The McNeese State basketball team is headed to Providence, Rhode Island, best known for being the county seat of Providence County and, I’m told, also for jumping the gun with its own Gaspee Affair a full year before Boston popularized costumed, defiant patriotism with its more celebrated Tea Party.

But, unless you want to woo your happy hour crowd with some trivia, none of that is terribly important now.

No, but Tuesday with the Cowboys inflight to New England for an NCAA Tournament date against Clemson on Thursday, my mind did keep wandering back to one of the great film classics of our time — speaking, of course, about “Airplane!”

Specifically, you’ll recall the pivotal scene in which Leslie Nielsen stands in the cockpit behind pilot Ted Striker and the autopilot (who should have won the Best Inflatable Actor Oscar) and implores them multiple times …

Good luck, we’re all counting on you.

That’s Will Wade and McNeese hoops at the throttle of a supposedly doomed airliner. The rest of Louisiana college basketball is played by the helpless, rag-tag passengers in the back.

Good luck, we’re all counting on you.

Or, to borrow a book title, “Can anybody around here play this game?”

Not very well, it turns out.

March Madness, indeed. In Louisiana it’s just more March Sadness.

For everybody except McNeese State University, that is. Its trip is well-earned, second consecutive year.

Good luck, we’re all counting on you.

After all, there’s no other Louisiana team to count on.

The Cowboys will be the Bayou State’s lone representative in the NCAA Tournament, aka, The Big Dance.

And that’s with a full dozen state teams at least attempting to play the sport.

And those 12 state teams are spread out among six conferences, all of which provide a suitable path.

It’s a disturbing trend. Last year there were two state entrants, with McNeese joined by Grambling State.

The year before that? Only one, Louisiana-Lafayette.

Granted, the state’s wannabes are, for the most part, located in what’s known in the trade as “one-bid conferences.” Translation: No matter what you do during the regular season, you still have to win your conference tournament or get summarily tossed to the curb.

It’s always dicey. No guarantees.

But what’s LSU’s excuse?

The Flagship Tigers reside in a 14-bid league, the mighty SEC.

Last year the Southeastern Conference had 14 members.

Even with “only” 16 teams available, that’s still an 87.5 percent chance to make it from the SEC.

And LSU didn’t come close. Closer than South Carolina, maybe, but not much. If the Tigers’ name even came up in the selection committee’s discussions, it was strictly for comic relief.

LSU seems cool with that. So far nobody has gotten fired over it.

For some odd reason, being a team in the bottom two of the SEC and not getting a bid to the NCAA Tournament, gets you an automatic bid to the NIT, aka, the National Irrelevant Tournament.

Yet both LSU (14-18) and South Carolina (12-20) turned down the NIT opportunity, both reportedly with straight faces.

Other than McNeese, which of course beat Lamar in the Southland Conference Tournament after dominating the regular season, no state team even made the final of a conference tournament.

No drama, just one dance.

UNO — under the cloud of a gambling probe — didn’t make the eight-team SLC Tournament field, which can happen when you go 4-27, 2-18.

Louisiana Tech was a six seed in Conference USA, but one and done. ULL was an 11 seed in the Sun Belt and eliminated 14 seed Louisiana-Monroe before checking out too, with an 18-point loss to Old Dominion.

Southern University won the SWAC regular season, but was upset in its conference tournament opener by Grambling, which in turn lost to Alabama State in the semifinals.

Give Tulane credit. The Green Wave made it to the semifinals of the American Athletic Tournament before losing a heartbreaker, 78-77, to eventual champion Memphis.

But we’re not handing out participation trophies here.

Thus, without adding to the pressure for One Shining Moment, let’s just say McNeese is carrying the hopes and dreams of an entire state, possibly all the pirogues at sea. There’s an entire nutty population which is — when not wondering if the crawfish will ever get any bigger — living vicariously through a team looking for its first-ever tournament victory.

Brackets may depend on it.

So …

Good luck, Cowboys, we’re all counting on you.
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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com