One heavyweight fight you can’t afford to miss

By now your 6-foot sub is ordered. You’ve called your hundred or so closest friends. You’ve… By now your 6-foot sub is ordered. You’ve called your hundred or so closest friends. You’ve rolled the keg up the back stairs of your building. You even rented a 70-inch flat-screen television. It’s time for the biggest party of the year: the NCAA tournament play-in game.

This year’s clash of the titans is between the Hampton Pirates (16-15) and the Monmouth Hawks (18-14).

“It’s kind of two-sided,” Monmouth senior point guard Tyler Azzarelli told the Associated Press. “It’s a good opportunity to play another TV game that’s the only game on that night and it’s a game where you can play like yourself because you’re not playing a UConn. So it’s good in that respect. But obviously you don’t like to be in the play-in game. But we can’t change that, so we’re going to go to Dayton and treat it like a championship game.”

Of course, it’s good they’re not playing UConn. No one wants to see a second-tier team like the Huskies. Who in their right mind wants to watch a team that lost its opening game in its conference tournament?

You won’t find that here. This is a battle of the best of the best. Small wonder they’re going to treat it like a championship game. It might as well be for the title.

On one side, you have the Monmouth Hawks, who have been tested all season long by the best the Northeast Conference has to offer, including St. Francis of New York and St. Francis of Pennsylvania. That’s right, same school, two states. You know how confusing that could make scouting and game-planning? It didn’t matter. They still swept them.

Somehow they overcame all the obstacles to win their conference title. Along the way, they had to knock out Central Connecticut State (the best team in the state), Mount St. Mary’s and perennial powerhouse Farleigh Dickinson.

On the other hand, you have Hampton University, which will be competing in its second play-in game in a week. The Pirates needed to overcome the mighty Bears of Morgan State to even earn a spot in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament. The MEAC (poorly chosen acronym) is considered by many experts to be one of the strongest and deepest conferences in Division I basketball.

Three days later, the Pirates pulled off a miracle even more impressive than that of Team USA’s victory over the Soviet hockey team in the 1980 Olympics. They somehow managed to fend off the top-seeded Delaware State Hornets — who could probably give their NBA brethren a run for their money — to earn their place in the greatest spectacle in sports.

So why in the world would Tyler Azzarelli say that he would rather not play in this game?

Perhaps it’s because the teams focus so much of their energy and efforts into this colossal event that they have nothing left for their next game. Imagine playing in the Super Bowl and then playing that annual (and equally worthless) inaugural NFL preseason game in Mexico or Japan the following week. That gives you a pretty good analogy as to what these teams go through each and every year.

How can you expect these teams to get excited for a game against lowly Villanova after having already defeated the best the NCAA has to offer?

And it’s been proven year after year. In fact, every single season since the play-in game’s inception, the victors, visibly exhausted from their momentous triumph a few nights before, have suffered a letdown at the hands of much less talented teams in their “first-round” contests.

Oh, well. At least the public understands what’s at stake. And maybe someday, perhaps the same fateful day when the NCAA finally cleans up the bowl system, they’ll provide the same scrutiny toward this ridiculous tournament mess.

Until then, make sure you have plenty of Solo cups, paper plates and ranch dressing, because we’re Pitt students, and we understand that the best team isn’t always the one that wins the tournament.

Andrew Chikes is a staff writer for The Pitt News. E-mail him at abc10@pitt.edu.