A few weeks back the basketball coach at my alma mater was being interviewed about the importance of winning the team's third regular season title in 4 years. He made the point that the regular season title is more important to him than the conference tournament, because it is a measure of who is better over 16 games, not 3. He also probably feels that way because after winning that regular season title we lost in the first round of the tournament and didn't have a strong enough campaign to make it into the NCAAs as an at large bid.
This debate is going on in DI too. With San Diego bouncing both St. Marys and Gonzaga (who have both been top 25 teams this year and were shoe ins to get into the bracket) there is one less spot in the field of 65. Does San Diego deserve to go to the tourney? Probably not since St. Marys and Gonzaga were the pimps of the WCC this year, but alas, there will be a ho at the dance too. There will be other top teams who don't win their conference tournament which will cause more "Big 6" conference schools to be relegated to the NIT, Maryland, I'm looking at you.
The question is: is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is a 1 in 1000 chance that San Diego might knock off Duke or Georgetown in a #2 v #15 game worth not seeing a Big 10 team who was in the middle of the pack make it, and maybe catch lightning in a bottle and go to the sweet 16. We all love the Cinderella story (tears in his eyes I guess) but we all hate 110 to 54 games in the first round too.
It's important to note that the Cinderella is almost never one of these upstart teams that only made it in at 14-15 due to winning their conference tournament, they are almost always the Valpo's and late 90's Gonzaga teams that are in reality very good teams but just don't get a lot of play. St. Mary's could very well be that team in DI this year. The DIII version, St. Mary's of Maryland, who are in the Sweet 16 at the expense of my Spartans are the exception, not the rule.
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