This NCAA Tournament is said to be dangerously low on star power. Thirty years after Magic and Bird changed the game in every literal and figurative way, people keep talking about a tournament lacking in transcendent stars.

Not enough Mayos and Beasleys, Odens and Durants, Hurleys and Laettners, Jordans and Ewings. There’s no Dynamic Duo, never mind a Fab Five. America’s most intriguing player — Stephen Curry of Davidson — was busy firing away in the NIT.

Yet this remains the perfect time to focus on what college basketball’s jamboree is rather than what it is not. The tournament is still the best postseason event in sports.

You watched David Wright save the Americans from a sudden WBC death Tuesday night? The NCAA Tournament offers a delirious made-in-Williamsport celebration a “dogpile” Wright kept calling it every hour on the hour.

A devoted sports fan such as Wright knows that Bryce Drew of Valparaiso, and Tate George of UConn, and Tyus Edney of UCLA, and Christian Laettner of Duke are among the many shooting stars who had been there, done that.

The tournament never disappoints. Out of nowhere, 20 years ago, No. 16 Princeton was one foul call away from knocking No. 1 Georgetown out of the March Madness sky.

Even in defeat, Pete Carril was the founding father of the first-round shocker. His final victory — he won more than 500 games without awarding a single scholarship along the way — came on a 1996 night inside the state that gave birth to “Hoosiers,” of course.

In Indianapolis, Carril’s Tigers ran a perfect back-door cut to beat UCLA, the defending national champs. “Maybe if we play UCLA 100 times,” Carril said afterward, “they win 99 times. But tonight we did.”

The possibilities make people watch. People who otherwise couldn’t distinguish a pick-and-roll from an egg roll.

They fill out their brackets and wait to see if another George Mason can make a breathless run to the Final Four. They wait to see if another Gonzaga can grow a program from an underdog to an overdog.

They wait to see if another coach comes along in Jimmy V style and ends up running around the court in a frantic search for a hug.

The NCAA basketball tournament is more exciting than the NFL playoffs, baseball’s October and the endless NBA and NHL postseasons. It’s more exciting than the NCAA football tournament, too, because the NCAA doesn’t have one.

And even if the NCAA did, football isn’t half as easy on the long shots as basketball. Boise State over Oklahoma is the BCS exception.

Bucknell over Kansas feels like the NCAA Tournament rule.

No, this tournament isn’t promising anything resembling Magic-Bird from 1979, an event brilliantly captured by Seth Davis in his new book, “When March Went Mad”. But somehow, some way, the 2009 edition will be a blast all the same.

You want to talk about something that’s a downer? Something that stinks? The economy, the bailouts and the executive bonuses paid from taxpayer pockets all qualify.

Even without star power, the NCAA Tournament never will.