Sports Talk: The ultimate matchup

As I’m sure you all know by now, our beloved basketball team was taken down last Friday to end their season. Some analysts say it is good for college basketball teams to have a tough game or even a disappointing loss before going into tournament play, just to help them keep things in perspective. Now whether you buy into that philosophy is for you to decide, but you must remember our boys had won 25 games in a row! Sadly, all great streaks must come to an end. And who would have guessed some Mennonites would have knocked off the Presbyterians to end it?

Now, hats off to Eastern Mennonite; we all know it must have taken a valiant performance on their part to take down our Bucs, but I have some issues with the way this game was played. As the No. 4 team in the country and the No. 1 team in their section of the bracket, the Pirates were not given the home-court advantage they deserved. Again, I do not want to discredit those Mennonites, but there is a lot to be said for home-court advantage in college basketball, and our guys got the shaft. Even if the game was not at Whitworth, it should have been somewhere on the West Coast.
To ask our team, one of if not the favorite to win the national title, to travel to North Carolina and deal with a time change and the hassles of traveling is simply a joke. But wait, it gets worse! Not only did Whitworth have to fly across the country to get to the “neutral” site, the other teams were brought in on buses. That means aside from dealing with East Coast garbage and the obvious bias towards East Coast teams (don’t even get me started on the SEC), our guys were playing at a location within driving distance of the other three schools in their area of the bracket. Whitworth’s hard-earned home-court advantage (remember those 25 straight wins and that No. 4 ranking?) was given over to its opponents. You have got to be kidding me!

If you’re the NCAA, you’ve got to buck up the funds and fly those Mennonites and the other two schools in the bracket over to the West Coast. Or, if you want to make it a truly neutral site, play the games somewhere in the Midwest, a location mutually far away from any schools involved. That is really poor form in the part of the NCAA. Cheap-skating those East Coast schools into an opportunity to have home-court advantage while the favorites must play on the road.

What does that say about what about the NCAA’s treatment of its best teams? It says, “We don’t care how good you are, just so long as teams in your region are also good will we reward you with a home-court atmosphere.” Come on NCAA! You’re the mother-flippin’ NCAA; you’re bigger than that.

You all saw (Or “y’all,” as they would say in North Carolina) what kind of atmosphere the Fieldhouse was against Chapman a week ago. You know how important it is to play at home. How can the NCAA possibly justify our team (the No. 1 team in the bracket, might I remind you) having to play in North Carolina at a site only driving distance from its opponents? It’s simply unbelievable.

Contact Colin Zalewski at colin.zalewski@whitwothian.com.

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