ALEX K. FONG

By Ron Kantowski

Thu, Feb 28, 2008 (2 a.m.)

So I’m watching ESPN the other night and Andy Katz, the former Fresno State basketball beat guy (how’s that for overachieving?), is breaking into a sweat talking about Kent State’s ability to bust an NCAA bracket next month.

At least I think it’s Kent State that’s making him sweat, because, although he’s working at it, Katz isn’t quite as cool as Jay Bilas when those hot studio lights are shining on his mug, or at least doesn’t wear enough makeup to absorb the occasional bead of perspiration.

Katz is flashing golden about Kent State because he watched the pride and joy of the Mid-American Conference upset nationally ranked St. Mary’s, which would be the pride and joy of the West Coast Conference, were it not for Gonzaga, on national TV Saturday night during ESPN’s BracketBusters Weekend.

My first thought: It could have been UNLV that darn Katz was raving about.

If there is a team that is quintessentially capable of busting a bracket, the Rebels are it. Or at least one. Or have you forgotten last year?

Because nobody on the selection committee gets the mtn., either, UNLV got a lame No. 7 seed to last year’s Big Dance, which is the equivalent of receiving the home game of Concentration. Only it wasn’t a lovely parting gift. UNLV beat Georgia Tech of the vaunted ACC and second-seeded Wisconsin of the vaunted Big Ten. As Hugh Downs was fond of saying, forfeit one gift.

This year, the Rebels aren’t quite as good. But their record is almost as good. And they play defense just as hard, and if there’s one thing the boys from the power conferences don’t like come tournament time, it’s teams from conferences they don’t get on cable that play defense like crazed yaks.

Last week, the Rebels had another of those silly midweek byes because somebody at Mountain West headquarters thought it would be a good idea to add TCU to its membership, thus making it a difficult-to-schedule nine-team league.

It was the perfect opportunity to go bracket busting.

But the Rebels weren’t invited. Neither was BYU. Neither was New Mexico, which all of a sudden is 22-7 and beating people at home and on the road (except BYU) under first-year coach Steve Alford.

Part of the reason the Rebels and the other Mountain West teams weren’t invited is that they’ve never been invited to bust brackets during the middle of the conference season. You could attribute that to ESPN’s mistaken notion that the Mountain West once was a power conference itself, at least when Rick Majerus was coaching Utah, and, perhaps more important, when it was part of the network’s Big Monday package.

Even if those games came on about 2 a.m., which is only a slight exaggeration, especially if you live on the Big East Coast, there were VCRs, and later, there was TiVo. So if you had the proper hardware, and the manual showing how it works, there were plenty of opportunities for Mountain West teams to expose themselves on national TV. If that’s the right expression.

Any confirmed bachelor residing in the Eastern time zone will tell you there was something comforting about coming home from the bar after a night of hard drinking to find Wyoming and San Diego State running up and down the court on TV or, better yet, nodding off to the dulcet tones of former broadcast partners Bob Carpenter and Jimmy Dykes.

But now those guys are gone, and so is Big Monday, and so is the Mountain West’s opportunity to expose itself during BracketBuster week on ESPN, or maybe even impress somebody who doesn’t get the mtn.

It’s all gone, because the Mountain West dumped ESPN for a bag of cash so it could show Air Force playing Colorado State in women’s tennis or lacrosse or full contact badminton on the mtn., and ESPN has a memory like an elephant.

So now, Andy Katz is drooling over Kent State on national TV instead of BYU or UNLV, and BYU coach Dave Rose is complaining about the possibility of the Mountain West’s being a one-bid league this year, which it never has been before.

I’m not sure if that would be any different if Jimmy Dykes were whining at halftime of the Wyoming-San Diego State game about the Mountain West not getting any respect, which you could count on Dykes’ doing. Only that it wouldn’t have hurt.

And also know this: To bust a bracket, you must first be selected to play in one.

With all due respect to Natalie Vickers’ ability to break down the motion offense, anybody who doesn’t think Drake is in a better position to make the NCAA tournament than the Rebels are after beating Butler on The Deuce on Saturday night is mistaken.