At Small

Imagine you are applying for a job at a top law firm. You were the 63rd best law student there was. You did well, but others were far and away more impressive than you. They get the top jobs, which is expected. Then the lower opportunities are handed out. The 25th guy gets his job. Then the 39th. Then the 62nd. It's your turn now. You get passed up for somebody else, and then another. All of a sudden, there are no more jobs left.

Do you think anybody cares? Of course not. You weren't a top prospect, just one of those who could of been considered. Yeah, you were 7th in your class at Harvard Law. But the top firms liked the head of his class at Binghamton. Your final interview didn't go so well. This is life.

But not in college basketball. In this world, the underachiever at the big school feels slighted when he isn't picked. He never thinks that he could've done more. His competition is too good, he says. The #1 at Binghamton didn't have enough talented classmates. That is HIS job.

Except, law students don't have the media on their side. They have to accept reality. Joe Lunardi gets to create his own reality, a world in which the opinions of the decision makers doesn't matter. But in business, in the real world, those decision makers can fall back on one point: you didn't do well enough.

You weren't #1 in your class. You did not do the work necessary to take the decision out of the hands of the decision makers. You left it out in the open. You made it an argument. You left it up to chance.

And that's what UCONN, Notre Dame, Rhode Island and many others have done. They did just enough to make it a decision. How can they complain if they don't get in the tournament?

All they needed was that one signature win, or to get a win over that one bad loss. But these schools didn't do that. They left it up to chance. They didn't get the job done.

So when the brackets come out next week, and if your school isn't amongst the elite, ask yourself: did we do enough? If you did, there wouldn't be a question. You only did enough to be considered. And that just ain't enough.