With regular seasons winding down, college basketball conferences around the country are busily seeding teams for their conference tournaments. These tournaments embody the American Dream in that they give nearly every team in the conference one last shot to make the Big Show. For small and mid-major conferences that may get only one invite to the field of 64, the conference tournament actually supplants the regular season by giving the conference's automatic NCAA bid to the tournament champion rather than the regular-season champion.

In the next ten days, Bay Area hoops fans will have plenty to watch.

West Coast Conference (WCC) Men's Tournament
March 3-6, McCarthey Athletic Center, Spokane, WA
Six seed Santa Clara plays Friday night against seven seed Portland; USF and Saint Mary's have byes into the quarterfinals on Saturday. ESPN2 will televise the tournament semifinal games on Sunday (5:00 PM, 7:00 PM); ESPN the original will televise Monday's 6:00 PM finals. The only chance any of the local teams have for the postseason is to win this tournament and get the WCC's automatic NCAA bid. An underdog winner for this tournament seems unlikely to happen in McCarthey Center though, home to the conference 800-pound gorilla, the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

WCC Women's Tournament
March 2-5, McCarthey Athletic Center, Spokane, WA
Santa Clara, the number one seed, plays eight seed Portland at 6:00 PM on Thursday. The WCC might get two bids this year, but the Broncos should approach this tournament as do or die.

Pac-10 Men's Tournament
March 8-11, Staples Center, Los Angeles, CA
The conference season is not yet over, so seeds are to be determined. At 17-9, with at least three games left to play, Cal is on the bubble to get an at-large bid to the NCAAs, but is probably in. Wins this year against Arizona, UCLA, and Washington look really good, but da Bars beat nobody of nonconference consequence. Stanford needs to run the table. Fox Sports Network (FSN) will televise all tournament games except for the championship game, which will be covered by CBS.

Pac-10 Women's Tournament
March 3-6, HP Pavilion, San Jose, CA
No surprise, 14th-ranked Stanford comes in as the tournament's number one seed. Stanford and Cal both play on Saturday, March 4. FSN will be covering both the semifinals and the finals. Tickets are still available.

Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Men's Tournament
March 7-11, Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV
The only Bay Area horse in this race is more like a nag, maybe. At 6-22, San Jose State must fend off 4-23 Idaho over the last week of the season for the ninth and final seed in the WAC tournament. We're not going to spend too much time worrying about which region the NCAA selection committee might send the Spartans to if they pull off the improbable next week.

WAC Women's Tournament
March 7-11, Lawlor Events Center, Reno, NV
The Spartan women are definitely in the WAC tournament, but they'll probably have more luck on Virginia Street than in the Lawlor Center.

Elsewhere.

With the San Francisco State men's and women's teams in total disarray and no conference tournament in the California Collegiate Athletic Association, the Division II championships are just a footnote this year.

Down in D3, it's a similar story for both sexes of Banana Slugs. Playing as independents and carrying winning percentages that look more like Bush's approval ratings, UC Santa Cruz will not be taking the Road to Salem for the Division III championships.