Welcome to the NCAA Division III women’s basketball tournament, where you’re only as good as your last obstructed-view seat.

Bates College currently resides in hoop heaven. Twenty-five wins. Unbeaten at home. Thumped Southern Maine by a stunning 25 points, Wesleyan by a weighty 35, University of Maine-Presque Isle by an ungodly 91.

Its reward is a Friday night ride to USM’s Hill Gymnasium. Bates faces the titanic task of tackling the state’s most time-honored program on its home floor in the NCAA’s Sweet 16, regular-season result be deviled.

On the fairness scale, it ranks right up there with that Old Testament icon of uprightness and perseverance, Job, being smitten with boils.

No offense to USM and coach Gary Fifield, who started winning 20 games every season back when Bates took women’s basketball as seriously as Barry Bonds might approach a Dale Carnegie course. The Huskies have earned the benefit of every imaginable doubt.

But this isn’t about history, tradition or which school has more maroon banners wallpapering its auditorium. Tournament basketball ought to be a what-have-you-done-for-me-this-week world. And when I think about what the Bobcats have accomplished and what little respect it garnered from the Division III committee, two ribald bleacher-creature chants about tool kits and elevators come to mind.

Hey, I understand why the game can’t be played at Bates. Too many butts, not enough bleachers. There’s more room for spectators in your basement.

Why doesn’t the NCAA at least pay lip service to neutral sites? Because it’s all about the Benjamins, baby.

Look at the Division I bracket that’ll be released this Sunday. Don’t think for a minute that Tennessee, Connecticut, Stanford and North Carolina won’t dress for their first two games in the comfort of their own locker rooms. Their cult following ensures brisk ticket sales.

Until two or three years ago, when the D-I committee grew a conscience and acquiesced to the ridiculousness of it all, one or two of those teams would have breezed to the Final Four without leaving campus.

It’s a not-so-subtle admission that women’s basketball can’t match the mass appeal of the men’s game, for which 18,000 junkies will show up in Ogden, Utah, to watch eight teams from parts unknown.

We know that isn’t true in Maine. Go to a women’s game at Bates, Bowdoin or USM. Take in a men’s game on a different night. Then tell me which atmosphere gives you more goose pimples.

Four hundred colleges and universities, roughly, play Division III basketball. If there’s not a gym on every corner, there’s one just off every Interstate exit ramp. Even while protecting its precious gate receipts, is the NCAA telling me the regionals couldn’t be played at the nearest neutral campus?

Hard for me to believe that Bowdoin isn’t fit to host the Bates-USM and Wesleyan-Springfield sectional. There’s room for more than 1,700 spectators without creating a fire hazard. It’s a 30-minute drive for Bobcats boosters and Huskies howlers.

As it stands, there will be no comparison between Bates and USM’s gameday routines Friday. Southern Maine can enjoy a leisurely team meal. With the 8 p.m. tip-off and the game within walking distance of their dormitory or apartment, players may choose to take a nap. Bates gets to take a bus.

Basketball arguably provides a greater built-in home court advantage than any other sport. One team is acclimated to the acoustic quirks, sight lines, dead spots in the floor, stiffness of the rims, you name it. The other team is on foreign soil.

Ask Emmanuel College, whose coach and players looked like they’d received a 90-minute glimpse of hell following their 83-64 loss at Bates last Saturday.

Bates deserves better. So does USM. So does all of women’s basketball.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].