The Fresno Regional finished the way it began, more fantastic basketball with not nearly enough witnesses.

Barely 3,000 watched LSU beat Connecticut 73-50 Monday night at the Save Mart Center. A team qualified for the Final Four in Fresno and more of you probably watched Nick-@-Nite reruns.

So no, it wasn't nearly enough. They, whoever they are, will say it was one of the worst-attended regionals in NCAA Tournament history. But it's hard to blame you. If you support Fresno State football and basketball, and you make a donation to the athletic department like they say any non-Communist should, then it's this time of year you start to think, "I've spent all the sports-entertainment cash I'd allotted ... plus $10,000."

Another $100 per game for a family of four to watch women's teams from the East Coast probably seems like a good place to make budget cuts. Which is a shame, because there was so much to see this weekend.

Put it this way, there is a high school girls basketball coach in Westfield, N.Y., whose players work concession stands so they can go to a women's NCAA regional every year.

This year Rich Morrison chose Fresno, and not because of its accessibility from western New York. (Their travel itinerary? Drive an hour to Buffalo. Fly from Buffalo to JFK in New York City. Fly from JFK to San Francisco. Drive three hours to Fresno.)

They will do the reverse trip Wednesday. "We could only miss two days of school," said sophomore Sarah Myers, with a look you would normally save for a weekend homework assignment.

They did indeed come to the right place. They saw what might have been North Carolina State coach Kay Yow's last game. Her players huddled around her in timeouts, their hands resting on her shoulders. "Together," they said in unison, and went back out to play.

Their game Saturday was proof that the team that "wants it more" does not always win.

Her players sobbed in the news conference, trying to explain how amazing Yow is, how motivational it was to play for a coach fighting Stage 4 breast cancer.

"My reaction is, that's what coaching is all about," she said.

She talked about her six seniors who will all graduate in May.

"Yes, we want to win every game," she said, "but most important, we want to win as people. If we are a winner as a person, no matter what we do -- if we're a mother or a career person or a spouse -- we're at our best if we become a winner as a person."

Yow's assistant coaches came to watch her news conference, their eyes straight from a 15-round slugfest. The girls from western New York should have seen that.

They saw the LSU players celebrating as if they were in "Rocky IV," the movie the Tigers watched Sunday night.

That was one of the motivational ploys LSU coach Bob Starkey tried. The other was to give them a net to cut up, to simulate cutting down the nets if they beat UConn. Six-foot-6 center Sylvia Fowles put her strand of practice net inside her shoe for the game, which as you might expect, was pretty annoying.

Fowles eventually forgot about it, and dominated the game in about every way you can: 23 points, 15 rebounds, six blocks and three steals. Can you imagine if Fowles had gotten a blister from it, and couldn't play much in the second half? That would have gone down in the all-time coaching blunders.

The girls came all the way from New York to see the best women's players in basketball, to be motivated to be better basketball players, but watching Fowles smack UConn shots into the cheerleading section should have motivated them to become accountants.

The Fresno Regional had an underdog, too. Florida State came in as a No. 10 seed, and the people who saw its closed practice Saturday said they had never seen a looser team. They took half-court shots left-handed. They laughed and joked. They played a version of the dizzy bat race where they had to run around in circles and then try to shoot layups. Players fell down. It had to mean something good that they were so relaxed.

And then they got blown out by LSU.

Just more life lessons from the Fresno Regional: There are some days when it doesn't matter how relaxed you are, or how motivated you are, the opponent is better. And like Yow says, all you can do is be a winner as a person.

Hopefully the girls have room in a carry-on to take that back with them.