You want March Madness? Here you go: Say hello to No. 65.

Oh, they could be 64. They could go even higher, I guess, depending on how nutty the NCAA seeding committee feels on Sunday. But it doesn't matter, really, because this little school in Rock Hill, S.C., Winthrop, already rates as the best story that you haven't been reading a word about in this massive hoo-hah that goes as the walk-up to the greatest month on the college basketball calendar.

On Saturday in Roanoke, Va., the Winthrop Eagles beat Radford in overtime to win the Big South Conference tournament. For those scoring at home, the Big South Conference includes, well, Winthrop and Radford for sure, and Liberty, I think (it played in the tournament, so you'd certainly hope it's a conference member), and after that it might be time for a quick Internet search to obtain further details.

It was a great game played before a small crowd to establish the winner of a conference that isn't on the radar screen of your average fan. And, boy, if that doesn't just sell a program like Winthrop's completely short, I can't imagine what would.

The thing about the NCAA tournament is that it seems to comprise seven or eight little sports universes rolled into one big ball. The tournament is about Duke, of course, and it is about Stanford and Michigan State and North Carolina and Florida, and it's about who is on the bubble (and, you would think, how they got there). This year it might be about the Fresno State Tarkanians or Dick Bennett-less Wisconsin or, heaven help us, UCLA, and that's the beauty part -- you just don't know who ultimately will write the tournament's greatest lines.

But on some wholly different level, it's about a place like Rock Hill and a program like Winthrop, and a bunch of players you've never heard of, and a coach whom you might be close to becoming more familiar with.

Gregg Marshall is the coach, and he has now been at Winthrop for three seasons, and the Eagles, with a university population of 6,000, are making their third consecutive NCAA appearance. Here is what happened in Winthrop's last two NCAA first-round games: An 80-41 swamping by Auburn in 1999; a 74-50 flogging by Oklahoma in 2000.

And guess what? It couldn't matter less. Say what you want about the tournament's automatic-qualifier rules, Winthrop has played by them. It has earned everything it has received -- and never moreso than this year, when the Eagles just absolutely defied the odds to scrape their way back into position for another expected NCAA crushing by one of the big-time programs.

At the beginning of the season, Winthrop lost its best player and the preseason Big South player of the year, Greg Lewis, to a foot injury. Lewis never returned, and Marshall's team, thrown off its stride and suddenly relying on kids who were supposed to play supporting roles this year, struggled to push much above .500 through the schedule.

Then came the conference tournament, and those Winthrop miracles started happening again. The Eagles trailed Liberty by 16 points in Friday's semifinal game, but came all the way back to win in double-overtime. In the championship game, they trailed Radford 46-37 with 10 minutes left, but rode the 23-point, 10-rebound performance of a freshman, Tyrone Walker, to force overtime. They won it all with six seconds left in OT when one of Marshall's favorite players, Marcus Stewart, hit a spinning layup.

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And guess what? It couldn't matter less. Say what you want about the tournament's automatic-qualifier rules, Winthrop has played by them. It has earned everything it has received -- and never moreso than this year, when the Eagles just absolutely defied the odds to scrape their way back into position for another expected NCAA crushing by one of the big-time programs. ”

Not that Marshall was surprised. After all, he was wearing his new suit. In each of the last three years, the 38-year-old coach has been given a new suit for his birthday on Feb. 27, then worn it in the title game and coached a victory.

Marshall had his lucky stone. You don't know the lucky-stone story? A couple of years ago, a 12-year-old girl who has attended Marshall's basketball camps gave him a polished rock with the word "Faith" emblazoned on it. The coach had the stone in his pocket for each conference championship.

And then there was Marshall's 4-year-old son, Kellen, who raced excitedly up to his father in the Winthrop team's hotel lobby on the day of the title game to say, "Dad! The team that gets to 67 first is going to win today!"

Final score: Winthrop 67, Radford 65.

Greg Marshall is 60-29 in three seasons at Winthrop, and you know what that means: He'll be leaving Winthrop soon. It's an occupational hazard of being a small but successful college program: Most coaches want to do well there and then see where the road takes them. It's not personal, it's life.

The people at Winthrop understand. After last season's second straight NCAA appearance, the school's athletic director negotiated a pay raise for Marshall intended to keep him around for as long as possible. The raise was from $75,000 to $90,000. Not exactly Pitino money we're talking about here, is it?

The fans, they know the score. As Marshall stepped on the ladder to help cut down the nets after the Big South game on Saturday, the Eagles' supporters were chanting, "Four more years! Four more years!" But they know the truth.

The truth is that Winthrop is a really good but really small basketball program in a land of behemoths, and that even Gregg Marshall's best work there might well have produced a team here in 2001 that winds up appearing in the NCAA's "play-in" game between the Nos. 64 and 65 seeds next week in Dayton.

The truth, it is to say, is that programs like Winthrop's are operating in that weird parallel universe of the NCAA, the one that almost never catches the national fan's eye -- not even here in March, when there isn't supposed to be anything left unscrutinized. And the more you know about the Winthrops of the roster, the more you understand just what a loss that is for that national fan. It's a world within the world, all right -- and it sure looks like a cool place to be.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a web site at http://www.sacbee.com/.