Epps: No tourney game should be at 9 a.m.

A woman rests her head on her hand, white hair peeking through her fingers, and closes her eyes.

A cheerleader shakes her hips and head as she yawns before her team emerges from the tunnel, looking like a driver trying to stay awake on the road.

Another woman uses scissors to slice through construction paper, a project for a children’s Sunday school class.

It’s a long day, folks.

This is the marquee event for the Southern Conference, and it looks like people are auditioning for one of those Diet Pepsi yawning commercials. It’s 9 a.m. inside McKenzie Arena on Friday, and if you rub your sleepy eyes long enough, you can see that basketball this early in the morning is a worse idea than peach baskets with no hole in the bottom.

Sure, there are the Southern Conference basketball tournament lifers who took Friday off to watch, in part, the Samford and UNC Greensboro women play at 9 a.m. There are Paul and Phyllis Rouse in Section 124. Paul took the day off from his job driving a CARTA bus.

And there’s Steve Schild, who has attended every Southern Conference tourney since 1985. (I totally understand skipping work to see basketball. I used to sneak a tiny TV into high school to watch March Madness games. Needless to say, there was not a girl in sight during my high school career.)

But this isn’t working. The coaches say it’s not working. The commissioner says he’s not convinced.

Tournament matchups, the most important games of these players’ careers, should not be played at 9 a.m. in front of bleary-eyed fans. UNC Greensboro played past 7 Thursday night, went out to eat, woke up at 5:45 a.m., prepared for Samford, played at 9 a.m. and, of course, lost.

“It’s a terrible game to play,” UNCG coach Lynne Agee said. “I would hope that things will change, because playing at 9 a.m. after getting 10 hours of rest is unreasonable. It’s a lot to ask.”

The coaches wanted this setup, to put all the teams under the same roof, but basketball just shouldn’t come before breakfast. (I do realize some of the older folks start their day early. I once took my grandmother to dinner on my lunch break.)

“I think some of the coaches are realizing this may not be the best experience for their players,” said league commissioner John Iamarino, sitting courtside during the Appalachian State-Georgia Southern men’s game. “We’re looking at other options. It may be the best we can do, and if so, I hope people understand. But I think you’ve constantly got to evaluate what you do, and I’m not convinced this is the best experience we can give people.

“We want to do everything we can to make this a good experience for the players and the coaches, and I’m not sure we’re succeeding with 9 a.m. starts.”

It was so early that Samford’s Emily London, riding a streak of 54 straight made free throws, missed twice in the second half. I also had this exchange with a concession-stand worker at halftime of the UNCG-Samford game, around 9:40 a.m.:

“Have you sold any hot dogs?”

He: (Laughing) “Yeah. We actually sold one.”

Everyone within listening range: “Ewww.”

So what’s the answer? The addition of Samford makes a resolution difficult. Iamarino said playing games at Maclellan Gym wasn’t an option.

“There’s a bunch of negatives with it,” he said. “Right away, it kind of gives the mpression that one facility is automatically lesser than the other. It causes us to have to split our staff to service both gyms. You can’t watch the men and women at the same time. You split your bands and you split your support. I don’t think that’s a solution we want to go back to.”

Starting the tournament a day early is one solution, but that adds to the expenses in an economy that’s officially not awesome (that’s a technical economic term). There are no easy answers.

Samford’s players were not among the yawners. Coach Mike Morris made his players practice at 6:15 a.m. Birmingham time to prepare for the early start. They got up at 5:30 a.m. (4:30 on their body clocks) for Friday’s game. Our own David Uchiyama was probably just getting home. Brutal.

“I don’t get up until 8 our time,” said forward Savannah Hill, from Elora, “so 4:30 was a bit of a change.”

The game ended at around 10:45. Samford’s players celebrated their win and did interviews. I broke for lunch. They broke for dinner.