Also noticed Gonzaga is only playing 14 games. My guess is the WCC gives USF the option to do what they want…seems like the fair thing to do.
Bullwinkle, thanks for coming in with civil discourse rather than guns ablazin’. Much appreciated, and you are welcome anytime. Your Pilots look like they are finally starting to gel, I’m impressed with what the new coach has been able to accomplish in such an incredibly short period of time. Unfortunately, come tourney time, with a 7-10 seeding, it is tough for any 7-10 team to win so many successive games (THU, FRI, SAT, ) to get to the semi-finals, but teams in the 5/6 slots must be prepared for the Pilots.
Regarding the cancellation, I think that there is more to the story that we just don’t know and probably will never know. It smells bad, but perhaps it truly is in the best long-term interests of the conference. But as others have alluded, karma can be a b*tch.
Appreciate your viewpoint Bullwinkle… “From our perspective, it a decision that lacks both class and conscience, but I wish you well.”
I completely agree with you there… it’s a crappy thing to do. I also appreciate that you didn’t come here firing off f-bombs and such (although I kind of think you’d be in the right doing so). Best of luck to the Pilots as they attempt to return to the days of Cheatum and Ranta… damn that was a good team.
Relevant games, controversy, a new spark for a rivalry?
It feels good to have anything at all going on at this point in the year.
My preference would be to uphold our scheduling commitments, and if we can’t beat the pilots in Chiles, they maybe we shouldn’t be dancing…
USF is the University of Something Fishy, not us.
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Do the committees that select at large teams go strictly by various rankings or is there a human side to it? Most of you agree there is a sinister side to this so if any WCC teams (especially SCU) improve or protect their standing due to this cancellation, could that end up hurting them if they are on the bubble with another team who played their full schedule?
On paper this may help some teams but considering how they are both playing, a Portland road win is more impressive then one at LMU
Not sure. With us off the bubble, BYU would be the only real WCC test case since they never made their road game up against Portland. And yes, LMU has fallen to 212 in NET with Portland moving up to 202 (Both would be Quad 3 road games for us.)
Is the NIT going back to 32 teams this year? I assume so? Regular season Conference Champs that don’t make the NCAA Tournament get automatic NIT invites.
Given that the NCAA acquired the NIT some years’ back, I’ve said many times over the years that I’d like to see more coordination between the two tourneys. Make it a tournament of 96 teams, with the top 32 getting a bye, the other 64 playing in the first round. A first-round loss moves you into the NIT, a win puts you in the field of 64 for the big dance. Think of it as an expanded version of the 4 play-in games (which effectively makes the NCAA tourney a 68-team tourney). Heck, it could even be structured such that any loss in the big dance still gives a team the chance to play out in the NIT. The NCAA baseball playoffs is still double-elimination, right? My basketball proposal could be riff of that concept.
No, it’s not strictly by rankings. Ultimately, a group of people behind close doors making the final decisions. NET and other advanced metrics are considered along w/ ‘Good Wins’, ‘Bad Losses’, consideration of key injured players, and the ‘eye test’ (committee supposedly watches a lot of late season games, particular of bubble teams). They try to be transparent but it’s still an imperfect process.
Above is regarding NCAA tourney. Not as sure about NIT but I think they follow a similar process but there is of course much less media and public scrutiny of who they select for the NIT. Just based on what I’ve observed of who gets in and who doesn’t with the NIT seems pretty clear the NIT favors Power 5 schools and schools who may draw solid attendance; not sure if it’s changed due to COVID or otherwise but the first several rounds of the NIT have been hosted by the higher seeded team.
You end up seeing a lot of Power 5 schools with less than 20 wins, barely over .500.
If we win 3 of the 4 remaining conf games (assume a loss to GU) we’re more or less guaranteed no worse than 4th place in league, giving us byes to the quaterfinal round of the league tourney and a regular season record of 20-10. Let’s say we win 1 league tourney game and lose in semi-final, we’d then be 21-11 on the season. Is that good enough for an NIT birth?.. Who knows.
Best case scenario, we need to finish in 3rd place place so we line up with #2 SMC in the tourney semi-final game, beat them for another signature win and advance to the tourney final, likely losing to GU of course but getting to 22-11 overall with quality wins over SMC (twice), BYU and TCU.
For that to happen…we need the 3-1 in the final league games, then root for SMC to beat USF @ Moraga. USF also plays GU once more so they’d end up with at least 6 losses and behind us in 4th.
Still a lot of dominoes to fall for things to go in our favor.
