Regrouping after NCAA Tournament miss, WKU...

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Regrouping after NCAA Tournament miss, WKU primed for NIT semifinals in New York


Darius Thompson is a glutton for punishment.

Two weeks ago, mere hours after the Western Kentucky men?s basketball team missed out on a chance to automatically qualify for the NCAA Tournament ? losing by one point to Marshall in the Conference USA title game ? Thompson would?ve been perfectly within his rights to skip the annual Selection Show.

Who wants to watch 68 other teams celebrate? But the senior Hilltopper watched it; as a basketball fan he was curious.

?It was tough because I knew we weren?t going to hear our name, but I wanted to see where everyone landed and where Marshall landed,? Thompson said Monday. ?After it was over, we had to start getting ready for this tournament.?

?This tournament? has turned out extremely well for WKU. Thompson was speaking Monday in a Times Square hotel in New York City, where Tuesday night the Hilltoppers (27-10) will face Utah in the NIT semifinals.


Playing in its first postseason tournament since 2013, WKU has turned its? C-USA title game disappointment into a stirring March run, defeating three major-conference opponents in a row, two on the road, to reach this point.

After first taking care of the ACC?s Boston College at home in the opening round, the veteran Hilltoppers took care of two teams on the road that many college basketball experts thought should?ve been in the NCAA Tournament: WKU beat USC by four, and then, playing in what senior Justin Johnson said was ?the loudest building I?ve ever been in,? at Oklahoma State, ripped off an eight-point victory.

How did they recover mentally from the crushing loss to Marshall, to play again just three days later? It started with senior leadership, from ?old guys? like Thompson and Johnson.

?You?ve got to get young guys mentally locked in, getting them to slide back in and tell them ?hey, we?ve still got something to play for,?? said Johnson, who leads the Hilltoppers in scoring and rebounding (15.4 points and 9.4 rebounds per game.)

?I think knowing we?d get a home game at Diddle Arena to (start off) was a big help for us,? Thompson added. ?We were so pumped to play again in front of our own crowd, and they were so loud that night that it got us re-focused right away.?

The Hilltoppers were also helped by having a head coach who?s been through this ?disappointment and recovery? transition before. Rick Stansbury took Mississippi State (who WKU could meet in the title game Thursday if the Bulldogs defeat Penn State) to the NIT six times in his career.



?I told our guys that it?s so much better to play three games in a tournament like this, and win them and get here to Madison Square Garden, than to play one NCAA game and getting beat,? Stansbury said. ?I?ve been on this side of the fence before, and you face the disappointment, and then you move on. And our guys have done a great job of doing that.?

Tonight against the Utes (22-11), WKU will be playing a veteran team from another major conference (PAC-12).

The Utes, who finished third in the conference this season, start four seniors and a junior, and also had to snare a difficult road win to get here, going into St. Mary?s and grabbing an overtime victory.

Utah is led by senior guard Justin Bibbins (14.7 points per game) and senior forward David Collette (12.5 points per game).

For WKU, the chance to play on a big stage has motivated them throughout the postseason.

?We talked about this big carrot (playing in New York) two weeks ago, and now they understand what it is,? Stansbury said.

?We have a chance to play two more games and win a championship, and that?s a pretty huge deal for our school,? Johnson said. ?The attention that would bring us, would be awesome.?

 

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Utah's Utes cannot be kings of the world, but they can be kings of the NIT


Utah?s Utes will play a game against Western Kentucky at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night and try to feel better about their failings earlier this season.

That sounds more critical than it?s meant to be.

There is inspiration to be found here, it just requires some shoveling.

The reason being that the NIT is a tournament for the disappointed.

It?s a tournament for the second cut.

It?s a tournament for teams that could not or, at least, did not meet their goals when the regular season started and when it ended.

It?s a tournament for teams that lose in the quarterfinals of their conference tournament.

It?s a tournament whose champion can proclaim: ?See, we didn?t screw up as bad as everybody thought.?


Saying the NIT is a redemptive affair for the Utes is too strong a statement.

Their promising high points during the season betray that kind of notion, the reward now is too pedestrian. Those moments suggest that maybe, just maybe, Utah basketball could have been above all this one-more-shot folderol.

When the Utes beat UCLA at home and headed into a showdown with USC, it looked as though the Utes might roll into the Pac-12 tournament in a condition to be considered worthy of an NCAA berth, but then they lost to the Trojans at the Huntsman Center and thereafter stumbled at the Nikes of Oregon to come up empty and miss out on the tournament everyone actually cares about. Some have guessed they had to win the league tournament to get in.

To hold the Utes to a lesser standard is to disrespect a proud program that too often has demonstrated in the past that it darn near every year should have as primary goals contention for a league title and/or an invitation to the NCAA Tournament.

Those goals will and do go unattained some seasons. And when they do, nobody should be dancing on the floor after a subsequent victory over an opponent draped in the same disappointment, just disappointment of a different uniform color.

It?s a tough competitive truth of our time that nobody should dance for taking wins in the consolation bracket after missing the big dance.


On the other hand, it beats losing.

The very meaning of consolation is to find solace and comfort after being laid low.

Now that we?ve burrowed through that hard truth, we can find a boost.

It?s represented in the varied words Grandma used to say back in the day when you failed a test or skinned a knee or lost a fight or fell short of a better intention.

? ?It?s not how many times you fail, but how many times you get back up.?

? ?It?s not whether you get knocked down, it?s whether you get up.?


? ?You don?t inspire others by being perfect. You inspire them with how you deal with your imperfections.?

? ?Never let a stumble in the road be the end of the journey.?

? ?The glory is not in never falling, but in rising when you do.?

That?s the beauty that can be found deep inside the NIT.

None of the wins the Utes have gotten or will get in this tournament will eclipse or make up for their earlier losses. They won?t. Ask the players. Most of them would trade away an NIT championship for one shot in the NCAAs.

But there is valor in fighting on.


When Alabama apologists/excuse-makers said the reason the Crimson Tide were defeated by Utah in the 2009 Sugar Bowl was on account of their abject disappointment caused by their previous loss to Florida, they dismissed the honor in overcoming that disappointment ? and the fact that the Utes absolutely balled out in that game, kicking Alabama?s trash all over the field.

The Utes have not and will not play a single great team in the NIT.

They have and will play some good ones.

And beating the good, for this team, which isn?t great itself, is an accomplishment worth, if not going crazy over, at least paying attention to and respecting.

It?s not then that the Utes can be the kings of nothing here.

Or the kings of the world.