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By Christopher Witflee
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The fall of Kenyon Martin sent chills down the backs of Cincinnati basketball fans, heavy ripples into arenas throughout America and tough questions to the top-secret meeting rooms of the NCAA Tournament selection committee. The last week in college basketball has been pure chaos, the outcome of which has summoned even greater furies.
Faced with the loss of Martin, who broke his leg three minutes into UC's Conference USA tournament opener in Memphis, Bob Huggins took up arms on two fronts. Most important, he has set about retooling the Bearcats, adjusting some responsibilities to take up for Martin's absence. On this front, he is, by all accounts, succeeding.
Less successfully, Huggins campaigned to preserve the Bearcats as a top seed in some region, if not the entire tournament. This campaign didn't end when it was revealed that the selection committee sensibly disagreed, dropping the Bearcats to a No. 2 seed. Despite no direct evidence that UC can't win without Martin, the committee could certainly point to a game or two it wouldn't have won without him.
And it's simply impossible to argue that any team losing the Player of the Year is as good without him as it is with him. If Huggins gets to tell the committee that it's unprecedented for the top-rated team in the RPI to not be a top seed, then the committee gets to tell Huggins that it's unprecedented for the top team in the RPI to lose the its top player on the eve of the NCAA Tournament.
On that horrible afternoon in Memphis, one could see in Huggins' face and hear in his voice the dull pain of dashed hopes. Martin, the best player at UC since Oscar Robertson, was going to have the old timers comparing him with Bill Russell at the beginning of April. Suddenly, UC is a tournament underdog, but an underdog with a No. 2 seed and a pretty nice draw.
Huggins spoke at length throughout the last few weeks about UC's dependence on Martin, going so far as to say Martin was the player who put the other players where they were supposed to be on the floor. In the wake of such comments, only his rhetorical responsibilities could possibly lead Huggins to say UC still was worthy of a top seed.
Huggins says, rightly, that there's no way the committee can know how good UC is without Martin. But that's precisely the argument for dropping the Bearcats out of a top seed. The committee would do the NCAA Tournament a disservice by giving a top seed to any team without knowing how good that team is. Even Arizona's loss of Loren Woods, who isn't as good as Martin, occurred in time for the Wildcats to adjust for a couple weeks. And there remains the possibility that Woods, unlike Martin, will return during the tournament.
Without Martin, is UC better than Michigan State, Duke, Stanford or Arizona? No. Without Martin, UC is a team that has to prove itself all over again. The committee didn't punish UC for losing Martin, but neither could it pretend the loss of UC's heart and soul doesn't make a difference. The committee still put UC in the same neighborhood as Temple, St. John's and Iowa State. And the experts who supposed Martin's injury would make Ohio State a top seed might notice that UC still is seeded ahead of the Buckeyes.
The committee didn't drop the Bearcats just because, without Martin, they lost in the conference tournament to a St. Louis team they slaughtered with Martin a week earlier. Everyone knows the Bearcats were shell-shocked in Memphis. Everyone knows they needed to take a deep breath. The Bearcats fell to a No. 2 seed, perhaps charitably, simply because no one knows what to expect from them at this point.
So, instead of playing Valparaiso as the No. 1 seed in Cleveland, the Bearcats are playing North Carolina-Wilmington as the No. 2 seed in Nashville. In the second round, the Bearcats would play Tulsa or UNLV, rather than Utah or St. Louis.
If the bracket goes according to form, UC would play its third-round game in Austin against Ohio State, rather than in Auburn Hills against Syracuse. In the regional final, according to form, it would play Stanford, instead of Iowa State.
So, where's the big difference? The way UC slaughtered Iowa State earlier this year, perhaps the Bearcats would rather have that game. But Iowa State, by winning the Big 12 regular season title, held off stiffer and deeper conference competition than UC or Stanford. Iowa State's Marcus Fizer is playing like every bit as much of a mad dog as Stanford's Mark Madsen. Either team would be a serious test for a UC team missing Martin.
