There's no need to crank up the hype-meter tonight, as the Seattle University men visit the Portland Pilots for a 7 p.m. contest (we assume; more on that in a bit).
SU would naturally like to play in the West Coast Conference (WCC) when its Division I transition phase ultimately comes to an end. The WCC boasts four Jesuit institutions (Gonzaga, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount) and would enable Seattle U to blend in with its brother schools in the Pacific time zone. Each of the WCC's eight schools possess Christian affiliations (seven are Catholic, with Pepperdine being the only exception), making the Redhawks an attractive potential partner.
There's just one hitch: SU needs to lift its program to a point where it can claim an appreciable degree of competitive parity.
The WCC has initially distanced itself from Seattle U in recent years, gently stating that the Redhawks - in basketball and beyond - need to make substantial improvements before they can be considered for inclusion as the ninth and newest program in the league. With SU being ineligible for the NCAA Tournament until the 2012-13 season, the school's journey to conference affiliation will take some time. While that fact might disappoint Redhawk diehards, it will allow the next three basketball seasons to progress without suffocating pressure or runaway expectations.
More to the point, it means that tonight's game against WCC member Portland is anything but a put-up-or-shut-up moment for the Redhawks. No, they don't have to win. No, they don't have to make a statement to the rest of the West Coast Conference. No, the push to become a rival to Gonzaga will not be defined by SU's performance in Oregon's largest city.
Tonight's game can simply be about basketball, and SU's quest to develop over the course of a long season. More specifically, tonight's game will - one hopes - skirt around the dramatics witnessed this past Saturday in Stillwater, Okla.
If you read up on SU's 86-64 loss at Oklahoma State, you surely noticed that the game - slated for an 11:30 a.m. Pacific time tip-off (1:30 in Oklahoma) - began 100 minutes later than scheduled, due to the fact that the officiating crew arrived late at Gallagher-Iba Arena. When the duration of the delay reached one hour, coach Cameron Dollar took his team to a nearby Quizno's for some subs... subs that had nothing to do with bringing a sixth man off the bench.
Needless to say, SU didn't need this kind of disruption in a season opener against a team that nearly reached the Sweet 16 in the 2009 NCAA Tournament. Athletes are creatures of routine, so when the Redhawks' preparation patterns were disrupted, they found it even more difficult to play at an elevated level.
Anyone still unconvinced about the value of regular rhythms for athletes should realize that, earlier today, the time clock similarly sabotaged the Monmouth University (New Jersey) Hawks. No, the officials didn't arrive late for Monmouth's game at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, N.J., but one would have understood if they did: The game tipped off at 6 a.m. local time. That's not a misprint: A major college basketball game began at 6 a.m. at the given game site.
The reason for the absurdly early start time was television. ESPN, the Worldwide Leader in monopolizing sports broadcasting and making life harder for niche news sites and independent bloggers, incorporated the game into its 24-hour college hoops marathon, which began at midnight Eastern time this morning. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the poor Monmouth team - which had to commute in order to make this (not) made-for-TV game possible - couldn't hit the ocean from the Jersey shore. The hapless Hawks, playing at an hour when athletes should be resting their highly-trained bodies, failed to score 20 points in either half and hit only 10 field goal attempts in a 58-34 loss. No one found out if the Monmouth coaching staff made a run for Quizno's before or after the game.
As the Monmouth story illustrates, athletes need familiar rhythms, the very kinds of rhythms the Seattle U men lacked at Oklahoma State. Tonight, a season begins in earnest, and without the pressure to measure up to a team from the West Coast Conference.
The Redhawks can step onto the hardwood at the Earle A. Chiles Center and just play the game they love. Then we can get on with the business of this 2009-10 season... and not worry about the clock.
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