Was your team left out of the big dance? Is your team the Ohio State Buckeyes, Florida Gators or Syracuse Orangemen, but know that your team did not quite have it this season? Do you root for A-10 teams such as UMASS or Dayton? Or, are you a fan of Arizona State, Virginia Tech, Ole Miss or Illinois State and feel your team was robbed?  

Does having your team in the NIT get you down?

Perk up and join me in rooting for a true Cinderella team in the 2008 NCAA basketball tournament - The Baylor Bears.

It was absolutely insane for the CBS Selection Show to wait until the last team listed to show the name of Baylor. Not only because they were a bubble team, competing against most of the above teams for the last spot, but because of what the Baylor Bears basketball team has accomplished since the summer of 2003.

In June 2003, Patrick Dennehy, a member of the Baylor basketball team was shot and killed by a former teammate, Carlton Dotson. After repeated hearings about his sanity, Dotson pled guilty to the murder in June 2005.

During the murder investigation, many scandals surfaced around the Baylor basketball program and head coach Dave Bliss.

In short, Bliss paid tuition money for several players, including Dennehy, tried to convince his team to lie to investigators about Dennehy and hid drug use among its players. After all this Bliss was never charged with any crimes and cannot coach college basketball for ten years. Bliss also had many problems when head coach at SMU literally having cash payments made to players.

What happened to the hoops program was even worse. Self imposed sanctions were not enough for the NCAA, which reduced scholarships, reduced recruiting violations and eliminated non-conference play for a full season.

Also, every member of that team was given their outright release, free to transfer to any school without sitting out a season. Stalwarts Lawrence Roberts transferred to Mississippi State and John Lucas III went to Oklahoma State. Roberts was first team All-American in 2004 and Lucas led the Cowboys to the Final Four. In all, five players eventually transferred and one recruit who had signed a Letter of Intent decided not to attend the school.

You can imagine the job a new coach would have in recruitment and building a program.

Enter Scott Drew, head coach at Valparaiso University, who took over the Baylor program in August 2003. Because of the NCAA and self-imposed sanctions, the 2005 Bears were hindered by only having 7 scholarship players and recorded only one win in conference play. Drew, son of former Valparaiso coach Homer Drew, was able to put together a 2005 signing class ranked No. 7 nationally. During his first three seasons at the helm, Baylor won only 21 games, an equal number of wins by the current team. This is an amazing transformation, especially when the head coach never even played a single game of varsity high school or college basketball!

When the Bears play the Purdue Boilermakers on Thursday in the first round of the NCAA tournament, consider how far this team has come and root for Coach Scott Drew and the Baylor Bears. Current seniors Aaron Bruce and Mamdou Diene were Drew's first two recruits, but it was sophomore Tweety Carter and freshman LaceDarius Dunn who really helped put the program on the map. Dunn is the first McDonald's All-American recruited by Drew. Together these players helped turn the program around and an at-large bid to the big dance.

So, if you haven't brought a lady to the 2008 dance, feel free to cut in with the Baylor Bears. In the end, we might just end up with that glass slipper.