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By Christopher Witflee
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The term "March Madness" first was coined during the frenzy of high school basketball tournaments in Illinois during the 1970s. Indeed, the term is copyrighted by the Illinois High School Association.
The phenomenon has moved, however, to a newly defined manifold of time and space known as "Wally World" -- shortened, in some circles, to "World." It's a world not unlike the one we've always known, a world in which the championship tournaments of college basketball amuse us with upsets and unresolved tensions while proceeding, more or less, according to form.
We look at the brackets to find names like UCLA, North Carolina, Stanford, Cincinnati and Utah eliminated, while those of Miami (our Miami), Oklahoma, Gonzaga and Southwest Missouri State remain. But the top seeds -- Duke, Connecticut, Michigan State and Auburn -- are right there with them, and we can now pull back from the thrill of seeing giants fall as the cosmos assumes its predictable pattern this weekend. Only once has a team seeded 10th or higher reached the Final Four, that being LSU in 1986.
At this point in the tournament, we can see clearly why the seedings are so important and why the only seed that ultimately matters is the top one. To be seeded at the top of a region guarantees an easy first-round break-in game while other worthy contenders are fighting off competitive upstarts. In the second round, the top seed never has to play anyone higher than an eight seed, while other contenders face serious trouble.
Though the poor might strike it rich in this tournament, the rich get richer. But it's the riches of the underdogs, the unveiling of hidden talent to even the nation's basketball zealots, that makes the NCAA Tournament such a spectacle. Just as Bryce Drew and Valparaiso opened our eyes last spring, the eyes of basketball now are fixed on Wally Szczerbiak and his Miami Red Hawks.
It won't last, of course. It can't. First, Miami would have to beat Kentucky, seeded third in the Midwest Region and playing in a milieu it has defined in recent years -- the deep weekends of March. Should Miami survive, it probably takes a crack at Michigan State, which rolled through the Big Ten.
Indeed, Michigan State's outstanding regular season looks all the more impressive today, for the Big Ten, which stood apart from all conferences throughout the regular season, still has a team alive in each region. Ohio State has a fighting chance to beat top-seeded Auburn in the South Region, Iowa will go all out for departing coach Tom Davis against top-seeded Connecticut in the West and Purdue has awakened with hopes it can bounce Temple before taking on Duke for the East Regional championship.
To be sure, the supremacy of the Big Ten and the invincibility of Duke are the true indicators of where power resides in today's college basketball. Of all team sports, though, basketball comes closest to being an individual game, a truism demonstrated by no individual so clearly as Szczerbiak.
Miami coach Charlie Coles all but apologized for calling a 59-58 first round win over Washington "a team effort" since Szczerbiak scored 43 points, 73 percent of the Red Hawks' offense. Utah coach Rick Majerus knew a better answer to Szczerbiak in the second round, but the star turned to his supporting cast and hit 6-of-6 free throws in the final 89 seconds of a 66-58 win.
Szczerbiak first made his national mark as a leading figure for the United States' Goodwill Games team last summer, but he managed to be forgotten this winter amid the usual din of deification for Richard Hamilton, Elton Brand, Connecticut and Duke. That mattered little to or about Szczerbiak, who is 6-foot-5, bench presses 370 pounds and has a 30 1/2-inch vertical leap, a smooth jump shot, complete off-the-ball skills, a nice post-up game and decent defense.
Now, the Red Hawks are in for their dream game against Kentucky, the standard of excellence in college basketball with seven Sweet 16 appearances in the last eight years. That, too, falls quite according to form, for it's just one more indication of the region's richness in college basketball.
Despite the second-round fall of UC against Temple and Xavier's exclusion from the NCAA Tournament, college basketball is alive in the Tristate. Besides the coming showdown between Miami and Kentucky, the weekend will bring the Mideast Regional finals for the NCAA women's tournament to Firstar Center. Add Ohio State's run and Xavier's continuance in the NIT Tournament, and the season is far from finished.
The women's tournament, in particular, could have brought the women's game to extreme local prominence. Both UC and Xavier were invited to the tournament, with the possibility of meeting Friday on the riverfront. But UC lost to Oregon in the first round, and Xavier fell under circumstances that wouldn't be allowed in the men's tournament.
Perhaps the women's game still needs all the help it can muster to fill arenas, so it shouldn't be surprising that Connecticut was allowed to play on its own court against Xavier in the second round on March 14. But it was so fundamentally unfair to the Musketeers, who played about as well as a team could play before losing, 86-84, to UConn.
The seeding rules for the men's tournament stipulate that highly seeded teams aren't allowed to play too close to home in the opening rounds. It creates real competitive tension, for the house always turns out for the underdog. But here's Xavier playing in Storrs, Conn., in front of a crowd that's made UConn one of the elite women's programs, with nothing less at stake than its competitive life.
Xavier held double-digit leads at some points throughout the night, but the crowd asserted itself and Xavier, frankly, unraveled in the late stages of the game. All the markings of a home court advantage worked in UConn's favor, including a questionable call under the basket that set up the winning free throws.
This is no way to run a basketball tournament. The women's college game today is an excellent game. If you've ever seen the likes of Tennessee and Connecticut, you've seen dynamic cutting and passing, tenacious defense and an overall floor game well-executed and true to the fundamentals of basketball. But the advance of the women's game is mitigated by certain irritating features.
Last season, for example, a Connecticut player became the program's all-time scoring champion, but she is, unfortunately, not even worth naming in this context. The basket with which she set the record came on an uncontested layup by complicity of the coaches involved, for she was injured and wouldn't have otherwise been able to play.
Perhaps the argument could be granted that women and men are so fundamentally different as to legitimize such shenanigans in women's athletics. But the point is highly debatable and probably not even worth the benefit of doubt. In any case, it's disingenuous for the game to condone record fixing and give the best teams guaranteed home games in the NCAA Tournament, then expect sports fans to respect its records and achievements.
Think about it. Pete Rose is out of Major League Baseball, probably for good, because he put himself into a position from which he could be suspected of fixing outcomes. Major League Baseball took this extraordinary step because nothing less was at stake than the perceived legitimacy of the competition. And do you remember the heat put on Reds pitcher Brett Tomko last year when an ESPN interview was edited to make it appear that he would seriously consider grooving a pitch for a record-breaking home run by Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa?
But we're supposed to respect the legitimacy of women's college basketball when even a school record is staged like a pin fall in professional wrestling? Sure, the player had scored a thousand other baskets, and it's a tough break to be injured so close to the record. But that's part of what makes sporting records so compelling. They must stand on the merit of great skill and the fortune of good luck.
When the outcome is scripted to compromise those elements, the entire fabric of the achievement is ruined. The sentiment behind fixing the record-breaking basket is respectable, and it's a little bit understandable that such a plan would be hatched. But to actually go through with it?
All that said, UConn is in town this week. They play wonderful basketball and are well worth the price of a ticket. Even if you're put off by the concerns mentioned above, a hoop fan could do a lot worse than to watch them play.
Of course, television sets also will be blaring all over town with the exploits of Ohio State, Kentucky and Miami. It's Wally World. No, this weekend it's just world.
