Rich Hofmann: Why mid-majors have become major thorn in NCAA Tournament

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Cornell in the East, Saint Mary's in the South, Northern Iowa in the Midwest and Butler in the West. Four of the mid-majors are through now, and you can add Xavier in the West, too, if you want. They are through to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. You cannot ignore them, not if you watched the games. You cannot belittle them, not with that cheery, familiar, nice-little-team damnation.

Butler has the tournament history. Saint Mary's dropped Villanova with the easiest-on-the-eyes playing style you will ever hope to see. Northern Iowa knocked out top seed Kansas and has gumption raised to a special power, so special that even sports writers who know that they might have to type the name Ali Farokhmanesh on deadline don't seem to mind.

And now there is Cornell, which has absolutely annihilated two of the nation's top defensive teams, Temple and Wisconsin. Next up for the Ivy League champions is No. 1 Kentucky in a morality play waiting to happen, the scholars-vs.-mercenaries story line to be served up by the disgusting ladle-full over the next week, so much tired pap.

Anyway, Cornell guard Louis Dale, after his team's 87-69 floor-wiping of Wisconsin, was talking about motivation. And he said, "We've got eight seniors on this team, and we want to take this ride as long as we can because after this it's just nothing but babies and memories. So we'll just keep going."

Mid-majors. There are people who hate the term. In its most pure form, it is a simple statement about the economic realities of college basketball, essentially the divide between the schools that earn big-time college football revenue and the schools that don't.

The danger comes when a label that is meant to be descriptive becomes dismissive. When tournament bids - read: money - become involved, you hear it all the time among the people who flack for the BCS football leagues on television. It is a tone more than anything.

Well, here is the reply: Butler, Saint Mary's, Northern Iowa, Cornell. A lifetime ago, Penn made it to the Final Four in 1979 behind this little internal mantra: "We've got a secret." In the here and now, Cornell coach Steve Donahue seems to know exactly what it is.

"Now, especially when you're older and experienced, 22-year-old mid-majors - if they're talented - are probably better suited for this environment than 19-year-old kids that are thinking about the next level," Donahue said. "Wisconsin doesn't fall into that, but that's generally what it is.

"These games mean the life to these kids. I sense that some of those other teams, those kids, when this ends, there are better things, basketballwise. This is it for us, for the most part.

"This is what they dream about. Most of those kids probably dream about the NBA."

With those NBA kids from Kentucky looming, everyone knows who has the best athletes. It isn't even a conversation, and it matters a lot. But Cornell has good talent, great skill, a solid bench, lots of seniors, a coach who is widely respected, and nothing to lose.

Donahue said he had never played on or coached a team that executed as well as Cornell did yesterday. "I couldn't even imagine that we could play that well in the stretches that we did," he said.

The Big Red jumped out to an 11-1 lead and got good look after good look against a team that had specialized in tying opponents in ugly knots forever under coach Bo Ryan. They shot 61.1 percent for the game. Dale, who owns any part of the floor he wants to own, scored 26, and Ryan Wittman had 24 points on 10-for-15 shooting.

Cornell played two No. 1 seeds in this tournament on the road, losing at Kansas and at Syracuse. That kind of scheduling has toughened this team, clearly.

"I don't think there's any question," Donahue said. "I think those games have already benefited us greatly . . . Now, in the NCAA Tournament, you get a neutral site, you get great officials, you just really get an opportunity to play your game against teams in a real honest, clean environment - which for a mid-major against high majors is very difficult."

Donahue would climb into the stands after the game to be with his wife and kids. Later, his voice would break and there would be tears when he mentioned Cornell athletic director Andy Noel, who stuck with him in the early years. You do have to travel more difficult roads to reach days like these if you are a mid-major. And it's funny: On these days, the size of the obstacles is in direct proportion to the persistence of the smiles.

Because people can be brutal. On Saturday, Cornell's Jon Jaques was asked about his use of the term "Hatorade," and he was quite happy to explain.

"I don't know," he said, "it's just something people who don't respect your program, I guess [people] don't think you belong at this spot. I think we have proven, though, that we do belong here in the tournament, and hopefully no one is drinking any Hatorade against us."

If they are, they are choking on it today - because we all know, if we have eyes, that for certain teams, in certain special seasons, the labels really do cease to matter anymore. Or, as Cornell's Alex Tyler said, "Before we got here, we were a low major. To be called a mid-major is actually a nice step up."

Butler. Saint Mary's. Northern Iowa. Cornell. Mid-majors, then. On the greatest weekends like this, it is a description, yes, but not necessarily a destiny.

Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com,

or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at

http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.

For recent columns go to

http://go.philly.com/hofmann.