So I was seated at the press table along the baseline at Franklin & Marshall's Mayser Center when this New Jersey City University player suddenly comes barreling directly at me, plows into the table and into my metal folding chair, which does a wheelie and, just for an instant, seems ready to tumble over backward with me in it. This guy was 6-2, 275, with a shaved head and a little Charles Barkley thing going. "I'm sorry," he whispered, unnecessarily, before chasing the play.

I'm sorry? If that was Dennis Rodman, I might have a gunshot wound. I told the guy next to me that the kid actually apologized. He leaned over and quietly said, "Division III."

The point is that D-III could be D-P, with P standing for Perspective.

That's one reason you should love it. Here are some others.

* The players. They almost never play on TV or before a large crowd. Nobody's on scholarship, and nobody's going to be a pro. Remember that defunct pro summer league for players 6-4 and under? Its spirit lives in Division III, the home of 6-5 post players and 6-2 power forwards and 5-9 shooting guards. They really are playing because they love it.

* The game. If big-time hoops is a vertical game, Division III is a horizontal one. Since they generally can't get shots by going over you, Division III teams get them by going around you. And since there is not generally Jameer Nelson-level quickness, going around you involves team play, cutting and screening and grinding. Boy, do these guys run their stuff. Division III is as hard to officiate as Division I, because there's so much going on off the ball. If you're anything like a basketball purist, it's fun to watch.

* The tournament. In Division I, there are about 320 teams, and 64 make the tournament field. In Division III, there are 430 teams, and 48 make it. And in Division III, there are just 12 at-large berths, six of which go to independents. No such thing as going 8-8, finishing fifth in a power conference and limping into the tournament. If you want to dance, you had better win your league. Think that throws some heat on the conference tournaments?

* Academics. The defending national champ and current No. 1 team in the country is Williams College, where 84 percent of the students came from the top 10 percent of their high-school class, and the average SAT score is 1,365. The one team that beat Williams this year is Amherst, where 86 percent of the undergrads had a class rank in the 90th percentile or above and, absurdly, the SATs of the middle 50 percent of the current freshman class ranged from 1,350 to 1,560. That's the middle 50 percent. It means that a quarter of Amherst frosh have SATs over 1,560. Perfect is 1,600. And schools like this get zero money and less than zero prestige from sports, so the coach is getting zero help from the admissions department. Talk about your Grand Experiments.

* Roots. Division III is a respected branch of Dr. Naismith's vast family tree -- you'll never see Maryland or Gonzaga run the flex offense better than Elizabethtown does it. You'll never see North Carolina get more mileage out of the Carolina freelance, high-low passing game than Franklin & Marshall. Princeton doesn't even run Princeton anymore, but Gettysburg does. Gettysburg coach George Petrie is the brother of Geoff Petrie, who runs the Sacramento Kings, maybe the best basketball team on Earth. The Kings sometimes run Princeton. On the Kings' bench sits Yoda-like assistant coach Pete Carrill, who invented Princeton.

* Nicknames. Division III school names tend to be unpoetic references to dead guys or places, immortal or obscure, tied together with hyphens or ampersands: Gwynedd-Mercy. Randolph-Macon. Hampden-Sydney. Johnson and Wales. Pomona-Pitzer. Washington & Lee. Franklin & Marshall. But the nicknames! Gothic Knights. Lord Jeffs. Ephs. Golden Gusties. Sagehens. Diplomats. The first game at Franklin & Marshall Friday was the Gothic Knights vs. the Lord Jeffs, which sounds like it should have come with a damsel and drawbridge.

The absolute best thing about Division III is a remarkable sense of gratitude and grace, in victory and defeat. For example, Hampden-Sydney was a senior-dominated team that had been to the national finals last year. Despite a 24-5 record and No. 6 national ranking, it had to beat Elizabethtown in the first round of this year's tournament just for the right to play at Franklin & Marshall in the second round. In that game, Hampden-Sydney came back from 16 points down and lost by two at the buzzer when a jumper by Jeff Monroe, an All-American who scored 30 points, just rolled off the rim. "I'm just thankful to have had the opportunity," Monroe said later, smiling. That seems utterly and amazingly typical. Teammate Jason Holman, who like Monroe had just played his last college game, said, "I've been a part of three (conference) championships and a Final Four. We're all healthy. How can I be anything other than thankful?"

He's not the only one.