Columnist Steve Carp: Fans trying to reason with upset season

Steve Carp

Thursday, March 18, 1999 | 10:38 a.m.

Steve Carp covers college basketball for the Las Vegas Sun. This column is one in a series of columns on the road to the Final Four.

PHOENIX -- OK, so your heart's broken. You sit around mopin' and cryin'.

Your office pool is in shambles. You've got a stack of losing tickets betting the likes of UCLA, Tennessee and Texas. You're ready to strangle Digger Phelps, who warned you on ESPN about Miami of Ohio and Southwest Missouri before the NCAA Tournament began two weeks ago.

You're tempted to call the Sun's Sal DeFilippo and ask him if he's better at picking basketball than he is football games.

Wait a minute. You're not that desperate, are you?

Hey, everybody plays the fool, sometimes. There's no exception to the rule. Because we've all done it, relying on the favorites and the higher-seeded teams to show us the way to the Final Four.

But right now, you don't want to hear any nonsense, much less cutesy lyrics from the Mane Ingredient. You want answers, dammit. You want to know what in the name of Billy Packer is Gonzaga still doing in this tournament?

You want answers? We've got answers.

Upsets in the NCAA Tournament are nothing new. Happens every year. Go back and check the brackets. Twelve seeds beat five seeds. No. 1s fall in the Sweet 16. A major conference gets multiple bids, then proceeds to fall flat on its collective face (Hello, Pac-10. Anyone home? Didn't think so).

But why? Why do these things happen? Is it fate? Are the planets out of whack? Does Dick Vitale give teams like Cincinnati and Arizona the evil, or, in his case, the bad eye?

You're close. But it has to do with the rules. Not the ones in the manual but the parameters by which the NCAA allows teams to compete.

If you're UCLA or UC Santa Barbara, you only get 13 scholarships. That means the talent pool invariably gets spread around. And if Stanford can't get a Matt Santangelo, it opens the door for a Gonzaga to sign him. And the Matt Santangelos of the world can take you a long way.

So parity has a lot to do with it. Even Duke doesn't get every single blue-chip kid in America. It only seems that way.

More about the Dookies in a minute. But for every star who doesn't go to Durham to play for Coach K, it gives guys like Billy Donovan a shot to recruit them to Florida and get the program to the Sweet 16.

"I think there's two reasons why parity is what it is," Donovan said Wednesday prior to getting his Gators ready to play 10th-seeded Gonzaga today in the West Regional semifinal at America West Arena. "One is because you've got a lot of high school and college players leaving at a rapid rate. You've got high school players going to the NBA and guys leaving after one or two years of college.

"The other thing is the reduction of scholarships from 15 to 13. That is two extra players that a team like North Carolina and Duke can't sign."

Gonzaga coach Dan Monson agrees.

"The big schools can't take everybody," he said. "If all the schools had 15, Matt Santangelo would be at Stanford. Instead, they took Arthur Lee."

The other reason upsets occur is the nature of the tourney's format. This isn't best-of-five or best-of-seven like the NBA. This is one-and-done basketball. If Utah played Miami of Ohio in a seven-game series, the Utes would win because Rick Majerus would make the necessary adjustments after game one.

But as good as Majerus is at adjusting, especially on the fly, the Utes still couldn't defend the Redhawks' screen-roll and Miami moved on. Sometimes, you have a bad day and there's no way to predict that.

And with each round, seeding becomes less of a factor.

"I think at this point, you can just about throw seedings out the door," Donovan said. "When you get to this point, I think you are playing against teams that are really, really good and can play.

"So all I think all that seedings are worth is who's wearing dark uniforms and who's wearing light."

That being said, it's still Duke's tournament to lose. Even if the Blue Devils donned that hideous black gear, which thankfully they won't, since they're the tourney's top seed and will wear white as long as they're playing.

The other 15 are hoping the Dookies do indeed play the fool and fall in the Meadowlands this weekend. Or next week at Tropicana Field at the Final Four. Everyone in Las Vegas remembers 1991 when it was UNLV and 15 others who were thinking the same thing in Seattle, and later, in Indianapolis.

"People tend to forget you see these upsets in November and December," Donovan said. "But because it's the NCAAs, everything is magnified."