Mike Celizic

The NCAAs are the tournament we all prime for, the one that spawns the office pools and the IM chatter, the ones that get radio talk-show hosts so excited you have to throw sawdust under them.

But, honestly, for the true college hoops fan, are there a better five days than the ones that begin Wednesday with the start of the big conference tournaments?

It’s not strictly the quality of the basketball, although you’ve got that any time the big boys take their hostility built of familiarity on the court. Beyond that, it’s the sheer intensity of a tournament that starts with anywhere from 10 to 12 teams and throws them into a meat grinder and spits out a winner four days later.

The NCAAs are for the championship of the country, and it’s a great tournament. But, let’s face it, even though every team goes in thinking it’s going to set the world on fire, it’s a long shot for any one team to win. Even Duke and North Carolina have just seven national championships between them, and the university that can claim as many as two titles is rarer than disinterested spectators in Cameron Indoor.

The National Championship is something you dream of.  But a conference championship is what you really work for. It’s the first goal of every team at the start of every season – win the conference. First, you want to win the regular season, and then the tournament.

Those are the trophies that establish real bragging rights in a conference. And these are the teams you really want to beat, because with them, it’s personal.

The NCAAs need three weeks to play six games, and there’s always at least one day between games. For one of the bottom eight teams in a 12-team conference tournament, there are four days to play four games. For the four teams that get first-round byes, it’s still three games in three days, a grueling schedule that these kids will never see again, not in the pros, not anywhere.

The NCAAs move from one town to another each week. A big conference tournament is at a single site, and to win it, it’s four days of nothing but basketball.

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There’s no time to practice for the next day’s opponent. The best the coaches can do is a shootaround and a walk-through. The best the players can do is gobble Advil and hope for a full night’s sleep.

It’s heaven for a fan. Four games on the first day, four games on the second, two on the third and two more (if there’s a consolation game) on the last day. And it’s all in one town in an arena that isn’t filled with corporate types and national fans who don’t even know who’s playing.

Arenas rock during conference tournaments. They rattle. They roll. They shake. They thunder. Every 2 ½  hours, there are two new pep bands in the corners, two new squads of cheerleaders, and fresh brigades of guys with painted chests and basketballs on their heads. And every game has its own back story of ancient rivalries.

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