Tonight we'll see some teams feel great about themselves and others that won't. If you ask any college player, one of their goals is to play in the NCAA tournament. I was fortunate enough to play in three (or be on the roster for two of them). It's such a cool thing to see your name on the big screen and now that you "finally" made it.
Here is a story from ESPN regarding what it's like when you are on the bubble.
Very rarely, do high school players have any idea what's it's like to sit on pins and needles to see if they made the playoffs of any type. Yes, there are some places that only allow teams above .500 to make the postseason but for the most part it's everybody gets in and everybody is happy. You might not be happy where you are seeded but you still get to go to the postseason.
College is a whole different story. Only 68 teams (should be 64) make the NCAA tourney that we watch on tv. It's actually about a 20% of a team making the tourney every year. D3 has the lowest percentage and it's really hard to get an at large bid to the the D3 national tourney. There are 43 conferences and each of their champions get automatic bids there are only 19 at large bids for about 400 teams.
My first two years in college we were fortunate enough to win our conference tournament and get automatic bids to the NCAA tourney. During my senior year had a average start to the year and then finished the year on a 15 game winning streak. We ended up losing in the conference championship game. We were crushed. We didn't think there was anyway we were getting a bid to the tournament. It wasn't exactly the way any of us seniors wanted to end our careers.
That Sunday night, I was on the computer chatting up with a bunch of (chicks) people preparing for student teaching in the morning. I didn't even bother going to the d3hoops website. I got a phone call from a teammate saying that we were in. I told him to not mess with me and probably a bunch of expletives and hung up. I then got a call from my college coach, Nelson Whitmore, and he told me we were in. I couldn't believe it. On top of getting in, we actually got a bye because we had the 5th toughest schedule in the country that year (our only home games were conference games).
So...we got to fulfill our dream and made it to the Sweet 16 once again. While there we got smacked by defending national champion Williams (coached by now Bucknell coach, Dave Paulsen) to finish our career. It was a great run and lots of fun.
Anybody else have a Selection Sunday story???
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