"I was very concerned there was a strong chance we'd lose Eric (to another school)," Brown said. "I thought he was a very valuable asset to our staff, as well as the other (assistants)."

Brown said Eaton will receive an undisclosed pay raise and will take over if Brown ever has to miss a game or a practice.

UAlbany said assistant coaches Pat Filien and Chad O'Donnell will take on additional duties. Filien will handle player development and coordinate strength and conditioning, while O'Donnell will serve as recruiting coordinator. Jeremy Friel remains in his role as director of basketball operations.

Eaton previously was a Holy Cross assistant from 2000-04, when the Crusaders reached three NCAA Tournaments.

He averaged 13.7 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.4 steals for 29-7 San Joaquin Delta, earning first-team all-Big 7 Conference recognition. At Fresno State, he averaged 2.3 points and 1.4 rebounds in 25 games played during the 2004-05 campaign.

"We are very excited to add a player of Carl's caliber to our basketball program," UAlbany coach Will Brown said in a news release. "He is an explosive athlete and a lockdown defender. Our squad has added size, strength and athleticism on the perimeter with his commitment."

Siena baseball on TV

Siena will telecast its baseball doubleheader with Iona College this Saturday on Time Warner Cable. Both games will air on TW-3, with the opening pitch slated for noon.

The games mark the first televised local college baseball action on Time Warner in the Capital Region.

Former Siena women's basketball and football play-by-play announcer Ranon Masliyah, who currently serves as the voice of several sports teams at Seton Hall University, will call the action alongside sports information director Jason Rich.

Subscribers to Time Warner cable will be able to access the doubleheader on Channel 3.

RPI softball 21st in nation

The RPI softball team, winners of 12 straight games, has cracked the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Division III Top 25 Poll for the first time this season. The Red Hawks, who are 27-3 overall, are ranked 21st in the nation.

But no, the Patriots are sticking with the Cinderella description of their sprint to the NCAA tournament's Final Four until high-top Nike glass slippers slide onto their feet or shatter into pieces.

"We've kind of used it to our advantage," Patriots guard Tony Skinn said. "We know we can play with anybody."

With that, the 6-foot-1-inch junior summarized the tournament and college basketball today. Everybody can play with everybody. Parity is in full bloom. If the Colonial Athletic Association's George Mason (27-7) can march through Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and Connecticut in March, what stops all 65 tournament teams from legitimately dreaming?

Once upon a time, NCAA basketball was the personal playground of UCLA under coach John Wooden. The Bruins won 10 titles in 12 years ending in 1975. UCLA was the King Kong of bullies. But college and amateur basketball evolved.

ESPN and other networks spread the gospel. AAU teams began traveling nationally. More universities, sniffing the rewards of six-figure paydays by advancing in the tournament, realized emphasizing five-man basketball instead of 22-man football was a bargain. More teams gravitated to Division I, with 334 statistically recognized schools this season.

It became nearly impossible to repeat as champion and upsets by mislabeled midmajor schools became commonplace.

Even though No. 1 seeds are 88-0 versus No. 16s since the NCAA began its present seeding system, there was a palpable difference this year. It used to be that the sacrifice selections were just happy to be there, quaking in their sneakers. These days, schools like George Mason, Wisconsin-Milwaukee from the Horizon League, Bradley from the Missouri Valley and Montana from the Big Sky shrugged at their matchups and won. Players from the power conferences like the Big East, Big Ten and ACC deny it, but they do underestimate unheralded schools.

"Other teams are falling asleep," Skinn said.

Snooze in one-shot, loser-go-home games and you cry. Adjustments occur the next season, not the next day.

"Anything can happen on any given night," Florida coach Billy Donovan said. "With the parity in college basketball, I don't think seeding means a whole lot anymore."

Fans adopt underdogs and cheer for them at neutral first/second round and regional sites. The noise level for the Albany Great Danes at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia was one-sided and deafening. DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright, who has coached at North Carolina-Wilmington and Richmond, recalled one year his No. 13-seeded Wilmington team met No. 4 Southern California in Sacramento and won.

"It was a home game for us because those Northern Californians hated them," Wainwright said.

With all of the hype and attention, with every friend and relative filling out a bracket, Wainwright thinks high seeds face extraordinary stress that can boost a loose, confident underdog.

"In a 40-minute game, where the pressure is solely on the higher seed," he said, "unless they get out (front) early, the pressure builds and builds and builds."

And they become ripe to tumble.