But the Bearcats aren't dead, and they might have even been done a favor with their seed. If they make it to Austin, they stand to face Ohio State, which hasn't been playing well, and Stanford, which struggles against speed. If the Bearcats make it to Austin, they could very well make it to Indianapolis.
Right off the top, though, the mine is set for the Bearcats in the second round, with a likely game against Tulsa. Just as UC has made an infamous tradition lately of losing in the second round, Tulsa has made a bit of a name for itself by sneaking into the Sweet 16.
But UC ought to be able to deal with Tulsa, even without Martin. Though the Golden Hurricane is quick and balanced among its top six players, it lost three times this year to Jerry Tarkanian's Fresno State team. No one is still referring to UC as Vegas East, but UC might still take a bow toward Tarkanian as Fresno East.
If the Bearcats are good enough to win the NCAA Tournament without Martin, then this tournament will give them a chance to prove it. We'll see how Huggins and UC get to work. Do DerMarr Johnson and Pete Mickeal assert themselves more offensively? Can Ryan Fletcher, Jermaine Tate and Donald Little defend in the post?
Huggins says Little, when all is said and done, will block more shots at UC than Martin. If Little is that kind of talent, this is the time to start showing it. With Little, Fletcher, Tate, Johnson and Mickeal stepping it up, the Bearcats could still bring enough talent to this crazy field to end up playing for the championship.
UC isn't the only team with complaints against the committee. But, especially this year, the committee simply couldn't please everyone. This year's candidates offered nothing approaching an easy consensus when it came to deciding who to invite, let alone seeding the teams.
Evidently, the conference tournaments went a long way toward deciding the high seeds. With no conference tournament to trip its top teams, the Pac-10 placed two No. 1 seeds, even though those teams, Stanford and Arizona, stumbled in the last couple weeks.
Stanford is ninth in a simulated RPI due to a weak schedule but took a top seed for being in the top three of both polls and the Sagarin ratings. Then again, Texas, a top 10 team in the RPI and Sagarin rankings with one of the country's toughest schedules, ended up a fifth seed.
Kentucky played the nation's toughest schedule according to RPI and the second toughest according to Sagarin. The Wildcats are rated third by RPI. But they're 16th in the polls and Sagarin, so they end up a fifth seed, playing in Cleveland. Ohio State is rated fourth and fifth in the polls, 16th by Sagarin and 23rd by RPI. The Buckeyes ended up in the middle, a third seed. Maryland sat around 20th in the polls and the Sagarin rankings, but flirted with the RPI top 10 and ended up with a third seed.
Presumably, Kent should have been in the field, for it received votes in the polls and ranked in the mid 30s with Sagarin and the RPI. But Kent is out of the picture, as is Vanderbilt, which has similar credentials.
Instead, the committee invited a lackluster North Carolina team almost entirely due to the strength of its schedule and, one supposes, its tradition. Missouri received the same consideration, even though it's a cut below the other five Big 12 teams in the dance. Both teams are 0-4 against the Sagarin top 10 and a combined 4-17 against his top 30.
Why is Seton Hall, rather than Villanova, the fifth team out of the Big East? Ask the committee. For that matter, Kent, Vanderbilt and Villanova all played tougher schedules than Seton Hall according to RPI and Sagarin, with Kent and Vanderbilt each rated at least eight spots higher than Seton Hall in both computer rankings.
Seton Hall finished 20-9, Kent finished 21-7, Villanova finished 19-12 and Vanderbilt finished 19-10. North Carolina-Charlotte and Wake Forest each played much tougher schedules and earned better computer ratings than Seton Hall, but 17 wins for each team just wasn't enough. UNLV finished 23-7 against an easy schedule, but it won the Mountain West regular season, the conference tournament and an invitation, much to the chagrin of many commentators and bubble teams.
So, a lot of teams have complaints and a number of others ought to be thanking their lucky stars. Some teams have it both ways. Arguments can be made against teams that are in and for teams that aren't.
But none of that matters right now, for UC or anyone else, as the NCAA Tournament begins. It's the time to either put up or shut up.
