Which would you rather have?

kjjson · Post by **kjjson** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 2:28 pm

Would you prefer to win this weekend and win the regular season championship but lose the tournament, or lose this weekend and then beat them in the championship game? I know that this is not the preferred way, but just wondering if the two scenarios, which would be better for our tournament seeding/ranking, confidence, etc.

Post by **Gunk** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 2:49 pm

Regular season champions. That's what I prefer.

nuk13 · Post by **nuk13** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:00 pm

My first choice would be to meet them in the ncaa tournament when we were the only teams left.

byutx · Post by **byutx** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:06 pm

Until the tournament leaves Vegas, we're going to need to win regular season championships-something we can control- because we're not going to win the tournament-something we have very little control of. Unless an opponent knocks UNLV off for us, we're not going to win the tournament for a long, long time. Maybe that explains UNLV's recent skid. They're already practicing for us. Maybe they're hoping to fall to the 8/9 spot

gmj81 · Post by **gmj81** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:32 pm

Home losses don't ever look good. Especially when you are a fringe top 10 team. I'd much rather than win on Saturday and lose in Vegas. And we've already won enough visitor/neutral site games to prove we are a good road team.

Besides, the conference tournaments seldom do much more than decide that conference's AQ bid. If you haven't done anything prior to that point, even winning the tourney isn't going to give you much credibility. And just meeting New Mexico (which would mean we'd made the finals) would be enough to not lose any ground from being MWC regular season champs.

GolfDiveNCougs · Post by **GolfDiveNCougs** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:35 pm

byutx wrote:Until the tournament leaves Vegas, we're going to need to win regular season championships-something we can control- because we're not going to win the tournament-something we have very little control of. Unless an opponent knocks UNLV off for us, we're not going to win the tournament for a long, long time. Maybe that explains UNLV's recent skid. They're already practicing for us. Maybe they're hoping to fall to the 8/9 spot

Keep in mind, though, it isn't just Vegas that keeps us from winning the tourney. They didn't make it out of the 1st round last year. Granted, case could be made that they were just assuming they'd win the first game due to home court, and prepping for us, but that's conjecture. Point is, though, no matter who we play, it's got to be OUR game. That's the reason we didn't beat SD last year.

All that said, I do agree that UNLV has adopted the Ute Football mentality... get up for BYU, they make or break the season. So what if you drop a few games you shouldn't, as long as you take BYU down. Then they go shooting their mouths off about how much better they must be because of their record against us, when we've won multiple conference championships, and they've got exactly SQUAT. Yup. SUUURE you're better. Scrimmage 25 games just for our 2 - 3 matchups a year, yeah, that's gets you more wins than expected against a superior program, but to the detriment of your own team and conference.

Schmoe · Post by **Schmoe** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:58 am

It IS, absolutely IS Vegas that keeps us from winning the tourney. NOT UNLV, but Vegas.

bigbluepuma · Post by **bigbluepuma** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:13 pm

We'll win this year!

EM_Puma · Post by **EM_Puma** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 7:07 pm

To me, that's a no-brainer question. Win now. The impression that the selection committee will have in my belief will be set going into the various conference tournaments and having won the MWC regular season (of course that includes wins over SDSU and Utah this Wednesday and next) will be more lasting than what happened a day or so before selection Sunday because the thought would be that playing NM again in the tournament would mean that we had already won two MWC tournament games. That has to be a better position because we're a lock for the tournament already and we're looking only at seeding at this point.

CougarCorner