Blanchette: Basketball fat cats treated harshly by little guys

The staggered start of college basketball’s conference schedules is upon us, much to the relief of Big Five or Big Six conferences – however many of them there are and whatever they’re calling themselves these days.

Relief, because now they can go back to losing to one another without any particular loss of face.

Instead of losing to, you know, New Jersey Institute of Technology.

NJIT 72, Michigan 70. Yale 45, UConn 44. Eastern Kentucky 72, Miami 44.

Yes, the 2014 part of the 2014-15 basketball season will be remembered for our discovery that there actually is a New Jersey Institute of Technology, and that it actually has a basketball team – the Highlanders, so named because the school was located in the Newark highlands. Which means we learned that the city has actual highlands, too. For a better view of, uh, Newark.

These were significant bulletins, but trifles when it became evident the Highlanders were good enough at hoops to beat the school that once gave us the Fab Five and sent Bill Freider packing to the Arizona desert where his lone achievement was defaming the city of Pullman.

Of course, by the time all this knowledge was made available, we had already learned much more.

Delaware State 72, Wake Forest 65. Missouri-Kansas City 69, Missouri 61. Charleston Southern 66, Ole Miss 65.

And, yes, Eastern Washington 88, Indiana 86.

Jim Hayford doesn’t mind catching the last few rays of notoriety from that night at Assembly Hall back around Thanksgiving, mostly because his basketball team is not still living just in that moment. The Eagles have made it the centerpiece of the best nonconference start in their NCAA Division I history – 9-4 – which now stretches 32 years.

Thus, there is eager anticipation of the possibilities of this Big Sky Conference season, beginning with the New Year’s Day matinee at Reese Court with Weber State, the defending champs.

The Wildcats have 21 Big Sky regular-season titles, in fact, but what they don’t have this year is a signature victory over a Big Five school – or even one against a team with a winning record. Unlike …

Portland State 76, USC 68. Idaho 77, Washington State 71.

“But they know how to win league games,” Hayford said.

Where it really counts, he means.

It is college basketball’s misery to have its schedule straddle the New Year and thus have half the season buried by football, Christmas commerce and football. About the only thing that gets some airing before January is this David-and-Goliath shtick. Inevitably, though, those elicit reactions along the lines of “They lost to who?” – the general fascination being the purported disgrace and not the achievement.

But not always.

“Every high school coach I’ve called about a recruit has told me he loved how we played,” Hayford reported. “I don’t hear it when we’ve missed 12 3-pointers in a row, but this is how we play – downhill and deep, I call it – when they see how it works the way it’s designed against an opponent like that, it helps.”

But there are lots of ways to skin a fat cat, as we’ve seen.

Cal State-Bakersfield 55, Cal 52. Incarnate Word 74, Nebraska 73. Stony Brook 62, Washington 57.

Hayford noted, not altogether jokingly, that the big schools’ instance on trying to buy wins with no-return home games “is at least giving the little guys more opportunities” for headline grabbing.

“And at some point, guys get a little complacent,” he said.

This may have been what Indiana coach Tom Crean was getting at when he said, “Eastern Washington was flat out on a mission when they played us. We didn’t compete at the level they did.”

Still, that doesn’t explain Texas Southern winning at Kansas State after it had shocked the world by winning at Michigan State. Who would have thought beating the Tigers at Morning Madness would be a resume win for EWU – or for Gonzaga a month later, for that matter?

Lehigh has beaten DePaul and Arizona State. USC-Upstate has wins over Georgia Tech and Mississippi State. Gardner-Webb has upset Purdue and Clemson.

Not all the victims are especially good this season, but they are the upper crust. Fact is, some of the victors may not be especially good, either.

It’s often posited that these upsets are often a case of veteran-heavy small schools using their savvy against One-and-Done State. Or that the AAU culture has allowed the Texas Southern kid to get a taste of playing Michigan State’s guys at a young age, deflating the intimidate factor somewhat.

“I’m probably not the best guy to ask about that – so many of my kids are from different continents,” Hayford said. “But maybe that helps, too. Our kids might be thinking, ‘They’re wearing shorts and shoes just like me.’ ”

But maybe the most interesting development is role reversal. Now that conference play is under way, little old EWU has, well, pedigree.

“Because we beat Indiana, we’re going to be getting everybody’s best shot,” Hayford said. “But that’s only going to make us a better team. So let’s see where we can take this.”

And the Hoosiers can go back to playing someone more on their level. This year, they have a lot of company.