I was curious about the structure of the tournament given that we have 2 additional teams in the conference (well, for the next two years), making a total of 11.
The Thursday game is 10 seed vs. 11 seed. What’s the point? I’d rather see the Thursday games as 10 seed vs 7 seed and 8 seed vs. 9 seed (like it was when BYU was in the conference). Does anyone really think the last place team has any shot at winning the tourney?
I’d prefer to have the final game on Monday night rather Tuesday night, which would be possible if 10 vs 11 game didn’t happen.
If they don’t want to rent the venue out for an extra day, I’d rather the league just not invite the last place team to the tournament……there’s nothing saying every team has to participate in the conference tournament.
There’s also no rest day between the quarters and semis anymore like previous years. Which means we probably would need to win 3 games in 3 days to make the tournament. Of course, if this team plays the way it’s capable of before the tournament…then that wouldn’t be necessary
You’re both right. There’s nothing requiring a conference to include all teams in their conference tourney.
It’s up to each conference to determine their own league tourney format and how they select their NCAA tourney autobid. They could play a tourney of Ro Sham Bo to determine their autobid if they wanted.
I believe the Ivy League’s tourney only includes their top 4 teams and for years they had no tourney at all w/ their regular season champ getting their autobid. And not so long ago, when the Big Sky had 9 teams, the 9th place team didn’t quality for their tourney. I’m sure there are other examples.
And reminder that GCU and Seattle join for 2025/26 so the WCC will have 13 teams next season and thus yet another new/different tourney format. And then down to 10 teams again for 2026/27 with GU, WSU and OSU departing and assuming no other changes to the league make-up in that timeframe (certainly not a guarantee). Lots of speculation and rumors of GCU heading to the PAC-12…which would be perfectly fine with me, in fact preferred.
Also, one thing to clarify, the WCC is finally going back to games on Sunday. Even though BYU left in 2023, last year’s tournament still had a day off on Sunday. With 11 teams in the conference (and all getting a berth into the tourney), we will now see 6 straight days of tournament games.
We are currently at 12-6 overall, and 4-1 in conference. With our remaining schedule, I’m not convinced we can finish better than 8-5 the rest of the way. Can we get a 3rd or 4th seed at 12-6? And does it really matter if we just get steamrolled by a 1 or 2 seed?
Not exactly the end-all-be-all, but here’s that link shared a couple weeks ago that does simulations of projected wins and order of finish for the conference:
After the last couple of wins, SCU now has a projected 49% chance of finishing 3rd or better and roughly a 75% chance of finishing 4th or better.
The unbalanced schedules make all of this a bit hard to project. But beating USF and Oregon State, plus OSU and Wazzu both taking losses to teams likely out of the running for top-5 spots, puts SCU in the driver’s seat for a top-4 finish. Realistically, though, the teams that finish 1-3 are probably going to be defined by holding serve against Pepperdine, LMU, Portland, USD, and Pacific as much as how they do against the better squads. Over the past 3 seasons, USF and SCU have finished third and fourth and the difference has always been losses to the bottom half of the conference.
