By Neil Schmidt
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Bob Huggins sits in front of his bench during the first half of a first round NCAA tournament game against Gonzaga, 2003. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)

Five that thrive

Schools/coaches that made their names in the NCAA Tournament: Gonzaga: Before 1999, it was just a trivia question. (Where did John Stockton play?) Yet under Dan Monson and now Mark Few, the tiny Spokane school has won eight Tourney games the past five years. Tom Izzo: He has the top Tourney winning percentage among active coaches (79.2) and took Michigan State to three straight Final Fours, winning one title. Steve Fisher: We're not calling him a Hall of Famer. But he made his name when he took over Michigan's team for the 1989 NCAAs and won it all. He's 20-8 overall in the Tournament, though forfeits for the Fab Five's misdoings mean he's 10-4 officially. Rick Majerus: If not for his near-annual loss to Kentucky, he might have a super record. Still, he turned Utah into an unlikely contender: 17-10 in NCAAs, including a title-game appearance. Don't forget, he also took Ball State to a Sweet 16. Princeton: That maddening, slow-down style gained renown in a one-point loss to top-ranked Georgetown in 1989 and an upset of defending champ UCLA in '96.

five that dive

Schools/coaches that historically fall short in March: Gene Keady: Purdue's coach is just 19-18 in the NCAAs. Even with six teams that finished in the top 10 - including two No. 1 seeds - he hasn't made a Final Four. John Chaney: The Hall of Fame coach is 0-5 in regional finals, including a loss by a No. 1-ranked Temple team in 1988. He's 23-17 overall in the NCAAs. Bob Huggins: UC made a surprise Final Four showing in 1992. But he has won just half of his last 22 NCAA games, and eight of his 12 Tourney losses at UC have been to lower-seeded teams. Wake Forest: The Demon Deacons are just 12-10 combined in the NCAAs under Dave Odom and Skip Prosser, including a third-round loss as a No. 1 seed in 1995 and a second-round loss as a No. 2 seed last season. Illinois: The Illini have split their last 20 NCAA games, including six losses to lower-seeded teams. They haven't reached a Final Four since 1989, despite owning a No. 1 seed in 2000. - Neil Schmidt

The ball traces a gentle arc, and at the buzzer it decides where to land. Hearts correspondingly soar or swoon.

Careers, too.

T.S. Eliot, who wrote, "April is the cruelest month," wasn't a coach. Had he been, he'd have picked March, and his wasteland might have been a basketball landscape littered with men who find they're defined by an unpredictable, single-elimination event.

As the NCAA Tournament has grown, it arguably has reduced the regular season to a tune-up. Coaches gain labels almost exclusively on their postseason play.

"You hate to think it would get to the point - and maybe it already has - where it's like the NBA ... or the NHL, where it's all about the playoffs," Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser said. "It's become almost a professional-sport type of attitude, that the only games they remember are the ones you play in March."

So some coaches are vilified if their teams seemingly fall short in March, while others are hired because of their apparent mastery of the month. The obsession with the NCAA Tournament in many corners leads to this theory: Maybe March is all that matters.

"Maybe?" Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. "The fans, they don't think anything else matters. ... If you're a top program, you have to be not just in the Tournament, you have to do well in the Tournament to satisfy the fans."

Until last spring, Boeheim often was considered a critical failure, largely because of two losses in the championship game. Never mind that he has taken his team to the Tournament 23 times, tied for the fifth-best total ever.

Yet Boeheim broke through with the surprise 2003 crown, passing the can't-win-the-big-one burden to Roy Williams, whose Kansas team was Syracuse's title-game victim.

So critics will forget that Williams has taken teams to the Tournament 15 consecutive years, the second-longest streak among active coaches, and has been to four Final Fours.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the regular season is overshadowed, and I think it's a sad state," said Williams, who now coaches North Carolina. "Television has gotten so powerful, and made the Tournament so all-important, that people do forget what you've done for 3 1/2 months."

One bad game means doom

The format is unforgiving. Teams try to win six games in succession, often with just a day between games, playing teams they might never have seen. Travel, officiating, matchups and injuries can loom large when the margin for error shrinks.

Correspondingly, the Tournament rarely follows form. Just three of the last 21 teams to finish the season ranked No. 1 won the NCAA championship.

Local schools recently have seen some of their finest seasons tarnished by a single setback.

Last season, Kentucky finished No. 1 in the rankings, but a Keith Bogans ankle injury contributed to a collapse against Marquette in the Elite Eight.

Meanwhile, Xavier had a best-ever finish of No. 12 in the Associated Press poll but got a tough second-round draw with defending champion Maryland and was done on the Tourney's first weekend.

