Around College Basketball: March Madness, a national holiday?

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/11/2009 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - We have three-day weekends for a variety of holidays throughout the year, but I'd like to propose another, for the start of March Madness.

It would give all of us college basketball junkies one extra day to devote totally to watching the start of tournament season on television, or to travel to the various tournament sites to get our hoop fix.

Holiday or not, like many other fans, I spent my weekend watching as much basketball as possible. I even managed to have multiple televisions going on Monday night to see four more teams earn automatic bids into the NCAA tournament field.

If you were watching from Saturday through Monday as eight teams punched their tournament tickets and several others positioned themselves for championship games, you were not disappointed by the excitement.

GETTING IT RIGHT

Hats off to the West Coast Conference for finally switching their tournament to a neutral site after years of rotating the event around various campus sites.

The WCC, spurred by the national success of Gonzaga and the development of several other programs in recent years, such as St. Mary's, moved its tournament to Las Vegas this year and was met by sell-out crowds and a celebrity constituency.

I'll never forget on one of my basketball trips to the Thomas and Mack Center, having former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese settle down in the seat next to me. I found it hard to take my eyes off his diamond-encrusted 1972 Super Bowl ring as I tried to watch UNLV and UC Santa Barbara play that night.

It was basketball royalty that I noticed at the Thomas and Mack Center this weekend, first and foremost former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, who had a front-row seat for every game. In Las Vegas, Tark the Shark is still as big as Wayne Newton.

NBA coaching legend Pat Riley had to make do with a seat further up in the crowd. The Los Angeles Lakers and other pro teams take a back seat to the Runnin' Rebels in Vegas.

On the court, there was little doubt that Gonzaga was the king. It is remarkable what Mark Few and company have constructed during a decade of success in Spokane, WA.

The Bulldogs won their ninth tournament title in 11 years on Monday night, beating a formidable St. Mary's squad in almost surgical fashion, 83-58. It was the 12th year in a row that Gonzaga has advanced to the WCC championship game, and the 14th time in 15 years.

Even Duke or North Carolina can't make those type of claims.

The only losses in championship games during the past 11 years occurred when San Diego beat the Zags in 2003 and 2008, on the Toreros' home court.

Now that the WCC has moved its tournament to Las Vegas, there's no telling when Gonzaga may lose this championship again.

But the Bulldogs have their sights set on something greater this year - a legitimate shot at the NCAA championship. This is a balanced and deep scoring squad that doesn't have to rely on one player to carry them as much as in the past, during the days of players like Dan Dickau, Blake Stepp, Adam Morrison or Derek Raivio.

I guarantee you that Gonzaga is not the school that other prominent teams want to find in their bracket when the NCAA tournament field is announced on Sunday.

BACK IN THE SADDLE

Even with the loss on Monday, St. Mary's (25-6) should also get into the field, if there is any justice from the NCAA selection committee. Gael guard Patrick Mills returned this weekend after missing more than a month with two broken metacarpal bones in his right hand.

Mills was noticeably rusty in Sunday night's 71-61 semifinal win over Portland and the loss to Gonzaga on Monday night. But with two more weeks to prepare for the postseason, Mills should look more like the player who carried the Gaels to an 18-1 start.

Strangely, St. Mary's has one more chance to impress the selection committee before Sunday. The Gaels have scheduled a game for Friday against Eastern Washington to give Mills another chance to get back into game shape.

St. Mary's played 29 regular-season games, but three of them were in the Union 76 Classic in Anaheim, CA, at the start of the season, one of the NCAA-exempt tournaments. That put the Gaels one game short of the NCAA limitation.

Eastern Washington (12-17) played in Hawaii in December, giving it an exemption. NCAA teams are given exemptions for playing in Hawaii in order to make it more desirable economically for teams to travel there for games.

GETTING IT WRONG

While the WCC was playing on a neutral site on Monday, the Southern Conference was making a mockery of its tournament by allowing Tennessee-Chattanooga to earn an NCAA bid by playing on its home court.

Now, it is one thing when a league allows its No. 1 seed to host a game, or the whole tournament, on its home floor. But it is another thing altogether when it does it for economic reasons.

Chattanooga is a fine town to visit. The NCAA has found a nice home for the Division I Football Championships since 1997.

But when a mediocre 18-16 team advances to the NCAA tournament largely because it gets to play three conference tourney games at home, something is wrong.

In the past, the Southern Conference has played in cities like Greensboro, NC, Greenville, SC and North Charleston, SC on neutral courts, but Chattanooga has been the only school in recent years to play with a true home-court advantage.

The SoCon had two fine NCAA candidates in Davidson and College of Charleston, teams that finished with 26 wins each and solid resumes. College of Charleston upset tournament favorite Davidson, 59-52, on Sunday, but came up short to Chattanooga, 80-69, on Monday night.

Charleston had already beaten Chattanooga twice in the regular season, but Bobby Cremins' Cougars ran out of gas in the second half on Monday night after being tied 34-34 at the break.

The SoCon uses a goofy, two-division set-up, even though it plays a home-and- home round robin. When it seeds the tournament, a team that has a worse conference record can be seeded ahead of a team from the opposite division that has a better record in conference.

