Traditionally, the idea has been that if you want your team to have a chance to compete for a state championship, you take your kids down to Vegas during the preseason.
Those trips usually bring with them a series of blowouts that coaches optimistically use to try to convey deeper lessons about the game.
When the Douglas baseball team made the trip down south this last weekend with a roster featuring only three seniors, the general expecation was that they were headed for that exact kind of "learning" experience.
After suffering a 10-1 defeat at the hand of Coronado to open the weekend, it appeared the expectations would be come to fruition.
Somewhere during the night, something changed.
The Tigers came out the next day to grit out a 6-4 win in 10 innings against Las Vegas and overcame an eight-run deficit early on against Foothill and slugged out a 19-11 win.
"It's been four years since we went down there," Douglas coach John Glover said. "We got the opportunity to see some good competition and we walked away with a couple of wins. It was a good trip for us."
Among the things that Glover had to be most pleased about was his squad's ability to put up the offense in the Foothill win.
Producing runs has been his biggest concern so far this year, and while that kind of production can't be expected every time out, it at least shows what the team is capable of when it starts clicking on all cylinders.
While Douglas took its chances in Vegas, most of the rest of the Northern 4A powerhouses spent last week slugging it out amongst themselves.
Now that the dust has cleared, we still don't know very much.
One publication has Damonte Ranch ranked No. 1 right now. That's not a bad choice. The Mustangs have a couple of solid pitchers, including lefty Joey Webb, who no-hit Spanish Springs Friday and gave Douglas fits in two perfect innings of relief work last week.
Reno and Reed appear to be loaded. Reno's pitching staff is always second-to-none and I simply wouldn't want to be sitting in the opposite dugout of Reed catcher CJ Maldonado.
Galena always improves as the year rolls along and will have arguably the best pitcher in the north, Jacob Anderson, anchoring down its rotation all season.
Wooster had a couple impressive wins against some Las Vegas teams and also took some bad losses.
Carson and Manogue are always contenders and you can't count out the likes of McQueen or Spanish Springs.
The long and short of it, though, is that no one has established themselves as a favorite thus far.
"I came back from this weekend and was looking at the scores," Glover said. "Everyone is right there. There is no team running away with things. You just never know who will come out on top."
It may be that there still won't be a favorite when the regional tournament comes around. It could be that it ends up coming down to the team with the deepest pitching staff.
That would bode well for the Tigers, who have one of the deeper staffs they've carried in five or six years.
I received this e-mail today apparently from the organizers of the College Basketball Invitational. It read:
"Congratulations! Your school has been selected to pay us $60,000 to host a game in our tournament featuring the best middle-of-the road teams in college basketball.
"Everyone else in the world will be watching every minute of the first two days of the NCAA Tournament on CBS, and on off days they'll get their hoops fix with NIT games on ESPN.
"But just think, for such a low cost, your school will be showcased on an obscure digital cable network in our brand-new tournament and you'll be fighting for the chance to win the CBI championship, which will give your school the distinction as the ... ummm ... 98th best team in America."
Okay, no one sent me any such e-mail, but after Nevada was "selected" to play in the CBI Sunday, I cringed. It really did play off like a bad hoax.
A sidenote that hasn't been publicized much around here, is that teams hosting games in the inaugural tournament (Think of it as the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl for college hoops), indeed have to pay the organizers $60,000 of their proceeds from hosting a first round game.
Reportedly, that was the main reason New Mexico State turned the tournament down.
I'll agree, it's nice that Nevada can continue its season, and deservedly so.
The Wolf Pack had a legitimate argument to be included in this year's National Invitation Tournament, but they didn't and now they are hosting Houston Tuesday night in the CBI.
Odds are that the school will be able to fill the seats at Lawlor Events Center to a sufficient level and turn a nice little profit on its "down-payment", but still, something about that whole idea doesn't work for me.
There is just something wrong about the idea of 113 (65 for the NCAA, 32 for the NIT and now 16 for the CBI) teams advancing to the Division I college basketball postseason.
If this were football, and they were to take the same number to even more contrived bowl games, that would leave less than 10 teams that actually stayed home during the already-contrived bowl season.
All extra tournaments, or extra bowl games for that matter, do is water down the postseason.
The NCAA basketball tournament is arguably one of the best systems of determining a champion in all of college sports (I'd rank it second only to the College World Series).
At the beginning of each season, every Division I school technically has a shot to win the national title. In football, all but about 20 or 25 schools are already eliminated from the title hunt before a single down is played.
There's simply no need to add to college basketball as it already was. At the end of the day, the moderate sports fan isn't even going to remember the NIT champ, or the CBI champ, much less how those tournaments even played out.
That all being said, who won last year's NIT?
- The Douglas softball team wore uniforms from the 1992 season against Carson Thursday. The grey outfits with orange and white trim, and "Lady Tigers" underscored by a black bat across the front were the look Douglas wore the last time they won the state title. Douglas ended up beating the Senators 4-3 in extra innings.
- The Douglas baseball team debuts on its newly-improved ballpark Thursday in the Sierra League opener against Wooster at 3:30 p.m.
Douglas installed a brick facade around the base of the backstop, put in seamless netting and installed four cases of bleachers. A new press box and snack bar have also been built.
I really mean it when I say the first two days of the NCAA Tournament are some of the best in television sports watching.
First of all, you get college basketball games all day long. Second, it's on network television, so even those of us who live off rabbitt ears can still enjoy the show. Third, there's never a bad game.
I mean, sure, there are blowouts, but if a game gets too out of hand, the producers just cut to a more interesting one. You also don't have to flip between games to see if you're missing something important. The producers take care of that for us too.
You get to see schools you've never heard of and game-breaker players who will go on to live normal lives going to work and playing rec-league ball in the evenings.
Oh, and every nail-biter finish gets hand-delivered to your front door as it happens. Not that anyone needs convincing, because you all are going to be watching anyway.
Now, if only they could find a way to make televised distance running this exciting ...
West Virginia defeated Clemson 78-73. Incidentally, both teams are in this year's NCAA Tournament.
