Selection Sunday horror stories
— -- The announcers had moved on, from announcing the NCAA tournament field to explaining it, dissecting how teams were chosen and why others weren't, looking for the upsets and the favorites.
In his basement, Barry Hinson was trying to do the same thing -- to explain it. Only he couldn't because he didn't have an explanation.
What the hell just happened? His 2006 Missouri State team, 20-8 overall, winners against NCAA tournament teams Arkansas and Wisconsin-Milwaukee, owners of an RPI of 21, didn't make the 2006 field. Air Force did, with an RPI of 30, but not Missouri State because, well, because why? Because they lost to Northern Iowa in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament? Those 40 minutes negated everything else?
People were in tears; a photographer from the local Springfield News Leader even snapped a picture of Hinson's crying daughter, in what became the ultimate a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words moment.
And the players, they looked like zombies, most looking anywhere but at Hinson, waiting for him to say something but not really wanting to hear it.
"It's like the last few minutes of 'Marley & Me,''' said Hinson, now the head coach at Southern Illinois. "My voice is quivering, eyes welling, tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth. I'm petting Marley saying, 'It's going to be OK,' when I know it's really not.''
There will be another Barry Hinson on Sunday, of that you can be certain. As sure as Kentucky will be the overall No. 1 seed, some team somewhere will be on the outside looking in, snubbed by the selection committee for a weak nonconference record, a crummy RPI, a lack of dominant wins or whatever whim the committee chooses as its explainer.
And some coach will be left to explain it to his team.
The coaches left out are a fraternity of sorts, one that no one wants to join. Maybe better, they are stars of college basketball's own reality show, publicly jilted by the committee much like the third girl in a two-rose ceremony on "The Bachelor."
Bruiser Flint joined the ignominious club in 2007, and then renewed his membership in 2012. Before the '07 season the Drexel coach called George Mason athletic director Tom O'Connor. O'Connor had just finished serving as selection committee chair and Flint wanted to pick his brain to see what the committee was looking for. O'Connor stressed the need to play tough non-league games and do well in conference.
So when Drexel that year went on the road and beat Villanova and Syracuse and finished 13-5 in the Colonial Athletic Association, Flint felt pretty confident.
"Our conference tournament finishes a week early, so that whole week I'm on the radio, doing TV because I felt like we were in pretty good shape,'' Flint said.
So much so that Flint happily invited the television cameras to hang with his Dragons for the inevitable celebration on Selection Sunday.
Only it didn't come. The teams were announced. None were named Drexel University.
"I'm saying, 'It's OK, we're still going to play. We've got the NIT,''' Flint said. "They're just like, 'Yeah, whatever buddy.' They don't want to hear that.''
Fast-forward to 2012. The Dragons finish 27-6, losing to VCU in the tournament tile game.
"After 2007, I decided unless I know we're in, like an automatic bid, I'll never do that again,'' Flint said. "So it was no cameras, no interviews, none of it.''
And again, no bid.
If there is a patriarch of this sullen crew, it is, of course, Seth Greenberg. As the head coach at Virginia Tech, the ESPN analyst was once the Susan Lucci of college hoops, repeatedly nominated to the NCAA tournament, but never welcomed to the party.
None of the near misses was easy. The last, though, was the worst. That was 2011, when after being told his non-league schedule wasn't tough enough the year before, Greenberg revamped his schedule in hopes of impressing the committee.
The Hokies that year finished 21-11. They beat Duke, then ranked No. 1 in the nation, but also went just 2-5 against the tougher competition Greenberg scheduled.
Still with four seniors on his roster and feeling pretty confident, Greenberg invited the team to dinner on Selection Sunday. It hunkered down as the show started, but as the teams are being announced -- Georgia in, UAB in, VCU in -- and the spaces were dwindling, Greenberg got a sick feeling in his stomach.
He left the players and called the ACC league offices.
"They said, 'We didn't call you because we didn't want to let you know before it happened,'' Greenberg said.
He went on his deck to compose himself, and then went back to his players.
The bracket was still being announced, but Greenberg told one of his managers to turn the TV off.
"They looked at me with just complete disbelief,'' he said. "I can see it vividly as if it just happened.''
It all sounds so melodramatic, doesn't it? It's only a basketball tournament, one where just 20 percent of the teams that play can compete, and only 10 percent earn at-large bids. The odds are so wildly stacked against every coach, the ones who make it ought to be more shocked that they got in than the ones that don't.
But that's not how this works. Fair or unfair, the reality is college basketball success equals NCAA tournament bid. It's a formula as universally accepted as 1+1=2.
To make it as a player is to validate your season. To be left off, is to fail.
And to make it as a coach is the difference between an extension and a pink slip.
"In coaching the two worst things you can go through is the rejection of the tournament and being fired,'' Hinson said.
Not making it, of course, would be difficult even in anonymity, but the misery is in direct proportion to the publicity.
Once a cottage industry, bracket prognostication is now a full-on obsession. Starting in about mid-February, quality wins and quality losses become part of the lexicon, giving way to on the bubble, off the bubble and so on.
By the time Selection Sunday nears, predicting the bracket has become almost as popular as trying to win an NCAA pool.
"At 4 p.m. you're one of the first four in,'' said Arizona State coach Herb Sendek, whose Sun Devils had their own share of heartache in 2008 when ASU missed the tourney despite a 19-12 record. "By 4:26, you're one of the first four out and you flip the channel and you've fallen off the face of the Earth. I've learned, for me at least, it's better to watch Andy Griffith reruns.''
Flint didn't ignore it. He bathed in it. He'd sit and discuss his team's chances with his players, listen to every analyst, read every story. It wasn't curiosity so much as it was affirmation because he was that sure his Drexel team would get in the tournament.
Hinson listened, too, but with a little more edge because he was ticked that people discounted his team. He remembers Digger Phelps, who sat clearly on the anti-Missouri State side, declaring emphatically that one blind resume team clearly was a tournament team, only to find that the team was the Bears.
"I enjoyed that,'' Hinson said.
Greenberg knows how that feels -- now, from both sides. As a coach he'd hear the TV analysts debating his team's merits, each jab at his club's worth feeling like a personal assault.
And now he's doing the same thing, asked to weigh in on the cost of a bad loss, to distinguish blind resumes and argue who should be in and shouldn't be.
"It used to kill me when people said stuff like that, and now I have to say it about people who are my friends, that I admire and respect,'' Greenberg said. "It's really hard.''
It will happen again this year. Hinson knows it. He'll be on a treadmill or maybe in a sports bar, somewhere where there are televisions turned to college basketball news.
The conversation will turn to the inevitable snubs and he'll hear it: Missouri State, the team with the highest RPI to never make the NCAA tournament.
It's his scarlet letter, one he's pretty sure will be his for life. No matter what people think of the RPI, he can't imagine the committee will make that mistake again.
It's also the pit in his stomach that will never go away. He has since been fired, let go by Missouri State in 2008. That wasn't nearly as bad.
"OK, it's not death, it's not losing someone you love, not even close,'' Hinson said. "But as far as my profession is concerned, it was the absolute lowest moment of my professional career because we didn't just think we were in. We knew we were in. Then it was just boom. I will never ever forget it. Never.''
This Selection Sunday, Hinson will do something extraordinary. He'll watch the Selection Show, not just for who gets in but for who doesn't.
And then in a day or two, he'll pick up the phone and call a coach.
"Hey buddy,'' he'll begin, "let me tell you a story ... ''