Well, it was fun while it lasted.
For a few short weeks early in the college basketball season, it was nice to walk around with shoulders thrown back and chest puffed out. The Sam Houston State Bearkats were getting noticed on the national scene, and for a moment, it was exciting to think about what has always been impossible for any Southland squad to consider. An at-large big to the NCAA tournament was nothing more than a dream, but for the first time ever it was more than just a hallucination.
That dream ended when Southeastern Louisiana walked out of Johnson Coliseum with a victory over the Kats to start conference play, but there was no reason to panic. The Kats still had a championship caliber team, or so we thought. That hope has disappeared in recent weeks as two things became clear — Stephen F. Austin had the best team in the SLC, and Lamar continued to play extremely well and reaped the benefits of playing an unbalanced schedule.
In the aftermath of Thursday night's embarrassing loss at SFA, it would be very easy to harp on everything that is wrong with SHSU's basketball team. When the defense it bad, it's terrible. When the offense is bad, it's unwatchable. For most of the season, SHSU has played with a passion that has allowed the team to overcome its deficiencies. Against the Lumberjacks, that over-the-top effort was missing, and for the first time, the Kats simply looked like a bad Southland basketball team.
But there is hope.
Glory for mid-major programs dwells in the conference tournament. The reality is and always will be that the regular season counts for very little. In fact, now that the SLC has moved to a neutral site for the entire tournament, regular season success comes will no reward other than tournament seeding. And as Bearkat fans learned painfully in 2000 and again in 2007, being a higher seed guarantees you nothing in tournament play.
More often than not during the Bearkat basketball renaissance of the 21st century, the unpredictable nature of the conference tournament has been cause for concern, words of warning that can weigh heavy on teams that have accomplished much but will have nothing to show for it if they slip just once at the end of their season-long journey.
For the downtrodden, the underachievers, those teams yet to tap into their full potential, the conference tournament is about redemption. The fear of failure is replaced by the anticipation of a second chance at fulfilling your dreams. The fact that a fourth-place finish in the SLC has become a disappointing season to everyone associated with Bearkat basketball is a sign of just how good things are in Huntsville. It will be a nice change of pace knowing March Madness will cause someone besides the Bearkats to lose sleep.
Hope does spring eternal, and when the Kats take the floor at the Merrell Center in Katy for the first round of the conference tournament, it will be alive and well.
But right now, March 13 can't come soon enough.
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2 comments:
I told you after the SLU game were we going to finish 11-5. Winning out will do that. I thought 11-5 might be good enough to atleast share a title, but that won't be the case however. 11-5 should get us the 4 seed meaning we won't see SFA until the finals if we make it.
i have not lost hope, but we look BAD!
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