Dancin' with the smalls

Amazing what the great unwashed can learn, listening to the NCAA bracket nerds with their slide rules and Quadrant 1-2-3-4 physics on Selection Sunday. I mean, I never knew what a snub was until the nerds kept jawing that Indiana was "snubbed" by the committee.

Who knew a 17-15 team that lost eight in a row and 12 of 13 at one point, then got flamed by a mediocre Ohio State team in the first round of the Big Ten tournament, could be left out of the 68-team bracket? How is that for injustice?

That apparently it was will come as a shock to those of us who figured Indiana needed at least two wins in the Big Ten tournament to get in, and was a mortal lock for the NIT after that didn't happen. But then, that is the way of things for the nerds, who never stop to consider esthetics when it comes to the Madness. It's all about Quadrant 1-2-3-4 wins divided by the hypotenuse of Dick Vitale's schtick, times the trajectory of a Fletcher Magee 3-ball.

Who, by the way, is a senior guard and the leading scorer for the Wofford Terriers, your Southern Conference champions and the counter-argument to the bracket nerds. Isn't the NCAA tournament the show it is because of the Woffords of the world -- or the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights, Colgate Raiders or Gardner-Webb Runnin' Bulldogs, who also made the tournament despite the crippling absence of a 17-15 record in a power conference?

Of course it is. Except for their alums, no one's going to tune in this week to see if some mid-pack Big Ten or SEC poser can knock off some other mid-pack Big Ten or SEC poser. Those teams are just field filler, landing spots because they happened to go .500 or so in a power conference. It's the Woffords and Fairleigh Dickinsons and Gardner-Webbs we tune in to see.

We tune in to see if guys with wonderful names like Tacko Fall (Central Florida) and Vasa Pusica (Northeastern) can possibly be as awesome as their handles. We tune in to find out what a Catamount is (Vermont). We tune in to see if Ja Morant of Murray State is the stunning talent we've been told he is, given that he averaged 24.6 points and a staggering 10 assists per this season, or who are the better Gaels -- Iona or St. Mary's.

The bracket nerds never get this, which is why they cast a Big Ten pack rat like Indiana as "snubbed," and why only two of the available 36 at-large bids went to mid-majors. Everything else went to Ohio State and Minnesota and Ole Miss and Florida and zzzzzzzz.

Meanwhile, it'll be, say, the Belmont Bruins who give the tourney its flavor and substance. It'll be Abilene Christian, playing in its first NCAA Tournament in only its sixth season in Division I. It'll be, yes, Wofford, a 7-seed, who'll be playing Seton Hall in the first round.

Wofford has won 29 games this year, in case you didn't know. It's a Methodist school in Spartanburg, S.C., founded in 1854. Its student body, at 1,592 souls, is almost exactly the size of Manchester University's here in northeast Indiana. And in addition to Fletcher Magee, it features another guard named Storm Murphy, who is the team's assists leader.

Storm Murphy and Fletcher Magee. How is that not a completely transcendent backcourt?

And wouldn't you rather watch them than, say, Baylor?