John Feinstein's intensively reported new book, The Last Amateurs: Playing for Glory and Honor in Division I College Basketball (Little, Brown, $24.95), may not feature as many big names as his best sellers about Bobby Knight (''A Season on the Brink'') and Tiger Woods (''The Majors''). (That is, unless you consider Lafayette's Stefan Ciosici and Navy's Sitapha Savane big names.) Yet the Washington Post columnist and NPR commentator makes you care about the little known players of the Patriot League, a group of East Coast schools that also includes Holy Cross, Lehigh, Colgate, Bucknell, and Army. Most of these kids have a better shot at graduating to an M.B.A. than the NBA, because unlike the jocks at many universities, they actually go to class, even on game days. By the time two teams reach the conference final, with the league's sole bid for the NCAA tournament on the line, you'll be glued to the page -- and glad to learn that the road to the Final Four doesn't always have to be a March to Madness.