Projo Sports Blog

By Jim Donaldson
Journal Sports Writer

I tuned in for the final two minutes.

Or at least what I thought were going to be the final two minutes.

I was checking scores on my computer just before going to bed shortly after 11 Thursday night and saw that UConn and Syracuse were tied with two minutes to go.

"May as well watch the end of that one," I thought, quickly turning on the TV.

I was still watching after 1 a.m., as the Orange and the Huskies battled into a sixth overtime.

And what was unbelievable about that was that, until Andy Rautins drained yet another of his long-range, NBA-distance, 3-pointers in the opening minute of what would be the final o.t., Syracuse had never led in any of the previous five periods.

That's right. Not once in the first five overtimes did the Orange have the lead.

But they ended up winning, 127-117, in a game that anyone who watched it, either on television or, most certainly, in person at Madison Square Garden, will always remember.

And, at least for me, part of what made it so great is that it didn't really mean anything.

I'm not a big fan -- or even a small fan, for that matter -- of conference tournaments. I've long felt that, in the big picture, more bad things happen in them than good.

Every year a couple of teams that really don't belong in the NCAA tournament win their conference tourney, thus bursting the "bubble" of better, at-large teams more deserving of a bid. Every year, in the smaller conferences, a team or two that dominated its league during the regular season is upset in its conference tournament and doesn't get invited to the Big Dance. Every year, powerful teams from the power conferences -- the Big East, the ACC, the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac-10, the Big 10 -- engage in physically-bruising, emotionally-draining battles against their archrivals and can't bounce back in time to be ready for the opening rounds of the NCAA tourney a few days later, and so never make it to the Sweet 16, or, sometimes, even out of the first round.

Pittsburgh, which everyone had been talking about as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, lost to West Virginia in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament. How can the NCAA Selection Committee now make the Panthers, who finished tied for second in the conference in the regular season and couldn't make the semifinals of the Big East tournament, a No. 1 seed now?

 Tags  Jim Donaldson

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