And in 2000, UC was No. 1 when national player of the year Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the Conference USA Tournament, and the Bearcats suffered a second-round NCAA loss to Tulsa.

"I realize that from a fan perception and media perception, all anybody cares about is (the NCAA Tournament)," Florida coach Billy Donovan said. "But in a one-game situation, anything can happen.

"Stanford and Saint Joe's, they're having unbelievable seasons, but if hypothetically they got knocked out in the first or second round, do you now classify their year as disappointing?"

Tournament success adds status

Teams with consistently high seeds that fail to win a championship or make a Final Four have to answer for it. While Williams will continue to be charred, Maryland's Gary Williams (in 2002), Connecticut's Jim Calhoun (1999), Arizona's Lute Olson (1997) and Boeheim only recently escaped such criticism by collecting a title.

Purdue's Gene Keady and Temple's John Chaney, both of whom have failed to reach a Final Four, and UC's Bob Huggins, who has suffered eight NCAA losses to lower-seeded teams, are other hard-luck cases.

Of course, trotting out such stats each spring perpetuates stereotypes.

"Yeah, like now all of a sudden Jim Boeheim's a genius, and (before) last year he couldn't get out of his own way," ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said. "It speaks more to our ignorance about the game - as media and fans - as anything. We have this need to be able to explain everything in this simplistic fashion."

Sometimes, things even out.

Take Duke, for instance. Bilas played on the 1986 team that set an NCAA record for most victories, 37, but lost in the final to Louisville. The 1999 Blue Devils team also was ranked No. 1 but was upset in the title game by UConn.

Yet no one will call coach Mike Krzyzewski a choker or pity the Blue Devils. Krzyzewski's 60 NCAA Tournament victories are 18 more than any other active coach, and Duke had fate on its side on Christian Laettner's buzzer-beating shots that beat UConn in 1990 and UK in '92.

Sometimes, the curse doesn't dissipate, as with UC.

In 1993, Allen Jackson hurt his knee and couldn't play in the regional final loss to North Carolina. In 1996, Keith LeGree had a stress fracture in his foot during a regional final loss to Mississippi State. In 1998, West Virginia banked in a 3-pointer at the buzzer to beat the Bearcats. And then, of course, there was Martin's injury.

"They say it all evens out," Huggins said. "I'm going to have to coach 'til I'm 90 for it to even out."

How best to adapt to the hype of March? Embrace it, apparently.

"We've won a number of regular-season titles, and people don't make a big to-do about it," Krzyzewski said. "We're still always going to be judged here by how we finish the year.

"It's a matter of knowing that March is different. You have to position your team."

Said Boeheim: "Nobody even knows who won the regular-season (Big East) championship the year before. I usually don't even know. It's irrelevant, other than it's good for your seeding."

Then there were 64

The seismic shift in importance from the regular season to postseason occurred from 1975-85. Before '75, 25 teams were invited to the NCAAs - 16 conference champions and 11 independents.

Back then, the drama often centered on which teams would make the Tournament. To wit: One of the sport's greatest games was the 1974 Atlantic Coast Conference championship between top-ranked North Carolina State and No. 4 Maryland, won by the Wolfpack 103-100 in overtime. If it had lost, N.C. State wouldn't have gone on to beat UCLA - ending the Bruins' run of seven consecutive titles - and claim an NCAA title.

By 1985, the field had swollen to 64 teams, and the top leagues secured numerous bids. Teams in championship contention could be more conservative in preparing for the postseason.

Not necessarily make-or-break

As for coaches' fates: Tournament travails don't always lead to firings, just as postseason success alone won't keep a coach afloat. Witness Steve Lavin, fired at UCLA last season despite an 11-6 NCAA record.

Yet postseason acumen can be a huge factor in coaching hires.

Stan Heath used a surprise Elite Eight run by Kent State, in his first season as a head coach, to get the Arkansas job. Dan Monson took Gonzaga to an Elite Eight and skipped to Minnesota. Tommy Amaker guided Seton Hall to the Sweet 16 and left for Michigan. All have been middling in their new posts.

"At the end of the year when coaching vacancies occur, certain individuals get positioned to get jobs not based on what they've done for the last 10 years, but on what they've done the last 10 days," Wake Forest's Prosser said.

No one disputes this: March basketball is the best and the brightest. At issue is the significance of November through February.

"It's a 10-to-1 deal (compared to the regular season) as far as interest," Calhoun said.

"Look at what they call some of the shows: 'March to San Antonio.' That's in December. It's snowing out here. We're not thinking about San Antonio then. But everyone has a great deal of anticipation."

E-mail nschmidt@enquirer.com