This year players on No. 16-seeded teams clearly realized the other guys put on their baggy shorts the same way they do. Albany led the Washington regional's top seed, Connecticut of the Big East, by 12 points in the second half.

"Why not us? That was our motto," Albany coach Will Brown said after his team lost to the Huskies but showed no fear. "A 16 is going to beat a one."

Albany gained so much favorable publicity playing tough against a team stocked with future professionals that Brown earned a new five-year contract for losing well.

No. 16 Monmouth harried the Minneapolis regional's No. 1 seed, Villanova of the Big East, all game.

"The margin is closing a little bit," Monmouth coach Dave Calloway said. "It was a moral win for us."

In reality, there are almost no moral victories left for underpublicized schools. Bucknell toppled Kansas in the first round last year. This year the Bison returned five starters, went 27-5, won at Syracuse early and upended Arkansas in the first round. Moreover, because the Patriot League allows only seven scholarships, the Bison accomplished all that without a level playing field. In 1992, the NCAA reduced the Division I scholarship maximum from 15 to 13. That began the spread of talent.

"The kids know they can go anywhere and be big," Bucknell coach Pat Flannery said. "You have such exposure, they can be on TV and on the Web. They don't want to go somewhere and sit on the bench."

There are several reasons the NCAA basketball gap has shrunk. Small-school players keep developing for four years, while big schools lose some players to the NBA after a year or two. More young players travel with AAU teams and gain early maturity, so they are not intimidated if they encounter an old foe in a big-name school uniform. The major conferences' home-biased non-conference scheduling remains snobby, but it has improved some.

Magnanimous big schools sometimes deign to offer 2-for-1 deals. Come to their place twice and they will play in your gym once. Maybe.

"That's a good discussion if you can get that," Loyola coach Jim Whitesell said.

Whitesell, whose Horizon League team jumped from 13 victories to 19 this season, plays in the Gentile Center where a banner hangs touting the then-independent Ramblers' 1963 NCAA title. Could the miracle repeat for Loyola in the present college basketball environment?

"I think it's possible," Whitesell said. "I still think it's a long shot. But (George Mason) has opened up people's eyes. Certainly it's not as (far-fetched) as it was 10 or 15 years ago. A group of five seniors that has been through trials and tribulations certainly can compete with incredibly talented young guys. The Sweet 16, you might see that more and more. The whole tournament is more and more of a crapshoot. That's why everyone loves it."

Perhaps not everyone. For the first time since 1980 none of the four regional top seeds_UConn, Villanova, Memphis and Duke - reached the Final Four, unraveled by their own mistakes or undone by someone else's poise. George Mason is joined by Florida and Louisiana State of the Southeastern Conference and, somewhat ironically, storied UCLA. Not that anyone believes this first Final Four for UCLA since its 11th title in 1995 indicates the Bruins will kindle another dynasty.

"Oh, no, no, no," Wainwright said. "Forget it."

UCLA coach Ben Howland threw a preseason barbecue with the current team meeting Wooden and nearly 80 former players from Bill Walton to Lucius Allen. The Bruins are keenly aware of school tradition.

"It's not a burden at all," guard Arron Afflalo said. "We're just trying to add our little piece of history."

And George Mason, the school named for an American patriot who wrote history when his Virginia Bill of Rights became the framework for the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, is seeking to add to a tradition begun, oh, about a month ago. Before the Patriots' first NCAA game against Michigan State, coach Jim Larranaga huddled with his players for a talk.

"I'm going to have more fun than any other coach in the NCAA tournament," he said. "And I want you guys to have more fun than any other team."

They got the message.

"It sure has been true," Larranaga said. "It has been an absolutely fantastic, magical carpet ride."

In a very short time, George Mason has become the poster child for NCAA parity. If the Patriots were to culminate their stunning run in the RCA Dome with a title it would be considered one of the greatest we-belong sports upsets of all time. Yet George Mason merely would be writing a midmajors bill of rights.

One week ago, UMBC saw its regular season draw to a close with a resounding 76-61 loss to the America East conference-leading Albany Great Danes. Fast-forward to the present, and the Retrievers again find themselves ending the season—this time, the postseason—at the hands of their conference foe. A 79-65 loss, headlined by the Danes’ Lucious Jordan scoring a game-high 22 points, officially ended UMBC men’s basketball for the 2005-06 season.

One day earlier, the Retrievers had been given a glimmer of hope in the form of an 88-70 win over ninth seeded Stony Brook in the America East conference tournament’s first round. Sophomore Brian Hodges had a banner day in the win, scoring a career-high 33 points for the Retrievers, who advanced to Saturday’s quarterfinals with the win Friday evening.

