Letters from Katy: Final thoughts from the 2017 SLC Tournament

And just like that, it's all over. The 2017 Southland Conference basketball tournament has reached a conclusion, with the New Orleans Privateers (men's) and Central Arkansas Sugar Bears (women's) representing the league on the nation's biggest stage.

The thriller between Texas A&M-CC and UNO in the championship game last night was bittersweet. Regardless of who won, it was going to be a feel-good story. No matter who lost, it was going to break your heart a little bit. Such is the life of senior-led teams.

Meanwhile, and unfortunately for SFA fans, the Ladyjacks just had about nothing left on Sunday. The dogfights in the regular season between the Ladyjacks and Sugar Bears were quickly overshadowed by a second half of the championship game that saw a fatigued SFA team collapse in the third quarter. For Taylor Ross and Adrienne Lewis, twice SLC champions who could never quite escape the Merrell Center, it's a tough pill to swallow.

But the high stakes are probably why this time of year is so special in the world of college hoops. As another year of Southland Conference battles conclude, here are a few observations from the final days in Katy:

People (me) like to hate on mid-major conference tournaments. Credit the SLC for making the best of it -

The MAAC should be thoroughly ashamed of how they've handled Monmouth the last couple years. A legitimately good basketball team, with ambitions and potential to make noise in front of millions, dashed by unpredictable circumstances. Forcing a top seed to play a road game against a #4 is a gross miscarriage of sports justice.

And although the Southland Conference may not be perfect on the conference tournament front (see: soccer), credit the league for doing everything in their power to clear the way for the top seeds in basketball.

How much better than SFA was Central Arkansas on the women's side? Plenty. Probably not 25 points better though. UCA head coach Sandra Rushing immediately pointed to the benefit of playing one game fewer in the moments after securing a second-straight NCAA Tournament bid. "Anything can happen tournament time," she said. "SFA played two games. This was their third."

For all the complaining about the flawed postseason system and how it cheapens regular season excellence, we should be sure to tip our cap to a league that gets it.

It isn't perfect. SFA fans probably still feel robbed of the double-bye on the men's side, being seeded below a team they beat twice. But let's be clear about one thing: the Southland Conference didn't take away SFA's double-bye. SFA did, by losing to Northwestern State in the final week of the regular season.

And had that not happened? Who knows. Maybe SFA would have a chance to get rolled by Nova this week instead.

For the most part, the Southland Conference did a fine job putting on a relatively smooth show over the last week. Nicholls fans may disagree, but barring that one major flub on the evening of regular season finales, the league did a fine job running an event that picked both #1 seeds to represent the participating schools in the Big Dance.

That should be the goal, every time. And in that regard, for the Southland Conference, mission accomplished.

The men's and women's championship games were a tale of opposite treatment for superstars -

As long as basketball has been a popular sport, refs have given the star players the benefit of most calls. You see it constantly and there's nothing necessarily wrong with it. It was never more obvious than during New Orleans' overtime victory over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

The Islanders' Rashawn Thomas did plenty of Rashawn Thomas-y things. The only thing he couldn't do, was make a game tying three-pointer in the final seconds of overtime (from the identical spot that he drained one to seal SFA's fate the night before). He was also greatly assisted throughout the night by officiating.

Twice, in the final minutes of regulation (both under very questionable circumstances), Thomas was gifted free throws for a hand coming too close to his face on a jump shot. The latter of the two calls came on a shot behind the arc.

It was not a well officiated game, but I don't necessarily have a problem with those two calls. The slow motion TV replays couldn't determine with confidence that there was any contact to Rashawn's face - I certainly couldn't see any from my vantage point. But maybe the official saw something I didn't? Even if so, most players probably don't get this call - especially with 50 seconds left in a one-point game:

Rashawn and his UNO counterpart, Erik Thomas, got the benefit of more than one such borderline call in the closing minutes.

The women's conference player of the year Taylor Ross? Not so much.

Ross is a physical player and has been all season. You could argue that officiating has helped her game, more than not. There's hardly a player in the country that is better at drawing contact and getting to the free throw line.

But during the championship game with UCA, Ross couldn't buy a call. She was shoved frequently with no-call by the ferocious Sugar Bears defense on the interior. Instead, on this afternoon, the whistles only seemed to break out when they were nailing #2 for an incidental hand check or five.

Officiating was not responsible for SFA's 25 point loss. In fact, the babying of Rashawn Thomas impacted the game the night prior far more significantly (and UNO won anyway). But that treatment of Ross versus Thomas does illustrate the frustrating inconsistency that has dogged games all season.

From a practical standpoint, it means that players probably shouldn't depend on those calls the way Ross has. But it's sad that it has to be that way - and that there cannot be a more constant criteria for what constitutes foul-worthy contact around the league.

If you watched both of the SFA men's games, the discrepancy between how the Lamar game was called (there was no such thing as a foul) and the Texas A&M-CC game (everything was a foul) demonstrates this point quite nicely.

Rashawn Thomas is one of the truly great SLC players in recent memory -

Don't mistake my comments on Thomas' favorable officiating to mean that he didn't earn his accolades during the tournament. In fact, in my limited experience dealing with the Islanders' forward, I've found him to be one of the most gracious, articulate, admirable athletes that I've ever encountered.

He'll finish his career having never gone to the NCAA Tournament. He was never the conference's Player of the Year. There are a number of other deserving players who you could say the same of (Zeek Woodley comes to mind), but in any case, it's a damn shame.

I told myself that I had no preference on Saturday night. I was going to enjoy either deserving team in the NCAA Tournament. But quietly, I found myself rooting for Rashawn. When it was all over, I was genuinely sad to see his conference career end.

SFA fans may never fully appreciate his greatness. That's probably mostly because he didn't always play particularly well against the Lumberjacks. But that performance of pure dominance on Friday to knock SFA from the tournament? That was a normal day at the office for Thomas.

And, sadly, at least in the world of college basketball, it was also one of his final opportunities to show it off. It was an amazing career, Rashawn. I hope people around the league are able to see it for what it was, despite never reaching the ultimate objective.

Fast break points -

- I can't remember being as thoroughly impressed by a losing press conference as I was after hearing from Lamar's Robin Harmony on Saturday. I suspect motivation is not a problem for her team. She has a young group of players, some really good ones, and could be the favorite to win the whole thing next year.

- Oh yeah, Lamar's men's team is going to be pretty good too. Tic Price has nearly the whole team returning this fall and with all the talent-shedding by UNO and A&M-CC, they could be SFA's biggest hindrance to reclaiming their seat on the SLC throne.

- Mark Kellogg may not be the most popular coach in America, but don't mistake the disappointing ending to his season as a coach not making progress. 2016-17 was a step in the right direction. Winning culture, especially with some of the locker room drama he encountered with older players, is tough to fully establish in a couple years. UCA is also really, really good. But Stevi Parker, with one year of eligibility remaining, will be on a mission next season.

- There are four SLC teams, including SFA, playing in the College Insiders Tournament. Who knows? We may get another league game out of this season before all is said and done.

- I'm going to sleep really well tonight. It's good to be back in Nacogdoches.