The Golden Flashes get their motivation mojo from a video.

When Phelps and former director of basketball operations Ryan Pedon (now an assistant at Miami) started producing an annual video in 2003, he had no idea that it would become such a big deal.

“I totally made it expecting the guys to like it, but I didn’t expect them to get this motivated,” said Phelps, a senior broadcast journalism/theatre major.

“Each year, it keeps getting bigger and bigger. More and more is expected of it.”

This year, Phelps topped even himself.

He tracked down former players such as members of the 2002 Elite Eight squad — the last KSU team to reach the NCAA Tournament — along with players who never fulfilled that lifelong dream.

He interviewed them via phone and the audio was incorporated with video highlights from their playing careers and this year’s games.

Demetric Shaw explained what it takes to win the MAC Tournament.

Trevor Huffman talked about the tradition at KSU.

Eric Thomas detailed what it’s like to head into the tournament injured, then put the pain aside.

Jason Edwin talked about how he never made it to the NCAA Tournament. He told them to leave their effort all out there on the floor.

“The guys need to know the tradition, the reason why we’re successful at Kent State, and what type of people they are,” said former KSU guard Eric Haut, now the team’s director of basketball operations.

The video is 14 minutes long and can be viewed in Quicktime, WindowsMedia or Real.

Paul Zeise just completed a NCAA Tournament chat at the P-G. I like Zeise’s work covering Pitt and college football, but found him to be all over the board and completely inconsistent about college basketball.

He’s a Temple guy and wants to complain about the Big East being too physical and rough? He thought the Big East Tournament was bad basketball? Then he obviously didn’t see the Big 11 Tournament or the eye-bleeding pain caused by watching the SEC Championship game between South Carolina and Florida.

Still worth a look, if for no other reason then he totally agrees with me about this:

Slr: Do you think Pitt is a year away?

Paul Zeise: I don’t usually buy that “a year away” stuff because each year is different and success this year doesn’t mean they’ll capture it next year. You never know. One guy could fail out, Aaron Gray could run into Greg Lee’s agent and walk away from the meeting convinced he’s a lottery pick and decide to leave school, another could get injured. This team is special _ they played together and were on a mission, it seemed. That chemistry can be hard to reproduce, particularly next year when the expectations will be high and they won’t have the “us against the world” stuff to rally around. They should be very good next year, but a lot can go wrong as well. That’s why they need to seize the moment this year.

Never waste an opportunity.

As I said the night of the selection show, Nantz and Packer were idiots for their arguing with Craig Littlepage of the NCAA Selection Committee equating the MVC with the ACC and such based on number of teams getting in without looking at the where in the seedings.

Well, with the Selection Committee taking a righteous beating all of Monday for more substantive reasons, Littlepage is on the defensive. Mainly by going after the easy, dumb arguments from Nantz and Packer (rather than the real arguments for the Committee’s incompetence).

And Littlepage said the reason teams from the traditional power conferences fare better in the tournament is that they typically get higher seeds.

“He may have an opinion about that or the two of them may have an opinion about that, and they are certainly free to have those opinions and express those opinions,” Littlepage said of Packer and his CBS broadcast partner, Jim Nantz. “But to look at this in terms of the partnership, you would hope there would be a little better understanding of what it is that we do and an accurate reflection of the facts as they know them to be. Facts, instead of opinions, would be helpful.”

But there were times Monday that Littlepage almost seemed to plead for empathy.

Empathy? Bear with us? What?

Another member of the selection committee was Kent State AD Laing Kennedy. He of course defended the job.

Kennedy, who returned to Kent on Monday after being in selection committee meetings since last Wednesday, said he has not compared the bracket to years past, but sensed nothing was out of norm with the final 65.

“I don’t know how it stacks up, but I would believe it would be about the same [number of majors and midmajors],” Kennedy said. “But I have to tell you, the effort put in all year, not just this [past] weekend, I’ve never been involved with a group so committed to the task.

“We wanted the best 34 at-large teams, and we hammered that every day, team by team by team. That [Nance and Packer assumption] is not a fair assessment.”

I’m getting a feeling that there’s a lot more dissatisfaction and annoyance with the selections than in past years. It seems like the controversy is going to last a few extra days. Maybe it’s because the landscape of college basketball is “flatter” — less variance between more teams — than in the past makes for more questions.

I also think that with all of the information, numbers, stats and analysis most believed they had the system understood and how things worked. Then the committee goes and behind closed doors makes their choices. The transparency of the system is abruptly cut-off and things don’t work out the way everyone was expecting. From questionable seedings to leaving certain teams out. There was a lack of consistency in how they made decsions. Strength of schedule, RPI, last 10 games, non-con. They were all applied inconsistently and without any explanation.

The Missouri Valley Conference seems to have figured out the system better than most mid-major conferences, and even they feel cheated by not having Missouri State make it.

Kent’s AD wants the MAC to have a similar plan.

Kennedy said, collectively, MAC schools should take a stand against major conferences and demand that they play home-and-away series.

Kennedy plans to discuss this, and more, with MAC administrators and coaches during May conference meetings.

Currently, if MAC schools want to play North Carolina, Kansas, Florida or other elite programs, they have to hit the road.

Recently, the Flashes discussed playing Duke. When the question arose if the Blue Devils would play at the M.A.C. Center in Kent, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski responded: “Are you kidding? I’ve done my homework. I’ll play you, but not there.”