With little time to celebrate their victory, the Retrievers found themselves again matched up against number one seeded Albany, and the result was a familiar one. UMBC clawed its way to a 39-30 halftime deficit, but was held to only eight field goals in the second half against an adjusting Great Danes defense.

Outstanding free throw shooting would keep the Retrievers in the game with the Danes leading only 66-56 with 6:38 remaining, but a series of missed shots and scoring opportunities took UMBC out of the game as time wound down. For the game, the Retrievers hit 24 of 29 from the charity stripe, but only 36 percent from the floor.

Despite the loss, UMBC basketball had a season to build upon. The Retrievers finished with a 10-19 record, but for the first time in its brief three-year run as a member of the America East Conference, two players were chosen for postseason conference awards. Senior John Zito was voted Second Team All America East Conference. In Zito’s final year at UMBC, he led the team in scoring (14.2 ppg) and rebounding (7.1 rpg). Meanwhile, freshman Jay Greene was named to the league’s All Rookie team after averaging 3.7 assists per game and hitting on 37 percent of attempted three-point field goals.

Greene, who started the final 18 of UMBC’s games, represents what could be the beginning of a change in UMBC’s competitive fortunes. Along with the freshman point guard, the emergence of Hodges as a serious scoring threat bodes well for a Retriever offense that slumped at times in 2005-06. While the loss of Zito will be a difficult challenge to overcome, the two guards compose a core of young talent for UMBC head coach Randy Monroe to build around in the coming seasons.

Yet despite the positives that can be taken away from individual player’s achievement, the season was often a tumultuous one for the first year head coach. Monroe saw his team take advantage of a slow-start by all nine members of the conference and remain the upper tier of the conference well into January. However, after a losing streak over students’ winter break, Monroe temporarily banned his team from wearing Retriever athletics apparel, and even went so far as to lock the team out of its locker room. Claiming the team had seemed to lose focus and determination during the slide, Monroe achieved his desired result as the team’s quality of play almost immediately was raised. Still, the Retrievers were never really able to bounce back into contention in the America East.

In order to become more competitive, the Retrievers must first learn how to win away from the friendly confines of the RAC Arena, where the team compiled an 8-4 record during the regular season. Away from UMBC’s suburban Baltimore campus, the Retrievers went an abysmal 2-15. That many of those losses came by single digits suggests that the talent is there, but that UMBC has simply not been able to concoct a winning formula in hostile territory. With a long off-season ahead for Monroe, the hope is that he can find the right combination of players and scheme to bring more wins to Baltimore in 2006-07.

To be sure, we mainstream media types love our hyped-up hyperbole.

We have our best-evers and worst-evers, and our Top 25s and our Bottom 10s, and our never-ending lists of never-ending lists in which every event in the history of man is among the best ever or the worst ever, with nothing in between.

Still, given all that, this time we mean it.

This is the Greatest (with a capital G) NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament ever.

Yes, ever. Better than any of the incomparable Lew Alcindor/Walton Gang runs for UCLA in the '60s and '70s. Better than Bird-Magic in '79. Better than North Carolina State slaying Phi Slamma Jamma in 1983. Better than any of Duke's titles in the early '90s. Don't tell him this, but better than Pitino on Parade in the mid-90s. Better than Glory Road.

Better even than 1985 when Villanova pitched its perfect-game upset of Georgetown in that epic final right down the street in Rupp Arena.

This one's the best ever. Best ever for upsets. Best ever for buzzer-beaters. Best ever for storylines. Best ever for underdogs. Best ever for characters. Best ever for overtimes; six in all, four in the last 12 games. Best ever for schools you never even knew were schools.

Who knew there was a Northwestern State before the Demons' buzzer-beater cut down Iowa Coach Steve Alford's chance at getting the Indiana job? Who knew Albany even had a basketball program before the Great Danes, a 16 seed, led Jim Calhoun and Connecticut, a No. 1 seed, by 12 points in the second half -- on St. Patrick's Day, no less?

You want drama? UCLA rose from the Dead Sea to score the game's last 11 points and gun down a gagging Gonzaga. Louisiana State would not even be in Indy to play the Bruins if Darrel Mitchell doesn't stick a three-pointer with 3.9 seconds left to beat Texas A&M in round two.

You want tears? On the same night, the game's top two players, J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison, gave their own personal Roy Williams imitations.

