If you don’t deserve to win, your chances are lower than ever.

Dean Smith always said he struggled between playing well and losing and playing poorly and winning. He knew his job was to win, but the process of practicing and execution was more important because that usually resulted in victory.

Times have changed since Smith coached, when there were far fewer good college teams than today. He and the other blue blood programs are to blame, because they set the standard to be emulated.

Can you believe how coaches like Porter Moser of Loyola Chicago have invented offenses that are so beautifully run by his smart tough heady players?

And when was the best point guard in the entire Big Dance playing for a No. 15 seed like Oral Roberts, which is in the Sweet Sixteen after taking down Power 5 schools Ohio State and Florida?

Roy Williams won 29 straight first-round games because, in most years, his teams were higher seeded with superior players. This year, Carolina lost to an equally seeded and talented team that played harder and better.

The incentive of playing the young Tar Heels was not lost on Wisconsin, which was confident it could win if it, indeed, played tougher and hit more shots. So, when the Badgers did, there should be no surprise they won so convincingly.

UNC, Duke and Kentucky have bigger names than all the other teams in the country since they have had more success and more publicity over the last 30 years.

Carolina was out early and the other two did not get in because there is more balance and more incentive among the rest of the field, and all three did not live up to preseason expectations.

When other programs have potential to make an NCAA run, and they don’t, nobody notices or really cares. When it is one of the blue bloods, the Internet and social media blow up and want to know what happened.

What happened was simple. All the attention is not really warranted. They’re not deserving of it. Only the winners are.

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