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Date Posted: 16:46:15 01/26/05 Wed
Author: dent
Subject: 3 WCC teams in the NCAAs?!

JONATHAN OKANES: COLLEGE BASKETBALL

WCC boasts more than just Gonzaga

St. Mary's, Santa Clara share first place in a league that might be ready to send more than one team to the NCAA tourney

THE SCUTTLEBUTT before the season was that this finally may be the year the West Coast Conference gets two teams into the NCAA Tournament. Finally, the WCC will produce something worth watching other than Gonzaga.

The prevailing thought was that St. Mary's or perhaps Pepperdine would challenge the Zags' bid for a sixth straight conference championship. Maybe the WCC would even have a non-Gonzaga team not have to win the conference tournament to make the NCAAs.

We're just past the halfway point of the season and the jury is still out whether a second WCC team has built a strong enough resume to be considered for an at-large berth. But the surprising thing is it hasn't just been a second team that has made the WCC more interesting. The entire conference has been compelling this season.

All one has to do is take a look at the WCC standings heading into the weekend. Gonzaga is in an unheard of third place behind St. Mary's and Santa Clara, which are tied for first. The Zags, who were 63-7 in WCC play in the previous five years coming into the season, already have dropped games to St. Mary's and USF.

There's some substantially better basketball being played in the WCC this season. Gonzaga still is having the best overall season, having defeated three nationally ranked teams, including two different opponents that were ranked No. 3 at the time. The Gaels have the most overall wins (17-5), although they've played more games than most teams because they participated in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, in which they went 2-2.

But Santa Clara, USF and Pepperdine also have provided reasons for the WCC to get noticed. The Broncos have had one of the more perplexing seasons in the country. They started 6-2, including a victory over then-No. 4 North Carolina, then proceeded to lose six of the next seven. Included in that skid were losses at home to UC Irvine, Central Connecticut State and Yale.

But WCC play began, and Santa Clara returned to playing at a high level. The Broncos' only conference loss came by four to Gonzaga, and they went on the road to beat St. Mary's by 23 and Pepperdine by 12.

USF's also had its moments. The Dons opened the season with an overtime loss to Stanford, then later went on a seven-game win streak that included quality victories over Pacific and Fresno State. Then came the high point of the season Saturday when they shocked Gonzaga at home.

And although Pepperdine has been an overall disappointment (12-9, 2-4 WCC), the Waves still can claim a nonconference win over Wisconsin, which was ranked No. 20 at the time.

In fact, seven of the WCC's eight teams claim an overall record over .500. Only Loyola Marymount at 9-10 is on the wrong side of the break-even mark. The WCC is ranked seventh in conference RPI this week, ahead of Conference USA, which features teams such as Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette and Memphis.

At this juncture, St. Mary's is really the only other WCC team besides Gonzaga that could make a legitimate case for an at-large NCAA berth. The Gaels' have an RPI of 50 and a handful of good road wins. But it appears there are more than two teams capable of winning the WCC Tournament. If the winner isn't Gonzaga or St. Mary's, the notion of the conference sending two teams to the NCAA Tournament might indeed be crazy. The notion might have to switch to three teams.

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[> Another article re: 3 WCC teams in the NCAAs?! -- dent, 16:50:56 01/26/05 Wed

WCC is dreaming the ridiculous dream
- Ray Ratto

Mike Gilleran found a few moments Tuesday away from his favorite work activity, answering e-mails from his best friends about the criminally low quality of his basketball officials, to consider his second favorite work activity.

Dreaming about the day the West Coast Conference, of which he is the commissioner and tallest office worker, gets three invitations to the NCAA Tournament.

He hasn't done this much over the years, granted. A great year for the WCC is two teams, a usual year is the minimum of one. You see, in NCAAWorld, mid-major conferences take what scraps are afforded them and then give the time-honored Kevin Bacon/Animal House response, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

This, however, is not a usual year. This is, in fact, a grand year for the WCC, and "if we can keep from cannibalizing ourselves between now and the tournament," in his words ... well, as the old Anglican prelate Chuck Berry once said, you never can tell.

We mention this because USF's incremental renaissance under coach Jessie Evans continues Thursday night at Santa Clara, while St. Mary's entertains, in the most hostile allowable fashion, San Diego. The Dons and Gaels are well- entrenched as tournament "bubble" teams, which is ball-slang for "a factor until someone figures out how to hose them on Selection Sunday."

Both are looking up at Gonzaga in the omnipotent RPI list, but their own positions are impressive enough to make Gilleran dream the ridiculous dream.

The WCC has never gotten three invitations, and only five times in the past 15 years has it gotten two. More to the point, with the exception of Gonzaga's rise to national playerhood, the conference has been mostly unnoticed in the tournament.

But some odd things have happened this year.

"Yeah," Gilleran said. "We have a lot of good road and neutral-court wins. No big names come out and play us, so we have to make our name on the road, and we have."

Gonzaga has made its bones. St. Mary's is 17-5. USF is 12-6. Santa Clara, a historically tough out, is 11-9, but 4-1 in conference with a win over Gonzaga, and is hosting the conference tournament. That last thing doesn't guarantee the Broncos a free ticket anywhere, but it could move them onto the "bubble," which is ball-slang for "a cheap excuse for students to gather in front of the tube on Selection Sunday for a scheduled letdown and trip to the NIT."

Secondly, the conference's RPI ranks it seventh, about six slots better than its preseason projections and only a shoelace's-thickness behind the Southeastern Conference.

"To the untrained, basketball-impaired eye," Gilleran said, "there's something wrong with that picture. But it is what it is. Our coaches went on the road, and they performed."

Gilleran is a cautious sort, at least before happy hour, and he was quick to say, "If we could get the selection committee to make their decisions today, I'd like our chances some. But it's six weeks still, and our teams could beat each other up. Plus, you never know what will happen if Vermont gets beaten by Boston University in the America East Tournament, or Pacific loses the Big West."

Ahh yes. Conference Tournament Week, diabolically designed to pit qualified mid-major schools against each other without ever having seen each other. Both Vermont and UOP have equally workable RPI ratings, to the point where losing in their tournament very well might get their conferences an extra invitation, at the expense of teams such as USF, or St. Mary's, or even longshot Santa Clara.

"I can worry about that now, but I don't have the energy to start sweating out the scores of my opponents' opponents," Gilleran said. "I probably have the time, but I can make myself crazy in lots of ways other than that."

Thus, he simply fingers his schedule and hopes nobody important gets hurt, that the teams on the bubble stay there, and that one time, just one time, the WCC gets the kind of love usually reserved for the Big XII's eighth team, or the ACC's seventh. This is surely the first time he could entertain such a notion, and for all he knows, it also could be the last.

But those are big thoughts, and it isn't even February yet. So he'll do what everyone else who taps into Bracketology and all the other Web sites that like to make up tournament fields before half the evidence is in.

"The people who don't tell me my officials stink tell me where our teams are going based on what they saw on the Web," Gilleran said with a wry giggle. "That's another thing I don't really spend a lot of time with, so it's nice that I have people who do it for me."

Now he merely needs to find some people free to keep an eye on Vermont and Pacific. If only to take their minds off their latest complaints about the officials.


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