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Defense wins championships. 'Indefensible' gets ORU in tourney?
Published: 3/11/2012 1:08 PM
Last Modified: 3/11/2012 1:32 PM

Here’s why Oral Roberts University should cling to a ray of hope on Selection Sunday:

Someone -- happens every year -- is going to be the surprise team that no one expected to make the field. What the heck. Maybe ORU can be that team.

College basketball’s premier bracketologists do not have ORU listed on their mock brackets. Those same bracketologists often post stats about how how many NCAA Tournament participants they got “right” in seasons past.

While bracketologists do a superb job of projecting the field, keep in mind that they do not have a 100 percent success rate. After the bracket is unveiled, they’ll no doubt write that they were blind-sided when (pick a team, usually a mid-major one) made the field.

Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale railed against the inclusion of VCU and UAB in last year’s bracket. Bilas (and I'm not picking on him; ORU once tried to recruit him) called the committee’s decision to include those teams “indefensible.”

I can defend why ORU deserves to be in the field. One bad night in March shouldn't trump a season's worth of work. But, if a national college basketball analyst is using “ORU” and “indefensible” in the same sentence later this evening, it will be a good day for the Golden Eagles.



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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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