Picking Splinters

March's Ls & Ws

By Mike Hume

As usual the NCAA Tournament has provided a variety of winners and losers, but some you can’t necessarily find in the morning box scores. Here’s a look at some of the people, things and teams that either came up big or went down hard this weekend.

Losers

Billy Packer: With the way the bracket has shaken out, Packer could give any of those NBC crash dieters a run for the title of “Biggest Loser.” Of course, Packer probably isn't losing too much weight right now. After four members of the Mid-Major conferences Packer bashed on Selection Sunday made it through to the Sweet 16, the CBS analyst has been served with a ginormous portion of humble pie, packed with crow with a healthy side dish of his own foot.

When will Packer learn to keep his mouth shut? Two years ago he griped that St. Joe’s didn’t deserve a No. 1 seed, then the Hawks nearly won their Elite Eight game against Oklahoma State. This year, a full quarter of the Sweet 16 (Gonzaga, Wichita State, George Mason and Bradley) are spiting Packer, with Wichita State or Mason guaranteed a spot in the Regional Final. While Packer is a first-rate analyst, uneducated (he has said he hasn’t watched any MVC games this season) assertions like these make his insights appear as valid as Brittney Spears’ position on North Korea’s nuclear program. The fact that he hasn’t owned up to it on the air is only making it worse. Ditto his network’s sheltering him by sending him to the Cinderella free Minneapolis regional.

Conference Tournament Winners: Kansas (Big XII), Iowa (Big Ten) and Syracuse (Big East) were all one and done at the Dance. Florida (the SEC Tournament Champion) is the only conference tournament winner still alive that didn’t also win its regular season crown. The Gators have played two laughers against South Alabama and Wisconsin-Milwaukee in their home-state venue of Jacksonville.

Bill Self: For the second straight season Self’s Kansas Jayhawks get axed in the first round by a No. 13 seed. I sincerely doubt the fact that Bradley moved on to the Sweet 16 will be any consolation to the Fog Allen faithful.

While this is sure to be an uncomfortable summer for Self, at least it’s not as bad as last year. In 2005, Self’s predecessor at Kansas, Roy Williams, won his first national title at North Carolina against Bruce Weber and Illinois — the team Self built and then left for the KU job. That’s gotta sting.

The Entire Big Ten: All gone by the end of the second round, further proving that the middling teams in big time conferences won’t be locks for further tournaments.

Cincinnati and Hofstra: These teams look pretty vindicated in their complaints of being excluded after Seton Hall imploded and Mason continues its run. Hard to exact any revenge in the NIT though.

CBS Producers Working the Wichita State Games: Some college intern needs to enlighten the production crew that when the WSU fans and cheerleaders make the “Shocker” sign by retracting their ring fingers, there is more significance attached to the gesture than the fact it looks like a “W.”

Winners

CBS Sportsline.com Producers Who Came Up with March Madness On Demand: With an estimated 1.5 million viewers watching out-of-market games on their computers, CBS claims it to be the biggest on-line event in history. That Boss Button is clutch too.

The Running Game-Winning Jump Shot at the Buzzer: Tennessee’s Chris Lofton and Northwestern State’s Jermaine Wallace gave us two of the first round’s most memorable moments with shots of this variety.

Mid-Major Staying Power: Winners even when they’ve lost close games, schools like George Mason, Bradley, Wichita State, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Northwestern State, Winthrop, Monmouth, Murray State, Pacific and Penn have proven that schools of their sort can dance with the big boys too. In 174 total games from the first round in 2004 to today (excluding the play-in games), Mid-Majors have won 37 of them. Yes, I’m counting the A-10 in that, but take out wins by St. Joe’s, Xavier and GW and you still have an average of 10 Mid-Major tourney wins every season. And by the way, only four of those belong to standard-bearer Gonzaga.

Tough Scheduling: As hard as it is to get a game with major conference powers, the remaining Cinderellas were able to test their mettle against the likes of Wake Forest, Mississippi State (George Mason), DePaul (Bradley), Illinois, Providence and Michigan State (Wichita State). I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Even the remaining conference powers had some tough non-con matches. Seven of the 12 Majors sport strength of schedules in the top 35, and Georgetown (whose SOS is 63) squared off against six top 10 teams this season, two of them (Duke and Illinois) in their non-conference schedule.