The Providence College Friars and the University of Rhode Island Rams still have a chance to go to the NCAA Tournament.

Not that either of them deserves one.

Why in the name of James Naismith should a team that lost twice as many games as it won in conference play (the 6-12, 12th-place Friars); or a team that lost seven of its last nine league games, including its final four home games, and finished under .500 (that would be the 7-9, ninth-place Rams) have a shot -- as remote as it may be -- at playing for the national championship?

Shouldn't the regular season mean something?

Why should what happens in one weekend wipe out two months of conference play?

I love March Madness. But these ridiculous conference tournaments drive me crazy.

It is a never-ending source of irritation and frustration to me that the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament does not go to the regular-season conference champion.

It doesn't make any sense that Georgetown, which finished atop the Big East with a 15-3 mark during a grueling conference campaign, or the Xavier Musketeers, whose 14-2 record was three games better than any other team in the A-10, shouldn't be rewarded for their season-long excellence with automatic bids.

Ah-hah, you say, those teams are sure to be invited to the Big Dance, no matter what happens in the conference tournament.

Ah-hah, I say, that's exactly the problem.

Admittedly, it's not anywhere as big a problem in conferences like the Big East and the A-10, although it's possible that a team that finished in the lower half of the league standings could get hot and land an NCAA berth.

The real problem is in the smaller conferences, which aren't likely to get multiple bids to the Big Dance.

Suppose Davidson, which went 20-0 in the Southern Conference, where the next-best record was 13-7, had lost in the conference tourney? I'd hope that the Wildcats, who lost by just four points to North Carolina, and by only six to Duke, early in the season, would have gotten an at-large bid. But that would have meant two bids for a conference that should get only one.

Fortunately, Davidson eliminated Elon in the finals Monday night. But that wasn't the case in the West Coast Conference, where regular-season champ Gonzaga, 13-1 in league play, ranked 20th nationally, was upset in the finals by the University of San Diego, which finished third, behind the Zags and St. Mary's, which also is likely to get an NCAA bid.

And what to do with VCU, which won the Colonial Athletic Conference by three games with a 15-3 record, but was upset in the conference tourney semifinals by fifth-place William & Mary (10-8), which then lost in the finals to league runner-up George Mason (12-6)?

These situations crop up every year, but few people seem to care.

Certainly, the administrators of the schools and conferences whose complicity has created these sporting scams care much more about reaping money and television time than they do about maintaining the integrity of the regular season.

There's no reason the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee couldn't have picked its 65 teams last Sunday, rather than next Sunday, strictly on the basis of regular-season records.

It's not that conference tournaments are offensive in and of themselves. What's troublesome is that the winner of the tourney, rather than the regular-season champion, gets the conference's automatic NCAA bid. Which is, sad to say, what the honchos at NCAA headquarters have insisted. The rule is, if you have a tournament, then the winner goes to the Big Dance, and who cares about which team was best during the regular season?

So let's hear it for the Ivy League - the only conference with the integrity to disdain having a postseason tournament determine its representative in the NCAA tourney.

Would anyone -- including runner-up Brown, which lost twice to undefeated (14-0) Cornell -- argue that the Big Red are undeserving of what undoubtedly would be the only bid the league would receive? Would it be right, if the Ivies held a postseason tourney, if the 11-3 Bears -- or the likes of Penn, Columbia or Yale -- upended Cornell on an "off" night for the Big Red, depriving them of a bid they'd earned as a result of a stellar season?

Yet arguing against having conference tournaments is the basketball equivalent of tilting at windmills.

Like greed, which is the primary motivation behind them, they'll always be with us.

It isn't right, but that's the way it is.