That same strategy allowed Syracuse to play 12 of its first 15 games at the Carrier Dome (Two games were played at Madison Square Garden). The Orangemen went 13-2 during the span, including a 78-66 win against KSU on Dec. 30.

Kennedy said scheduling the right top-50 teams is vital.

Looks like Pitt won’t be playing any MAC schools in its non-con for a while. That will be interesting because it potentially could reduce the pool of teams willing to travel for games. Driving up the guaranteed price and convincing more schools to schedule a little tougher if they have to do a home-and-home. I mean if you are going to do one would you choose to do it with another major conference team or a mid-major?

The article also mentions that Kent State will offer Christian a contract extension that would make him the highest paid coach of the MAC. (Which would probably still be cheaper than the lowest paid Big East coach.)

If you are feeling a certain deja vu reading Ron Cook’s column on how Pitt is still a year away, well that’s because his fellow columnist Bob Smizik wrote the same column back at the end of January.

I still have the same feeling on the subject. You never know.

Yes, on paper, the team would appear to be better, deeper and more seasoned with Gray, Graves and Kendall as seniors, Ramon and Benjamin as juniors, and of course Young, Fields, and Biggs having another year to learn. Cook even forgot about Mike Cook, the athletic guard/forward who is sitting out the year after transferring from East Carolina.

Last season was supposed to be Pitt’s big year and the team imploded late in the season. Consider, too, that Pitt has managed to avoid a key player suffering a serious season-long injury problem for years. Villanova, by contrast, has yet to get through a season without major injury issues to their incredibly talented players.

Imagine losing Gray or Young or Fields for the season. Young has been an impact all season, and should be bigger next year. No question. But what happens if he gets a knee injury or something. You just don’t know, and there is nothing dumber than anticipating next season when there is hopefully plenty more to do this season.

Coach Dixon, naturally, wants the team focusing on the game at hand. Not looking to next year or even to Sunday. The team, Kent State, was the best and most consistent team in the MAC this year. Everyone had Ohio University tabbed to win the MAC, but they proved wildly inconsistent. KSU, on the other hand, dominated the conference (15-3) and won their tournament.

Kent State was second in the Mid-American Conference in scoring (72.5 points per game) and a solid fifth in scoring defense (65.5 ppg). The Golden Flashes led the MAC in rebounding margin and held opponents to 33-percent shooting from behind the 3-point arc.

Like Pitt, Christian utilizes a deep bench and plays 10 players. He has seven players averaging 6.5 points or more per game. The leading scorer is senior guard Jay Youngblood, who averages 14.7 per game. But in the past six games, Kent State has had a different leading scorer five times.

“It’s been a strength of ours all year,” Christian said. “We play nine or 10 guys. We have different guys step up. We don’t rely on one or two guys. We utilize our bench as much as we can.”

The only common foes between the two are Rutgers and Syracuse. KSU lost to Rutgers by 3 on a neutral court, and of course, Pitt beat RU at the RAC. Kent lost by 12 to the ‘Cuse at the Carrier Dome and Pitt split with the Orange.

Kent’s only wins against top-100 RPI teams were Ohio (99) (twice), Miami (OH) (84), Akron (70) and Butler (82) (non-con). Kent has won 9 of its last 10 games.

Kent’s head coach, Jim Christian, now finds himself becoming a hotter commodity, after his continuing the success at Kent after Stan Heath left for Arkansas. This, despite, being unemployed as a coach for a couple years, following being purged from Pitt with Ralph Willard in 1999.

If you believe in trends, then the past 3 times Pitt has gotten to the BET Championship game, Pitt made the Sweet 16. Then, I guess, you should also believe that UConn isn’t going to win the NCAA since the last two times they won it, they also won the BET. Or is it just when the trend is convenient or only for Pitt?

A few open tabs I needed to clear off my browser.

One of the better possible explanations for the way the NCAA Selection Committee seeded things:

Lots of people are saying the NCAA Tournament selection committee made major mistakes in seeding the tourney. But give the committee members some credit. They’re by no means stupid. It’s all a clever ruse concocted to make some money. Think about it — they’re going to clean up in their office pools. When everyone else is going with chalk, the committee members will have a No. 2 seed like Tennessee or maybe even UCLA going out early in their brackets, while they advance teams that were given undeservedly low seeds, such as No. 5 Pitt and No. 7 Georgetown. So, you see, they’re just trying to win a few hundred bucks in their office pools. That, or they have absolutely zero knowledge of college basketball. It’s one or the other.

Sounds about right.

Actually I’m sticking by my theory that Pitt got jammed into a 5 seed because they didn’t have a good fit to place Pitt in the 3 or 4 seed locations that wouldn’t result in a potential/likely early round match with another Big East team. This tidbit seems to lend some credence:

The team that seemed to move the most around the board was Pitt, which settled at No. 5 in the Oakland region.

Now I know many of you have seen the SI.com Oakland bracket preview that called Pitt “overrated” and the “media darling.” Outside of some love from Michael Wilbon in the Washington Post, there wasn’t that much in most early previews I had seen. I started seeing some eyeing Pitt for the 5-12 upset.

This evening, my worst fears were confirmed. On ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” Michael Smith and (shudder) Jay Mariotti both tabbed Pitt for the Final Four. Talk about a kiss of death. If there was any consolation, it was that all 4 of the yappers picked BC.