Cincinnatians. Looks like the region could be in for an early spring, a maddening March or, at least, a couple good weekends of TV.
Of the seven major college men's teams in the Tristate or on its periphery, five were invited to the NCAA Tournament, another was learning the hard way about life with Rick Pitino and the last, Miami, came within one win of a berth. Xavier's outstanding women's team drew a fourth seed and, according to form, will be the last Cincinnati team standing.
It's worth noting that Xavier's first year of the Cintas Center ended with the little school on Victory Parkway as one of 16 with teams in both the men's and women's tournaments. The women's team never left any doubt, blitzing to a 28-2 campaign. As usual, though, the men's team jeopardized its candidacy with a premature exit from the Atlantic-10 tournament and ultimately benefited, this time, from the selection committee's hair splitting.
So, what began as a season of local uncertainty has come to mid-March with remarkable promise. The University of Cincinnati, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio State all began the year with questionable prospects and little proven. Now, none is lower than a fifth seed.
UC stopped hurting itself with its frontline weaknesses, put its games into the hands of guards Steve Logan and Kenny Satterfield and could actually last through the second round for once, despite being the least-heralded team in years. The Bearcats are hot and healthy, and the guards are unlikely to wear down through the tournament's forgiving schedule.
Kentucky began the season 1-3, finished with 12 wins in its last 14 games and could earn a rematch of the game that's never ended against Duke in Philadelphia for a Final Four spot. The Wildcats are right where they are every March, playing their best basketball.
The pre-season forewarned of gloom and doom for Ohio State as it broke in a new backcourt. But the Buckeyes didn't suffer any terrible losses and beat the three Big Ten favorites -- Illinois, Michigan State and Wisconsin.
Despite constant uncertainty as to whether Mike Davis will permanently replace Bobby Knight as the Indiana head coach, the Hoosiers played well enough against the country's second-toughest schedule. Indeed, all their non-conference losses came against other teams named to the NCAA Tournament.
From the seedings, Xavier and Eddie Sutton's Oklahoma State team were the last two at-large teams invited. Oklahoma State made its case with a Big 12 tournament win over Texas Tech, which wound up the most newsworthy game of the past week. Xavier, meanwhile, left itself at the mercy of the selection committee, which, evidently, intended to send a message just as much by excluding California-Irvine as by including Georgia.
Mike Tranghese, chairman of the selection committee, went to pains explaining that Georgia's inclusion at 16-14 with the nation's toughest schedule is consistent with the committee's insistence on tough schedules. If that's the case, then Xavier would have been right to complain about being excluded in favor of, say, Cal-Irvine, which finished 25-4 with a schedule ranked 248th out of 319 teams.
Xavier's schedule ranked only 97th, but it played 25 percent of its games against teams invited to the tournament and, until that first-round meltdown against George Washington in the A-10 tournament, its only loss to a team outside the RPI top 100 came against Princeton, which won the Ivy League's automatic tournament bid.
Richmond, Alabama, Mississippi State, Connecticut or Villanova might have nudged past Xavier. But Richmond lost three games outside the RPI top 150, Alabama died down the stretch with losses in five of its last six games, Mississippi State finished with a losing record in the Southeastern Conference, and Connecticut and Villanova were no better than .500 in the Big East.
Unlike the last two years, it turns out the selection committee really couldn't have left Xavier out even if it wanted to. There simply weren't good enough arguments for excluding Xavier to benefit one of those other teams.
UC coach Bob Huggins is never happy with the way his team is seeded, so the committee turned the tables on him this year. The committee gave Huggins the fifth seed he wanted, but he wouldn't be wrong to quarrel with the selection of UC's first-round opponent. How Brigham Young ended up a 12th seed matched against UC is a mystery.
Playing in the Mountain West Conference, which is certainly in the same neighborhood as Conference USA, Brigham Young tied for the regular season championship and won the post-season tournament. Nine teams lower in the RPI than Brigham Young (37th) were seeded higher, five of those teams received fewer votes than BYU in the writers' poll and four of them received fewer votes in the coaches poll. In short, UC is in for much stiffer opposition than a fifth seed deserves.
On the subject of UC's seeding, all will remember that the Bearcats were knocked back to a second seed last year after the injury to Kenyon Martin. The NCAA said, rightly, that it couldn't gauge UC's competence without Martin. This year, we have seen the same principle in reverse with the committee's remarkable generosity toward Missouri, which arguably has no business in the tournament and ended up with a ninth seed.
Missouri lost four of its last six and five of its last 10, finished sixth in the Big 12 with a 19-12 overall record and has an RPI ranking (47th) lower than three teams not in the tournament -- Alabama, Villanova and Richmond. However, Missouri went without the Big 12's leading scorer, Kareem Rush, for nearly all of February due to a thumb injury. He's returned for the last three games, which included losses to Kansas and Oklahoma. So the selection committee apparently decided Missouri is better than its track record with the return of its top scoring threat.
Cleverly, the committee matched Georgia and Missouri in the first round, with the winner likely to play Duke in the second round. It's a no-lose situation for the committee respecting its two most questionable picks. The selections are vindicated if the winner beats Duke, and they aren't discredited if Duke wins.
The tournament is that unpredictable, which makes it one of the great events in sports. Unfortunately, this year's tournament figures to be upstaged to some degree by the machinations of two unemployed coaches, Bob Knight and Rick Pitino.
The Knight story recalls an era long past in Kentucky, where recently fired Texas Tech coach James Dickey worked as Sutton's top assistant in the late 1980s. Sutton is back in the NCAA Tournament partly at Dickey's expense, for Oklahoma State's invitation-clinching victory over Texas Tech came along while the Tech administration worked behind Dickey's back to court Knight.
After the game, Sutton said that if his NCAA bid didn't ride on the game, he would gladly have lost to save Dickey's job.
At the beginning of the 1999-2000 season, Knight took his Indiana team to Tech for the opening of a brand new arena as a favor to his friend, Tech Athletic Director Gerald Myers. After the game, asked if he would bring his team back to Lubbock, Knight asked, "Why the hell would I want to come back here?"
That question has been answered: No one else will hire him. Texas Tech is the only school that's every bit as desperate as Knight. Indeed, Knight not only is desperate, but his notice of intent to sue Indiana University says he's endured "pain and suffering." Oh, the mighty. How hard the fall.
Meanwhile, Pitino apparently is backing off Louisville, and it's no coincidence that a better job could be out there -- Michigan might soon fire Brian Ellerbe. Conveniently, and legitimately, Pitino said he's concerned about how Kentucky fans would react to his hiring at Louisville (see "Crum and Crummer," issue of March 8-14).
More to the point, though, Michigan is a better gig. It's one of American's most prestigious universities, it's just off Detroit, it's in the Big Ten and it wouldn't compromise his standing with Kentucky fans.
Indeed, by going to Michigan, Pitino would leave Louisville in the lurch. And, just in case the Wildcats don't win a possible grudge match against Duke, that would give their fans something to cheer about.
contact BILL PETERSON: letters@citybeat.com
