3/3/07: The Week In Sports

March 3, 2007

I’d like to dedicate this week’s column to the Eastern Oregon Men’s basketball team. I should really direct it more towards the flaws in the picking process for at-large bids to the NAIA Division II Men’s basketball tournament.
The Mountaineers final record was 23 wins with just eight losses, and yet, still no invitation to the National Tournament. Other than the obvious appearance of the record, let’s breakdown some possible reasons why there was no invitation.
1) Eastern’s played no one tough on their schedule: Out of the 31 game schedule, 12 came against ranked NAIA opponents and EOU went 7-5. Two losses came to NCAA schools, Willamette (NCAA Division III) and Eastern Washington (NCAA Division I). So I feel like we can throw that argument out, and call it completely false.
2) Eastern came out of a weak conference: This one is connected to the schedule one quite a bit obviously. The Cascade Conference invited the most schools to the National Tournament than any other conference. The CCC had four teams in the Top 25 for much of the year, and two in the top ten. Eastern lost only six games in arguably the toughest conference in the country. I find this reason to be false as well.
3) Eastern was simply not hot going into the month of March: Eastern did drop three games late in the season, but how about the other five they won? Their record in February was 5-3. The three games they lost were to number four Warner Pacific by six, at number seven Oregon Tech by nine, and at Warner Pacific by seven. I find this to be the only argument that holds any weight, but not too much.
4) Eastern was just an un-noticed team all year: Out of the ten ratings throughout the season posted by the NAIA, EOU was in the first eight. They found themselves among the nation’s elite from debuting at number 23 to open the season on November 1 and dropped out of the top 25 on February 14 after their nine point loss at Oregon Tech, a game the Mountaineers were up by 11 in the second half. So, we can throw this argument out as well.
Basically EOU found themselves as the latest victim of “March Madness”. It’s the best time of the year if you are a basketball fan, but it also can be the worst if you find yourself on the outside of looking in. Conference tournaments are usually the reason for all the craziness.
Lower seeded teams have the same chance as every other team going into these tournaments to pull off miracles. Eastern was the fifth seed going into the tournament and had to face road games throughout the tournament, and won at two ranked teams in the postseason and almost pulled off their own miracle leading by six at Warner Pacific before running out of steam and losing by seven.
A conference tournament champion title was apparently the last shot the men had at getting into the national tournament. The loss left EOU waiting for an at-large bid to the tournament, an invitation which never came. The eight at-large bids, which are handed out by teams in the final coaches’ poll, only went down as far as No. 23 Northwood from Florida.
This brings me to the argument that the conference tournaments do not mean anything in NAIA. Unless one of those lower seeded teams wins the whole thing, it does not matter how far they get, it goes unnoticed. The final poll is released a week before the conference tournaments begin.
The reality of all this, Eastern was number 21 with two weeks to go, went to Southern Oregon and won, lost a close one at Oregon Tech, beat Albertson twice in a row, and then at Northwest. In that time EOU dropped from 21st to 30th. Albertson and Northwest then were awarded at-large bids along with Northwood and Cornerstone from Michigan who were unranked before February 21.
The Mountaineers' only game between the last two polls was its 78-75 home win over then-No. 14 Albertson on Feb. 16. EOU's reward for its upset win was receiving 14 fewer votes in the national poll.
All is not lost for the men though; they will return all but two players from this year’s record setting team. Seniors Derek Brown and Vernon Cropper will be missed and hard to replace, but Coach Ryan Looney has begun the recruiting process already.