Before we get started with how badly we got screwed by the NCAA tournament selection committee, I’d like to make a couple other comments about the weekend previous.

1. Congrats to all the Gtown fans. They were fantastic all year, and they deserve this title. Also, Congrats to Coach O, you’re smarter than me. All in all, it was a pretty good tournament, not the best I’ve seen, but entertaining none the less. And for the first time since 2004, the best team in the conference won the tournament. Well, I guess you could make a case for the Cuse in ‘05 as well. It was nice to see the tournament go to form though, and I was really excited for last night’s final. I thought it’d be a good game. I was wrong. Georgetown was incredible once again.

2. Building on that point of the conference tournament, I have a problem with continuous remarks that I heard from numerous commentators over the course of the past week. You may have noticed a few commentators on ESPN and CBS make remarks to the effect of, “these conference tournaments in the major conferences don’t mean much. They’re mostly about the seeding.” Well, I can assure you that that’s a bunch of horse dung. They don’t mean much? These commentators honestly feel that getting a 5 seed instead of a 6 is more important than winning your conference tournament? Try telling that to Russell Carter. Try telling that to Mike Nardi. Try telling that Aaron Gray. Try telling that to Jeff Green. The fact of the matter is, that most teams don’t win the National Championship. It’s hard, and it doesn’t happen to most of us. But, winning your conference championship is much more attainable. And 50 years from now, when Roy Hibbert is telling his story as a Hoya to his grandchildren, do you think he’s going to talk about how the Hoyas got a 2-seed? Of course not. Nobody’s going to care if Gtown is a 2, 3 or 4. He’ll tell the story of how he shut down one of the best centers in the Big East and helped his team coast to a championship on the nation’s biggest stage of Madison Square Garden. (assuming Gtown doesn’t make the Final Four, which I hope they do) And do you think Eric Devendorf will tell about how Syracuse earned a 5-seed in last year’s NCAA tournament instead of a 6 or 7? No! He’ll get to say that he played in the Big East final, and he played with Gerry McNamara, and won 4 games in dramatic fashion along the way, including an upset of the #1 team in the nation. I’ve heard too much recently about these major conference championships not meaning anything. Is winning the Big East as big as making a Final Four? No, of course not. But still, I believe commentators are minimizing just how great these conference tournaments are. We remember Ben Gordon, we remember Ron Rowan, we remember Gerry McNamara, we remember Ray Allen, we remember Oliver Taylor, and we’ll remember Jeff Green. While the national media minimizes these performances, I believe they are just the opposite, some of the greatest performances in college athletics that I have ever seen, and in our case in the Big East, they are performed on the grandest stage.

Before I go, one more thing. Big ups to the Big East. For the first time in years, I was not able to attend the Tournament this year, and it was nice to see a packed house from Thursday on, especially since there were so many empty seats at several other major conference tournaments. It’s the biggest, as always.

Categories: Commentary, Big Willie Style