nuk13 wrote:
If we can win our next game and Gonzaga can win theirs, the WCC should get a more fair shake next year. The committee will have a harder time giving us the straight arm.
I've followed the selection committee and their process extremely closely for the last several years, and I really don't think it matters next year what BYU or Gonzaga do in the NCAA or NIT this year. Gonzaga was an elite 8 team last year but barely got in this time by virtue of winning the autobid. They very easily could have been in the NIT otherwise. They didn't get a bump because of their tournament last year. Their 11 seed was reflective of this season. They did have a good schedule but they lost all those games. If close losses to Arizona and S. Methodist are wins then they're looking at more like a 7 seed. The win over SMC in the final was enough to bump them up to an 11. Otherwise they're most likely on the wrong side of the bubble, or one of the last two or so teams in.
Every year the committee has proven what it cares about, and it's only about beating good teams (as defined by the rpi) and your schedule (as defined by the rpi, with a special emphasis on the part of the schedule a team controls -- non-conference games). It's the reason BYU made the tournament last year and the year before. They can even be very forgiving about bad losses. We had killer non-conference schedules and had just enough decent wins to sneak in. But we wouldn't have without killing ourselves in the non-conference.
This year we didn't have that kind of schedule and didn't have the key wins. It really doesn't matter to the committee how inherently good a team appears to be on paper. It's all about who you beat and who you played. That's even more the case with the bubble teams. St. Mary's is a very good team. But they didn't challenge themselves much outside of the league What fans who don't follow this as closely have a hard time understanding is that they don't think in the same terms. They watch a team play and they formulate an opinion bout them based largely on "eye test" stuff. That's why even hard core BYU fans were surprised when we got into the tournament in 2015 and 2014. But for the committee it's more about inviting the teams that "deserve" it based on their on the court results and schedule and not which teams "look" like they have the best roster.
Mark Few was right on target with his comments. The problem is that the rest of the WCC are not really THAT bad. It's just that they mostly don't challenge themselves in their non-conference schedules and don't perform better before the conference games start, making Gonzaga's wins against them appear less impressive than they probably should, and any losses look worse than they should.
Basically, WCC teams outside of the top 3 don't give a crap about what the selection committee is going to think of their rpi or schedule. They figure their only shot is winning the tournament. They have a minor conference mentality that even the lower rung MWC teams didn't. Even Big West teams for crying out loud are better about this than most WCC teams are.
