Forever Blowing (and Stroking and Kneading and Rubbing) Bubbles

Mount St. Mary's did us all a favor last night, beating Coppin State 69-60 in the NCAA Tournament play-in game and sparing us, for at least one whole day, of the MSM going all "Coppin State is the worst team to ever get into the field of 64" and whatnot.

The thing is, they should be in.

This argument has probably been made elsewhere, but why aren't the final two at-large teams selected forced to "play" their way into the tournament? Here's some reasons why they should.

1. We all know that a #16 has never beaten a #1, and probably never will. Sure. Got it. But if you take the last two at-large teams and have the winner play the supposed "weakest" #1, well, now you've got some spice. And don't sell me that "you should be rewarded for being a #1 seed" shit. If you're a true national title contender, you should also be able to beat the sixth-best team in the ACC, eat their lunch, and make-out with their hot sister.

2. Why have the rule that conference tourney winners get an "automatic" bid if it's really not "automatic"? I used to have an "automatic" can opener that required you to put the can in at just the right angle, and then you had to press down on the top the entire time it opened the can. Guess what? I threw that "automatic" can opener out because it was a piece of fucking shit, then bought a "hand-held" one that works just as well and doesn't challenge my limited spatial skills.

3. Some people seem to think that the play-in game gives the "little guys" some national exposure. Let me squelch that one for you: NOBODY WATCHES THIS GAME. We all just wait for the highlights after the game or the next day and say shit like "Oh, looks like Lower Peninsula School for the NorthwestSoutheast IUPUI-OU812 St. won and is gonna get their fucking asses handed to them by [insert large school with astronomical athletic budget here]. Cool." But if you've got Arizona State playing Virginia Tech? People tune in.

4. I don't care how bad your team was during the year, if you muster up the balls to win three or four pressure-packed games in a row, you deserve to see your team's name - no matter how long or obscure or initial-ridden - on the bracket. None of this "Play-in game winner" shit.

5. Along the same lines, those first two days are magical. Who cares if you're relegated to the 10:50 a.m. tip-off on Thursday, and you're going to get crushed like white ass at an NBA party? Just being a part of that, and getting a few extra days off of classes, is key.

6. The play-in game participants played their conference tournament final in a gym that seats 8,000 and was 85% full. The game was broadcast on a regional network, whose satellite truck had fishing gear in the back of it. The graphics looked like something NBC shit out in the 70s. Villanova, however, played their conference first-round game at Madison Square Garden and had it broadcast on ESPN - sponsored by Aeropostale! Do you know who sponsored the SWAC tournament? Winston Pfeffer of Tupelo, Mississippi. Twenty bucks.

7. Instead of getting screwed over, some lucky mid-major (Butler, anyone?) may actually get the seed they deserve.

8. Aside from a few exceptions (Villanova as an 8 in '85, Kansas as a 6 in '88), bubble teams don't win shit. Sorry, Arizona. Good luck with that pissy weather and all those ugly bitches.

9. Even if it's just a clip of your center getting posterized, every conference champ should be a part of "One Shining Moment." Or have a game called by Gus Johnson. They're almost equal.

10. "But they seed them according to who's the best team, and a middling team from a major conference is better and has better talent than the best team from a small conference." Fuck you. And fuck you, too, NCAA. Really, that's the best one.

The Strange, Focused Curse of Ritchie McKay

If you peruse the current men's college basketball standings, you'll find that there's only three teams - three out of well more than 300 - that are completely winless in their conference.

They are: Rice, in Conference USA; Oregon State, in the Pac 10; and Colorado State, in the Mountain West.

One baseball school in Texas. One former powerhouse in the Northwest. And one non-anything school on the front range of the Rocky Mountains. On the surface they don't have much in common, but if you delve deeper you find out that two of them - Oregon State and Colorado State - were once coached by the same man: Ritchie McKay, current coach at Liberty.

There is nothing that needs to be written that hasn't been written before. In fact, two of McKay's other former programs - Portland State and New Mexico - are doing quite well. Portland State leads the Big Sky Conference (20-9, 13-2), and New Mexico is third in the MWC (22-7, 9-5).

So why OSU and CSU? It may be because a player named Ron Grady transferred from Oregon State to Colorado State to play for McKay, only to learn after a year that his coach was leaving to head up the program he had just left behind.

Or maybe it's because both of them are terrible programs that are headed in the wrong direction.

If you picked three teams out of all the programs in Div. I-A out of a hat, though, it'd probably be a long damn time before you found two that had been coached by the same person.

That's how it works, however. Some programs make the right decisions and move along, and some just take the hit.

Speaking of which, if you take "hit" out of "Ritchie," you get "Rice." Coincidence?

A Wild(cat) Wish

When I was about eight or nine, my father's older sister, Judy, and her husband Johnny came and visited from Arizona.

Even though it was twenty years ago, Uncle Johnny was old. Well, older. He was mostly bald, with liver spots crawling up and down his arms and neck and legs that were bare from lower thigh to mid-calf, thanks to the technological advancement of khaki shorts and white tube socks.

He also smiled ... a lot. In a way he looked like Fire Marshall Bill, with the curled upper lip exposing bright white teeth. And he used to tell these wonderful stories about particular things, random things he knew about. Most of them involved Arizona in one way or another.

So when he came to visit he brought me a University of Arizona hat. It was an old mesh-backed hat with a foam front (I'd say "trucker hat", but I don't feel like it), and it had Arizona's old logo on it - an 80s-esque post-modern line-drawn shot of an Arizona sunset with a cactus. Maybe saguaro. Maybe not.

Uncle Johnny loved Arizona, and he loved the Wildcats. I had no real college allegiance at the time - I rooted for Colorado or Air Force or even Colorado State, but I didn't care too much - so rooting for the Wildcats seemed plausible. Good, even.

When Miles Simon hit that three-quarters length shot in 1997 to win a game, and then Arizona went on to beat Kentucky in OT for the national championship, I always wondered what Uncle Johnny did to celebrate. He probably just clapped his hands a couple times and did a Bender-like fist pump or something. He wasn't flashy.

So when I found out recently that Alzheimer's had finally gotten the best of him, and my father told me that it made him a shell of his former self and that I wouldn't even recognize him if I had seen him, I thought of Arizona for some reason, and their recent troubles. I guess they mirrored his in a strange way.

My uncle forgot who he was. Arizona forgot who they were.

I probably only saw him a couple times since that visit twenty or so years ago when he gave me that hat. And that cap is long, long gone. But whenever I watched them play, or rooted for them, or talked about them with another Adam, a friend from college's younger brother who was also a fan, I would think about that white foam-front hat, and my smiling, low-talking, kind-hearted uncle.

They're 17-10 right now, 7-7 in the Pac 10, and definitely on the bubble. There's a good chance they might not even make the dance.

But if they do, here's hoping they find it within themselves, somewhere, to win one. Just one.

For Johnny.