Northwestern State came close to being the talk of the 42nd Outrigger Hotels Rainbow Classic last night.

Instead, its coach, Mike McConathy, probably should be.

Had the Demons emerged with the upset of Iowa State — as they probably should have — they would have rightly been heralded as the Cinderella of this eight-team field. They would have been the Whodaguys from the little school in Natchitoches, La. playing Colorado State for the title tonight.

That this potential Christmas tale got sidetracked in a controversial 81-77 double-overtime loss to the Cyclones, consigning the Demons to playing Hawai'i for the consolation title at 5 p.m., hardly diminishes their visit here. Indeed, in some ways how McConathy dealt with an inadvertent error by the official scorekeeper that gave the Cyclones an unwarranted second-half point makes the whole thing all the more remarkable.

When Iowa State's Curtis Stinson missed his first of two free-throw opportunities with 10 minutes, 27 seconds left, he was mistakenly credited with the point.

A Northwestern State assistant coach briefly questioned the validity of the posted score but was waved off. Only several minutes later, well past the two deadball cutoff for a reversal, was the issue examined in more detail and it was determined that Iowa State was, in fact, gifted a point, a UH spokesman said.

At that point in a pressurized game with no further recourse, if there was ever a coach on the Stan Sheriff Center court that had cause to scream and stomp, it was McConathy. If anybody could have license to whine to high heaven about being robbed by fate or gone into volcanic eruption, he was the guy.

Yet, in a refreshing reversal from the kind of sideline etiquette we've become used to seeing, McConathy did none of the above.

He accepted what he termed, "the unfortunate situation" and said, "there was nothing I could do so why not move forward?"

Iowa State's Wayne Morgan marveled: "You know what? Their coach is probably one of the most classy guys I've ever seen because he didn't argue and he didn't fight," Morgan said. "He said, 'OK, it is done. Let's play the game.' I don't know if I could have been that ... magnanimous."

Anybody want to imagine the chair toss record Bob Knight might have set in similar circumstances?

Afterward, given time to fully absorb the significance of the opportunity that had eluded the Demons, McConathy refused to point fingers, instead falling back on life's-a-box-of-chocolates philosophy. "Life's like that, sometimes," he said. "If we make our free throws (Northwestern hit 59 percent) or don't turn it over as much (20 times), then we still win."

McConathy might not have got the victory he and the Demons had their hearts set on. But they put the accent on "class" in the Rainbow Classic.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.