Four Days in March
The Magic of Conference Tournaments
March Madness.
It’s a term that most everyone is familiar with at this point, ubiquitous as anything in the cultural zeitgeist. Everyone knows that, come the third week of March and Selection Sunday, the havoc of bracket season and the Big Dance will be back once again, with 68 teams vying for the title of Men’s Division I Basketball Champion. This process repeats itself on the women’s side and at the lower divisions, with DII, DIII, and even smaller organizations like the NAIA and USCAA holding competitions.
And though 68 teams find their home in the NCAA Tournament, a further 32 in the NIT, and assorted numbers in other postseason tournaments, at the end of the day, the result is that a tremendous portion find their season ends before the Dance. They’re left dateless, without a partner, on the outside looking in.
Of the 358 schools in NCAA’s Division I this year, 148 (41.3%) will play in a postseason tournament – but that leaves a further 210 that won’t.
These 148 bids are determined through a variety of processes, but for the purposes of simplicity, we’ll be focusing solely on the NCAA and NIT, which rely on the postseason conference tournaments that each of the 32 Division I conferences (from AAC to WAC, we’ve got it all!) hold.
These tournaments don’t get nearly the same airtime as the Big Guys, but to me, they’re a perfect encapsulation of what college basketball is all about. It’s hundreds of teams vying to give themselves a chance, the run-up to the massive ball – and it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful.
In 2019, I was a senior at Pepperdine. We’d been largely mediocre through my four years at the school – went to the CBI my first year, then a downswing saw us go 9-22 and 6-26, but we’d bounced back. We were 13-17, 6-10 in a strong WCC that was only getting stronger – but on the backs of young superstars in Colbey Ross and Kessler Edwards, it was clear that if we could stay healthy, we could beat anyone.
We were the 8 seed – out of 10. The West Coast Conference, in an effort to entice Gonzaga into staying with the league, altered the tournament bracket to look less like a bracket you’d be accustomed to seeing in March and more like a ladder. This was the first year of that change, to boot, so no one really knew what to expect. I did know this, though: we were gonna have a hell of a road to the title – if we could get that far.
As the 8 seed, our first task was 9-seed Pacific. The game took place on March 7, a Thursday, in Las Vegas. I was in the throes of too much work, swamped in my final semester, but took the time to watch us – even though I was skeptical, since we’d always struggled with Pacific, including a loss in our game just prior to the tournament.
These fears and concerns only intensified when we came into half down four, having given away the ball a staggering eight times. I was almost ready to close the book, this close to giving up and accepting that this wasn’t the year. When the Tigers stretched their lead to 12 with 13 minutes left in the second half, I figured it was all lost. That was it, you know? No way is this battered squad going to pull this one out – all season, we’d been so known for choking away winnable games and putting ourselves out of contests better than our opponents ever could.
And then it happened – firestarter Darryl Polk Jr., a backup guard who, throughout his career had never really seen a starting role, absolutely took off – landed what was then a career-high 15 points, sparking a rally that saw us swing a 20-point difference – and when the final whistle blew, to my utter amazement, it was 61-53… Waves.
༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ PEPPERDINE TAKE MY ENERGY ༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ
March 8th. Our opponent was Loyola Marymount, the 5 seed – and more importantly, our archrival. We’d split the season series, so this was for all the marbles, but an important distinction was that LMU hadn’t yet played a game in the tournament. We’d battled back once, but it’d be harder to do it twice.
So that’s what we did. When the Lions took an 11-point advantage with 16 minutes to go, I was really worried once again – and though we kept chipping away, with three minutes yet to play, we still couldn’t seem to get it under three. From there, though, lockdown defense put them to bed, and suddenly, despite all my beliefs to the contrary…we’d done it again. Waves 68, Lions 65. We were going forward. Again.
༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ PEPPERDINE TAKE MY ENERGY ༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ
March 9th. 4-seed San Francisco enters the dojo. Again, it’s their first game of the tournament. Pepperdine, on the other hand, is on their third game in three nights, running with a short bench after workhorse forward Kam Edwards was limited by a foot injury. The Dons had swept the season series, taking the away game after a monumental collapse by the Waves – but even that aside, they were clearly the better team.
So naturally, we led nearly wire-to-wire, stretching it to 23 at one point late in the second-half before settling for an 89-72 victory, making 14 three-pointers and putting five players in double-figure scoring.
Onward. Upward. Forward.
༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ PEPPERDINE TAKE MY ENERGY ༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ
And then it was Gonzaga on March 11th. It’s not just that Gonzaga was the top seed, or one of the best teams in the country. It’s not that we were on our fourth game in five days, while they hadn’t played one yet. It’s not just the stigma of being a dog and knowing you’re a dog. It’s not just that Gonzaga had won 20 straight.
Gonzaga was – and is – our ultimate boogeyman. At the time, the Bulldogs were looking for their 37th consecutive win over the Waves dating to 2002.
This one was no different. I’m not going to get into specifics, but the final was 100-74. Those boys gave it absolutely everything, and were rewarded with a 26-point loss. Just like that, my time watching Pepperdine basketball as a student was done.
I remember getting a little emotional when that sunk in. Watching from TV is one thing, but it’s different when you’re heading down to Firestone after class to take in Waves basketball, you know? It’s just not the same.
Seeing so many people come together, too, was really special. I’d seen a lot, but watching a community of hundreds – thousands – of people unite behind a little school in Malibu trying to do the impossible – and ostensibly do so because I’d been so ardent in my support? That was incredible. After a year that included a shooting, a wildfire (within the same weekend!), routine mudslides, and a three-week closure of the university, having something go right was a much-needed breath of fresh air.
༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ PEPPERDINE TAKE MY ENERGY ༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ
On the surface, it’s a cool Cinderella story, but why should you care?
Beyond the reasons I mentioned above, this is the magic of a conference tournament. It’s not about what happened in the regular season – that sets your path, but what you do with that path is entirely yours.
The sky is the limit. If you win the games you’re given, you get that bid. You go dancing. If you don’t? Well, your story ends. But it’s memories like these and stories like this that last a lifetime. Just because we didn’t win the tournament doesn’t mean our tournament run didn’t mean something.
More than any other event in college sports – more than March Madness itself – this is the microcosm that illustrates the beauty and the magic of conference tournament season. Because no matter what, there are going to be hundreds of stories like mine, hundreds of incredible runs coming together to paint a beautiful picture of what sports can be.
What’s not to love about that?