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If USF finishes 10-6 and we finish 10-5 then I am pretty sure the KenPom algo (assuming it is used) will give them 3rd place. They will have beaten us twice and played all the top 5 teams 2 times.
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Yep, hadn’t seen your twitter repost in the USF game thread when I posted the above.
But I agree, KenPom probably favors USF in the most likely scenarios/outcomes. May need a significant upset, ie- Bronco upset over GU (highly unlikely) or a USF loss to a bottom dweller (more likely but not probable) to finish ahead in KenPom.
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Another Portland fan joining the conversation. Turns out there is more to the story, and it became known today via the Portland media. It does not make SCU or the conference leadership look good:
As others have suggested here, to give this situation any semblance of fairness the regular season finale should be moved to Portland. Beating the Pilots on the road would be better for SCU’s NIT resume, so Sendek should be all for it.
SCU goofed by re-scheduling the game in the first place but nothing is fair about the scheduling this year.
BYU @ Portland was cancelled on December 29th. SCU @ Portland was cancelled on Jan 5th. BYU could not make re-scheduling the game at Portland work even though they had a completely open schedule between February 12th-February 19th??? Why should SCU have to play 3 games in 5 days all on the road (to Portland, to Los Angeles, to Spokane) when BYU gets to sit at home all week?
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Bob, while I agree with your rationale, the fact of the matter is that SCU agreed to play the game. I don’t like the idea of making a commitment and then de-committing 5 days before hand because it is “too hard”. What kind of lesson is that for young men? The wrong one, in my book. If we didn’t like it, then we shouldn’t have agreed in the first place.
EDITED to add this: chalk this up to another reason to ditch our AD. I never liked the hire in the first place, and this is just another revelation of her true character.
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I agree we should have played it since we re-scheduled it…but just wanted to point out that there are definitely other programs in this conference that look out for their own self interest.
Not that it makes a difference because Gonzaga is crushing everyone, but guess how many true away games they’ve played this (including non conf) season so far?
3!
Their first two were cancelled/postponed to start conference play. Currently they’ve played 7 home games and only 3 away in conference. They will get to 8 home and 6 away by the end of conference season. With at pacific and at lmu falling off the schedule.
The Zags treat everything in conference like the Melian Dialogue. I don’t love SCU emulating them here, but an honest appraisal of why SCU is permitted to do this begins with how the Zags throw their weight around and dare the conference to take issue.
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Honestly, I don’t have a problem with Zags throwing their weight around. Year-in and year-out, they put a quality product on the court and they generate a massive amount of cash for the conference. More than 2 decades ago, they went “all-in” on basketball and it paid off in spades. A few other mid-majors did something similar, with varying degrees of success, but none as successful as Gonzaga. In the meantime, our school did little more than “call” the already-increasing blinds (to continue with the poker analogy) to stay seated at the table. But let’s face it, our chip stack seems low. Yet the Bulldogs keep replenishing the kitty.
Can we also give props to Legans? He’s injected energy in what was once an all-but-dead basketball program, and now the Pilots have a bright future. Legans, Golden, Madsen at UVU, and a few other coaches seem to have developed roadmaps to success. While not identical paths, directionally they are similar. I’m envious, and more than just a little disappointed that SCU probably won’t be the program to knock Gonzaga off of their 1st-place pedestal.
If this had been years’ past, Portland probably would’ve just sucked it up and accepted it without much pushback. But Legans, along with the Pilots’ AD, made it a big issue. Perhaps it’ll be a rallying point for Portland, and maybe they’ll make some noise in the conference tourney and/or the final regular season game against our boys.
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Maybe I missed it, but it seems to me that SCU was well within the league’s parameters to cancel the game. The League’s statement:
"This decision is in alignment with the priorities for rescheduling and consistent with prior decisions as it relates to other games that have come to the conference office this season.”
So the league apparently thought it was ok. The problem seems to be how it was communicated. That falls on the AD and seems to be an SCU trait inherited all the way back to Locatelli.
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The fact that SCU scrubbed the game 5 days before tip-off smells rotten… did they not realize that they were going to play 3 games in 5 days when they rescheduled it?
Let’s at least be honest here.
I guess we live in a wold where a commitment is just, meh.
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I think they realized they were going to play 3 games in 5 days when they rescheduled it, under the assumption that the league would require every team to make up each game. It was probably a week before the game that SCU discovered the WCC signed off on Gonzaga, SMC, and BYU waiving games, and then made a move.
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