Bob Dunning: Tournament renders season meaningless

THE THRILL OF VICTORY … count me among those who are not thrilled with March Madness, the major college basketball frenzy that has rendered the regular season virtually meaningless … not that there’s anything wrong with having a tournament with a select few teams — maybe 16 maximum — to determine the national championship …

Let’s take our local heroes at UC Davis as an example … they play an exciting brand of Division I mid-major basketball and appear to be gradually improving as they adjust to their new home at college basketball’s highest level … that said, the Aggies are nowhere near deserving to be playing in the national championship tournament … yet, and here’s the crazy part, when the Big West tournament started last weekend, UC Davis was just a three-game win streak away from securing a spot in the Big Dance … it didn’t happen, but it certainly wasn’t far-fetched … this for a team that was 9-9 in conference play and 14-16 overall entering the Big West tournament …

Regular season champion Long Beach State, clearly the class of the conference, saw all its regular-season efforts fall by the wayside when it couldn’t win the conference tournament and the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament … like I said, the regular season has been rendered meaningless … if a conference feels it really must have a season-ending tournament to determine its tournament bid, at least allow the regular-season champion to host the tournament as a reward for its season-long success …

As it is now, it’s a crap shoot … the tournament has become the only thing that matters … so let’s just start the tournament in November and do away with this regular season charade altogether …

ROAR OF THE TIGER … ignoring all of the above (see above), I was enormously pleased to see UOP secure a bid in the NCAA dance by winning the Big West tournament in Bob Thomason’s 25th and final year as head coach … Thomason, who announced his retirement at the start of the season, used to go head-to-head with Bob Hamilton back in the old Far Western Conference days when Hamilton led the Aggies and Thomason coached Stanislaus State … Thomason was the very model of the teacher/coach, who always insisted on strong academics and life lessons for his players … an NCAA bid is a fitting end to his stellar career at a private school in a struggling city, where recruiting talented athletes is a supreme challenge …

Unfortunately, the Tigers are one of those happy-to-be-there, one-and-done teams that will be cannon fodder for first-round opponent Miami out of the powerful ACC … unless UOP can put together a six-game win streak to claim the national title, Thomason’s last game will be a loss in a career full of wins, on and off the court …

ACLU ALERT … there she was, staring out at me from a fully visible outer window at the very public Davis High School, a photo of Nobel Prize winner Mother Teresa in full Missionaries of Charity habit … along with the photo were the words, “Reach Beyond Yourself,” which is completely appropriate unless you’re some sort of church-state zealot who feels all religious reference must be banned from the public square …

While I didn’t have any trouble with Mother Teresa, I was struck by the green “Oregon Alumni Association” decal visible in the very same window … as an Oregon State alum, now that was offensive …

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net