CAA spin aside, only the champ will get a bid

A few things...

At the traditional time for basketball coaches to start spinning for bids into the NCAA tournament, the men of the CAA are right on schedule.

George Mason's Paul Hewitt on the league's conference call Monday said he thought the CAA would get "at least two teams" into the NCAAs, which implies it could even more than that, which is just silly.

Meanwhile, ODU's Blaine Taylor, who can spin a ribbon around a polecat, or something similarly Taylor-esque, disparaged reliance on the RPI ranking system used to decide among college hoops teams as a kind of zealotry.

In that case, Taylor needs to tell ODU's sports publicity people to rewrite his bio on the website, because pretty quickly into it are four boastful mentions of high RPIs compiled by his past teams.

Look, sometimes a league is just a one-bid league. This year, the CAA is a one-bid league. Prosperity cycles through at all levels. Go get 'em next year.

Yes, the CAA is the only conference right now with three teams who own 21 victories or more. Drexel and George Mason have won 21 and Virginia Commonwealth has won 22.

But the fine print and the RPI say those three teams are the lowest ranked in the country among programs with 20 victories; Drexel 82, VCU 83 and George Mason 100.

That is to say, as in the past, early out-of-conference games went back to killing the CAA this season. They not only played weak schedules, but none of the three has a top-50 nonleague victory to make a tournament selection committee stressing over 37 at-large bids look twice.

But some losses are glaring, even though they happened early - Mason to Florida International, VCU to a bad Georgia Tech team, Drexel to Norfolk State. It all counts.

So after getting three in last year, the CAA, barring a selection committee meltdown of reason, will be represented this time by just the tournament champion. And that prospect probably makes Drexel coach Bruiser Flint more high-strung than normal.

His Dragons have found little happiness at the tournament home, the Richmond Coliseum, in the past decade. Drexel made the final in 2003, the semifinals in 2007, and has lost in the first round three of the last four seasons.

Speaking of Norfolk State, it's different to see the Spartans for once on Joe Lunardi's ESPN "Bracketology" worksheet. The Man's latest noodling has NSU, which would obviously have to win the MEAC tournament to get into the NCAAs, among the "first four" 16 seeds that would play in Dayton, Ohio, to advance to a second game against a No. 1 seed.

Lunardi's speculation over the past week has had NSU (18-8, 10-2) in a match-up with Stony Brook (17-7, 12-1), which leads the American East.

Buy your tickets? Eh, not yet. But Lunardi over time has proven bankability. They don't just let anybody wear the Bracketologist's sash, you know.

Virginia coach Tony Bennett might soon need to don a fake mustache and glasses, a la Bobby Valentine, and take the court for the busted-up Cavaliers, who have lost two of their past three.

Add forward Joe Harris' broken left hand, suffered in Saturday's loss to North Carolina, to the two unexpected transfers and center Assane Sene's broken ankle that have dangerously thinned U.Va.'s ranks to essentially a six-man rotation.

Bennett, though, has said Harris, the Cavs' best 3-point shooter, will try to play tonight at Clemson with a protective pad on his non-shooting hand. The proverbial game-time decision.

Freshman Malcolm Brogdon, who averages 22 minutes, will naturally get more time if Harris can't go. Freshman Paul Jesperson, who was supposed to sit out the season, will be next to get appreciably more than his normal seven minutes since his redshirt was removed in late December.

Tom Robinson, 757-446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com