While Charleston was tied with The Citadel for the second-best record in the SoCon at 15-5, tie-breaking procedures forced the Cougars to play four games in the tournament.

Chattanooga was only 11-9 in conference play, but won the weak North Division crown and earned the No. 2 seed. That meant that the Mocs only had to beat mediocre teams from Elon and Samford to reach the final, while Charleston had to meet Davidson in the semifinals after winning two other games.

The result is that the SoCon is likely to be placed in the NCAA play-in game next Tuesday in Dayton, OH, while its better teams, Davidson and Charleston, may end up shutout of the tournament.

MAKING A CASE FOR DAVIDSON

One of the best stories from the 2008 NCAA tournament was the play of Stephen Curry, as Davidson marched to within a basket of the Final Four before losing to eventual national champion Kansas.

But despite another fine season and 26 wins, the Wildcats will be dependent on the NCAA committee to earn a fourth consecutive tournament bid. Davidson has played well against a competitive schedule, has wins over West Virginia, College of Charleston and North Carolina State and close losses to Oklahoma and Duke.

Some detractors point to the Wildcats' weak conference schedule, but Davidson did everything it could to play a tough, out-of-conference slate and showed it is a quality team.

Here is the quandary. Does the NCAA really need some eighth-place team from the Big East, or some school that didn't even have a winning record in the ACC, SEC or Big 12?

The tournament is better off with the leading scorer in the nation, Curry, leading his scrappy Davidson squad into the 65-team field than getting another "big-name" team from a "big-name" conference.

I'd rather see the Davidsons, Creightons, St.Mary's and College of Charlestons in the field - teams that have actually won some games - given the chance to play in the national tournament.

OTHER NOTES

-You had to know things were looking good for Chattanooga on Monday night when Patterson retrieved a ball near half-court with one second on the shot clock and fired in a three-pointer on a pseudo-set shot. It looked like something from one of those news reels in the 1950s.

-No tournament championship game is likely to have a more unusual start than the West Coast Conference final, with Gonzaga's Matt Boldin shooting free throws after St. Mary's Omar Samhan received a technical foul for dunking during warm-ups.

-Virginia Commonwealth's Larry Sanders proved to be too much for George Mason with an 18-point, 20-rebound performance, and Eric Maynor had 25 points in the Colonial Athletic Association title game on Monday. There will be no sighting of the Mason Nation in this year's NCAA tourney.

-Siena earned its second straight NCAA bid with a late surge for a 77-70 win over Niagara in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title game on Monday. Kenny Hasbrouck scored 19 points and was the catalyst as the top-seeded Saints broke open a tight contest.

-Northern Iowa survived a potential game-winning shot by Illinois State at the end of regulation and got a boost from Ali Farokhmanesh to beat the Redbirds, 60-57 in overtime, for the Missouri Valley Conference title on Sunday. Farokhmanesh scored eight of his 13 points in the extra session for the top- seeded Panthers.

-Army appeared to have regular-season champ American on the ropes with an 11- point second-half lead in the Patriot League semifinals on Sunday, but Brian Gilmore brought the Patriots back with a clutch three-pointer with 43 seconds left to tie the game. Gilmore then hit the second of two free throws with 3.6 seconds remaining to lift American to a 61-60 victory.

Holy Cross will travel to meet American on Friday afternoon for the PL championship. The Crusaders rolled to a 7-0 start and led by as many as 27 points in the second half on the way to a 61-44 victory over Colgate.

-VMI sprinted out to a 17-5 lead early as it tried to earn its first NCAA bid since a Sweet 16 run in 1977. But the Keydets came up short when center Art Parakhouski piled up 26 points and 18 rebounds for Radford in a 108-94 win Saturday for the Big South title.

-East Tennessee State had been unable to win the Atlantic Sun tournament title in recent years on its home floor, but a shift of games to Nashville proved to be the tonic for the Buccaneers as they beat top-seeded Jacksonville, 85-68, for the crown on Saturday. Mike Smith led second-seeded ETSU with 22 points and 12 rebounds.

Morehead State battled Austin Peay through two wild overtimes in the Ohio Valley Conference championship game on Saturday before freshman Steve Peterson, doing his best Michael Jordan imitation, nailed a baseline jumper with 1.2 seconds left to lift the Eagles to the 67-65 win. It was the only successful shot of the game for Peterson, who put Morehead State into its first NCAA tournament since 1984.

-While there were some great finishes in these men's conference tournament finals, the best play of Monday allowed top-seeded Western Carolina to escape with a triple-overtime victory against College of Charleston in the Southern Conference women's basketball tournament title game.

Trailing by two points with 1.8 seconds left in overtime, WCU had Lauren Powell set a pick while one of her teammates ran the baseline as the out-of- bounds passer. Charleston's Brooke Kotcella followed the passer, didn't see the pick, and ran over Powell to give WCU two free throws, which Powell sank to tie the game and force a second overtime.

Western Carolina also survived some hairy moments in the second extra session before a 16-2 outburst in triple overtime gave the Catamounts their 101-87 victory.