The Front Row with JASON ELLIOTT March 9, 2011

While the selection show brings some heartache to those teams left out of the NCAA basketball tournament, imagine the feeling of being 23-9 and having your season end.

For most NJCAA teams in Scenic West Athletic Conference men's basketball, that's exactly what they are feeling right now.

Home with nobody else to dance with.

TEAMS SUCH as Salt Lake Community College, Eastern Utah and Snow College, all of whom were ranked in the polls at some point this season, had their season end in Twin Falls at the Region 18 tournament.

North Idaho College, which began the season as the top-ranked team in the nation, also suffered the same fate, losing to eventual champion Southern Idaho on Friday night.

Imagine if Duke, the top-ranked team in Division I at the start of the season, was left out of the tournament should it fail to win the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament later this week.

With 68 teams getting invited to play over three weeks to determine a national champion, chances are the Blue Devils are safe.

Those four teams in the SWAC, which have spent the majority of the last two months beating up on each other, don't get the same shot.

CSI had to play its way into the national tournament, beating a team from Arizona on Tuesday night to earn a bid.

While the same theory doesn't hold true for the women, as NIC's women advanced to the NJCAA tournament in Salina, Kan., starting on Tuesday, it's amazing to me that a competitive league such as the SWAC doesn't have another automatic bid.

BUT CONSIDERING that the 5A Inland Empire League only gets two bids from a league that had Coeur d'Alene (third) and Post Falls (fourth) bring home trophies from the state 5A boys tournament, there's a line that has to be set somewhere.

Like any tournament in sports, sometimes good teams come up short.

In the 5A girls basketball ranks, three local teams were ranked a majority of the season in the media top five. Of those, two of them (Lewiston and Coeur d’Alene) played for a state championship.

Post Falls and Lake City, both ranked in the media poll most of the season, had to play in a loser-out game in the Region 1 tournament after a couple of first-round upsets.

Coeur d’Alene, which entered that same regional tournament the No. 3 seed, played its best basketball at the right time to finish third in the state.

EVERYWHERE YOU look anymore, the competition between teams in some of the surrounding leagues continues to get closer.

And in the coming weeks, teams will get a little more familiar with some mid-major teams from conferences around the nation as the NCAA tournament begins.

While state basketball and junior college games may not get the network viewing audience, that show was just as fun to watch while it lasted.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached via telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via e-mail at jelliott@cdapress.com.