Columnist Ron Kantowski: Blowing bubbles can be serious

Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006 | 7:57 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Yeah, I know. Get a life.

Chuck Schoffner, the veteran basketball writer who covers women's hoops for the Associated Press, was kind enough to include me on the Top 25 voting panel. So I figured the least I could do was spend a couple of hours trying to get the teams into their proper positions.

But I'm not voting in the poll this year because the Sun's new format doesn't allow me to get out to as many Lady Rebels games as before. Or enough time to keep up with Geno Auriemma and Kim Mulkey-Robertson and the other movers and shakers of the women's game.

At least that was the official reason I gave for giving up my voting privilege.

The real reason is that there was one Sunday evening last winter where I left Tennessee off my ballot.

It wasn't on purpose, mind you. I've got nothing but respect for Pat Summitt and what the Lady Vols have accomplished. It was an honest mistake. It was one of those weeks where my ballot didn't change much, so I'd thought I'd just do a cut-and-paste before e-mailing it to the AP office. But I cut the Lady Vols when I should have been pasting.

Thankfully, Schoffner was paying more attention than I was. Somebody from AP called and said that while Tennessee was having a bit of a down year, did I really want to leave it off my ballot altogether?

So it was no harm, no foul.

But my little double-dribble got me to thinking: What if the AP guys weren't so diligent, and what if the team I left off my ballot wasn't Tennessee, but some on-the-bubble team making a late charge to get into the NCAA Tournament? And my oversight meant that instead of being ranked No. 24 or 25, the bubble girls were tossed into the "others receiving votes" scrap heap? And that that chain of events, even if only indirectly, resulted in a deserving team being left out of the tournament?

And what if the coach of the bubble team was on the bubble with her or his administration, and wound up selling insurance because her or his team didn't make the NCAA tournament because some sports writer out West -- who had never seen her or his team play a single game, mind you -- left it off his ballot?

I should point out that the chance of this happening is about as great as Helena freezing over during summertime. But that it could happen made me think again about the assignment and whether I should choose to accept it.

And that, Mister Phelps, is why my mission to vote in the poll is no longer possible.

Unlike in college football, where until this year (when AP withdrew) they were a crucial component in deciding the national championship, the polls have been supplanted by other criteria in basketball. Computer-deduced power rankings such as the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) play a bigger part in determining who gets a chance to bust a bracket in the men's and women's basketball tournaments and who stays home.

Still, they carry some weight, even if it's only subtle, subconscious weight.

To wit, there's this from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia: "A number of teams essentially know they are assured of an at-large berth no matter their performance in their conference tournament. Any team in the top 25 in the national polls is essentially guaranteed an at-large berth if they do not win their tournament."

Unless, of course, absent-minded professors like me don't figure out how to use the cut-and-paste function on their laptops. Then it's only 50-50.