March Blecch-ness

 Well, THAT was not must-see TV.

If you stayed up for it, and hopefully you didn't, we got Colorado State vs. Virginia in an NCAA Tournament play-in game last night, and boy was that premo entertainment. In case you were doing something more productive, like sleeping, Colorado State won 67-42. Virginia scored 14 points in the first half on 5-of-29 shooting. At one point the Cavaliers missed 16 shots in a row.

But, yeah, what the Madness needs is more Virginias.

That's the contention of SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who last weekend created something of a firestorm not by suggesting the NCAA Tournament will one day be the Power 5 conferences and no one else, but by not not suggesting it. In other words, he said no situation in college athletics these days is static.

Which I suppose is true.

But then Sankey went on to say this: "We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues), and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of (conference) expansion ,,,"

OK, first of all: "Giving away"?

Second of all: "Highly competitive opportunities"?

Opportunities for whom, exactly? And for what?

If Sankey is indeed suggesting the tournament be expanded to 80 teams (as some have), then, sorry, no thanks. As was abundantly made obvious last night, Da Tournament does not need more Virginias. It does not need more "highly competitive opportunities" for Power 5 cruds  who can't get out of their own way. 

If watching Virginia soil the game last night didn't convince anyone that the Da Tournament might actually have expanded too much already, then perhaps this will: The obvious fact that no one plays hooky from work the first two days of the tournament to watch the No. 8 team in the SEC play the No. 7 team in the Big Ten. As Mad magazine taught us to say, blecch.

No, sir. The reason the hooky-players pack sports bars at noon on a Thursday or Friday in March is because they want to scarf wings and drink beer and watch, say, a Yale scare the crap out of a Kentucky. Or Princeton take down UCLA, as happened several years back. Or Mercer knock out Duke, or Fairleigh Dickinson or St. Peter's shock Purdue, or Bucknell wreck Kansas -- all of which has happened across the years.

That's what makes the Madness, the Madness. It's what separates it from every other Just A Buncha Guys Tournament. It's what gives Da Tournament its uniqueness and its hook, and no one who watched last year's tournament could argue otherwise.

After all, who made Da Tournament last year? Who was the One Shining Moment of One Shining Moments?

Thaaat's right. It was your Florida Atlantic Owls.

UConn cut the nets, but the Owls were the story. Years from now, when the 2023 NCAA Tournament is just a page in the book, it's going to be the Owls' run to the Final Four everyone will remember about it.

And who will remember Virginia shooting 25 percent, missing 14 of 17 from Threeville and losing by 25 to a team that finished sixth in the Mountain West?

Think you know the answer to that.