After hitting three of 18 shots against LSU, Redick's consolation prize was another one of those unavoidable man-hugs from Coach "Not So Special" K. A few hours later in Oakland, Morrison was picking up an unwanted floor burn, collapsing in a trail of tears after the Zags ended up with zilch.

You want stars? You were just staring into the wrong galaxy. Three days before the Final Four, NBA types claim that the top two players in this year's draft might well be an LSU redshirt freshman no one had heard of (aka Tyrus Thomas) and a ponytailed Florida sophomore (aka Joakim Noah) who played two minutes in last year's tourney.

Any Final Four without a team from the Big (L)East, the ACC, the Big 12 or the Big Ten -- 10 being the number of minutes that conference was alive in this year's Big Dance -- and with a boa-wearing 6-foot-9, 300-pound man-child nicknamed "Big Baby" is all right by me.

You want Cinderellas? George Mason is this year's Lesley Ann Warren. The Patriots' win over UConn on Sunday was/is the greatest upset in tournament history.

With all due respect, that '83 N.C. State team that took down Houston did play in the ACC. That '85 Villanova team that shocked Georgetown did play in the Big East and had taken the Hoyas to overtime in the regular season.

Even that '86 LSU team, like Mason a No. 11 seed, reached the Final Four by beating a Kentucky team it had already lost to three times. With Dale Brown, the fourth time was the charm.

Jim Larranaga is no Dale Brown. The GMU coach looks like your high school civics teacher, and, before this year, had never won an NCAA Tournament game. Neither had his school. George Mason lost to Mississippi State in December, and trailed Georgia State by 11, in its conference tournament, for heaven's sakes. Yet the Patriots and Larranaga are in the Final Four.

As reported by the Washington Post's John Feinstein, when the Masonites conquered cocky, overconfident and clueless Connecticut, Larranaga's wife congratulated her hubby with, "You deserve it."

"A lot of coaches deserve this," said Larranaga.

"Well, let their wives worry about them," said Liz Larranaga.

For those who think there have been better NCAA Tournaments, your significant others can worry about you.

I look forward to next season. The Danes will be good, though Zoellner, Lucious Jordan, Levi Levine and Jerrad Knotts will be missed. Can we replace those guys? Maybe, thanks to their contributions, Will Brown won't have to look too hard.

He also averaged 14 points and was named the America East rookie of the year in 2003-04, but saw the Great Danes play not-so-great while struggling to a 5-23 season.

Iati is considered a sophomore after earning a medical redshirt last season, playing just six games and averaging 11 points before undergoing shoulder surgery for a partially torn labrum. He returned this season to a vastly improved squad.

Iati's minutes decreased, but Albany went 21-10 and earned its first NCAA tournament berth in seven seasons of Division I basketball. The 16th-seeded Great Danes meet top-seeded Connecticut of the Washington Regional in Friday night's 7:25 game at the Wachovia Center.

This season, Iati has averaged 6.8 points, while shooting 40 for 110 from three-point range (36.4 percent). He has averaged just 16.9 minutes, a far cry from his freshman year. But Iati insists that it hasn't been difficult to cope with the reduced workload.

"It's not tough to take when you are winning games," he said Thursday after Albany went through a two-hour practice at the Palestra. "I was playing 40 minutes a game and we won just five times, and we are now a lot deeper and more athletic and have a lot more guys who can play."

Plus, he realized that he was playing way too many minutes, even for somebody who can seemingly run all day.

"At end of the season, I was dead and was struggling because I was run down," he said.

Albany coach Will Brown realizes it hasn't been easy for Iati to go from a starter who never saw the bench to somebody who at times had trouble getting off the pine.

"It's probably been an emotional roller coaster for him this year, but I'm proud of him because he has really continued to work, didn't pout at all and didn't let it distract what the team was doing," said Brown, who began his college playing career at Penn before transferring his first year to Dowling College, a Division II program.

Iati and teammate Brian Connolly, a Camden Catholic graduate, both said family and friends will be watching them tonight.

York is about 100 miles from the Wachovia Center, a gym that Iati had never seen until last night when Albany had a brief open practice to the public.

During Albany's 80-67 America East championship win over Vermont, Iati scored eight points in 11 minutes, hitting 3 of 5 from the field and 2 of 3 from beyond the arc.

His shooting could be a key tonight against an NBA-sized Connecticut team that isn't likely to allow Albany to get too much inside. That could mean more playing time, something that a refreshed Iati appears more than ready to handle.