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This was Selection Sunday at McCarran Airport: A foursome of men wearing red ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ T-shirts watched the TV screen at Corcoran’s Irish Pub with an almost hypnotic connection.

And then bedlam.

“N´Ç´Ç´Ç´Ç´Ç´Ç´Ç!â€�

One of the men rushed to Gate C2 where maybe 50 ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ basketball fans awaited a Southwest Airlines flight to Phoenix.

“We’re going to Boise!� he yelled to no one and everyone. “We got (not a nice word).�

Someone asked if “that other team got in?�

“Who cares! We got (censored)!�

The irony of all this is that Lute Olson was sitting in the group of Phoenix-bound passengers. If there is one man on the basketball planet who has seen it all on Selection Sunday, it is Lute Olson.

He smiled and shrugged.

“You just make the best of it,� he said.

Had Olson not been exhausted from a long delay and getting rebooked to Phoenix, he might’ve stood and calmed the crowd of agitated Wildcat fans.

Olson’s 1997 national championship team was a No. 4 seed. It was sent to Memphis and to Birmingham, Alabama, looking every bit a sacrificial victim to No. 1 Kansas or No. 2 Duke. As it turned out, the UA’s most difficult game before the Final Four was probably South Alabama or College of Charleston, not Kansas at all. Duke? The Blue Devils went home in tears, shocked by the Providence Friars.

No wonder Olson didn’t rush to judgment. It’s March. You never know.

The NCAA Selection Committee and the nation’s many bracketologists warned for months that Sunday might be bloody. The selection formula was tweaked for what seemed like the 25th time in 25 years, but this time there was a dire warning like few before it:

Conference records don’t matter.

If you dine on Akrons and Lehighs in the nonconference schedule, you will pay the price.

The Pac-12’s second-best team, USC, didn’t make it. Why? The Trojans played Akron, Lehigh, Princeton (and lost), North Dakota State, Santa Clara, UC Santa Barbara and some other unidentifiable teams.

This is part of the reason ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ is a No. 4 seed and not, befitting its talent, a No. 2 or No. 3. The Wildcats have diminished their non-conference schedule the last five years. So they were sentenced to basketball’s geographical hell: Boise, Idaho.

Imagine the hundreds of UA fans who had bought advance tickets to the San Diego regional this week. Those cozy, close-to-home first-weekend stayovers are no longer automatic. The NCAA once spoke loudly of the importance of keeping teams close to home.

Yet on Sunday it filled the San Diego bracket with two teams from South Carolina and others from Alabama, Kansas, West Virginia, and wherever Murray State and Marshall are located.

The “home team� in San Diego will be New Mexico State. That’s a 683-mile drive each way.

The Big Red Machine will not march at the Viejas Arena. Instead, the few UA fans who make it to Boise will surely be drowned out by the Zags. Distance from Spokane to Boise: 420 miles.

Gonzaga plays in the most ridiculously easy conference west of the Ivy League, but it was wise enough to play Florida, Ohio State, Villanova, Washington, Creighton and Texas.

Thus, the Zags will have a quasi-home-court advantage in Boise.

Historically, Boise has been good to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. It routed Robert Morris and Clemson there as the No. 1 seed in 1989. In 2005, the third-seeded Wildcats toyed with Utah State and Alabama-Birmingham in Boise, benefiting from UAB’s upset over LSU on a night some guy named Marvett McDonald outplayed LSU’s touted Glen “Big Babyâ€� Davis.

Anyone who has followed ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ basketball the last 20 years can fill a book with similar unexpected twists.

The last time Olson (and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥) reached the Final Four, 2001, the Wildcats lost four starters: Gilbert Arenas, Michael Wright, Luke Walton and Loren Woods. Some feared Olson’s 2001-02 season would break the school’s streak of 17 consecutive NCAA appearances.

The Pac-10 was loaded: Oregon and all four California schools easily made it into the ’02 NCAA Tournament.

But rather than dodge what looked to be some early-season growing pains, Olson scheduled No. 2 Maryland, No. 5 Illinois, No. 8 Kansas, No. 23 Michigan State, No. 24 Texas and No. 25 UConn.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ finished 12-6, in a four-way scrum for second place in the Pac-10, but its strength of schedule impressed the NCAA selection committee so much that the 22-9 Wildcats earned a No. 3 seed in Albuquerque.

On Selection Sunday, every basketball fan in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ filled out a bracket without giving a second thought to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ advancing to the Sweet 16 against second-seeded Oklahoma. All it would take were sure victories against UC Santa Barbara and Wyoming.

Right.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ had to rally in the final 45 seconds to beat UCSB 86-81, when some unknown 3-point marksman, Mark Hull, buried eight 3-pointers. Two nights later, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and Wyoming went to the final minute, neck and neck.

The Wildcats survived and won 68-60, but it was a reminder — then and now — how the Road to the Final Four is unnerving and uncertain.

This week it won’t be UCSB or Wyoming; it’ll be the Buffalo Bulls. They have never won an NCAA Tournament game. It will be the game of their young lives.

Kentucky can wait.

If Olson had given one sentence of advice Sunday it would’ve been this: Beat Buffalo. All the rest is bull.