Birds, Dogs & Kangaroos: Life on the Back Roads of College Basketball

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When the 65-team field is announced for the NCAA tournament in March, all the schools are lumped into one bracket. But with the fact that no No.16 seed has ever beaten a No. 1 seed serving as evidence, there is a group of schools in the bracket that are worlds apart from the BCS teams.

Some of the schools, labeled the 'mid-majors' make it into the Sweet 16, practically their version of making it to the Final Four. Rarely these days does a team go as far as George Mason University from the Colonial Athletic Conference did in 2006 when the Patriots played their way into the Final Four. Or Davidson, a little liberal arts school from Charlotte, taking Kansas all the way to the final seconds in the 2008 Midwest Regional Final.

The mid-majors have a better shot at knocking off the big boys. The low majors - the schools from the Summit Conference, the Ivy League et al - most often have no shot. Yet coaches from the low majors stake their careers and reputations at getting into the NCAA tournament field. Rich Zvosec was one of those coaches.

Zvosec takes you into the world of low majors that's never been revealed before in detail. It's a world that involves less coaching and more demands centered on fund-raising, commuting and handling off-the- court affairs.

It wasn't unusual for Zvosec or any other coach on the low major level to be doing the team laundry, searching for housing on behalf of his players or becoming make-shift mechanics when the commuter vehicles broke down. He takes you into the world of coaching that makes you want to ask, "Why do you do it?" And most often the answer is, "Because they love it."

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