Tourney time
The Utah State men’s basketball team is nearing the end of one of its most successful seasons in history, but it isn’t over yet.
The Aggies have one more regular season stop to make before preparing for next week’s Big West Tournament and beyond.
USU will take on the Idaho Vandals, winners of eight of their last 10 games, Friday on the road. A win for the Aggies will secure at least a share of the Big West crown for the team.
After their nationally televised late-night 59-56 victory over rival UC Irvine Saturday, the Aggies rose to their highest ranking of the year in the ESPN/USA Today poll at No. 21. They checked in at No. 23 in the AP Top 25 poll, having risen as high as No. 19 in that poll before losing on the road at Pacific Feb. 14.
Utah State is tied with the Tigers for the Big West league lead, with the teams’ sole in-conference losses coming against each other. Pacific will face Cal State Fullerton Thursday and UC Riverside Saturday. Both games will be home games for the Tigers.
Aggie Head Coach Stew Morrill said he likes the position his team is in going into the game against Idaho.
“Any time you have a chance to win the regular season, that is a great situation to be in going into the last weekend,” Morrill said. “If we [Pacific and Utah State] end up tied at 17-1, we both can hold our heads high and claim that we’re conference champs.”
Regardless of the outcome of the game, Utah State will have a bye through the the first two rounds of the BWC tourney by virtue of finishing the conference season in either first or second place.
While Aggie players and coaches look forward to the Big West Tournament, Utah State fans are keeping one eye on the tournament and the other on The Big Dance. Five days into the month, March Madness has kicked off with speculation about selection and seeding to the NCAA tournament.
ESPN.com’s “Bracketology” site has Utah State slated as a No. 7 seed playing Air Force, a No. 10 seed, in Seattle March 18 in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
By comparison, Utah, which along with Pacific, is one of two teams to defeat USU this season, is projected to be No. 11 seed on the same site. The Utes would face Wisconsin, a No. 6 seed, in Raleigh, N.C.
ESPN.com also predicts BYU will be one of the last four teams eliminated by the selection committee. Utah State led BYU by 26 points at halftime Dec. 23 before blowing the lead and holding on for a two-point win.
Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Karl Benson, who serves on the 10-member NCAA tournament selection committee, said he likes Utah State’s chances of making the tournament.
“Utah State has established itself as a very legitimate, valid team,” he said.
Benson arrived in Logan Thursday for a two-day visit to Utah State, which will be joining the WAC in 2005.
Serving on the committee is difficult, Benson said, because every year there are several teams on the bubble who feel like they should have gotten in.
“It’s demanding,” Benson said. “It’s long hours, and it’s a lot of information in terms of data and computer rankings.”
Though selecting teams is tough, seeding them is harder, Benson said.
“That process is more demanding and more provoking than the selection process,” Benson said. “You don’t want to make a mistake on the seeds because of what it might do to the competitive balance of the tourney.”
But on the other hand, Benson said, selection is still crucial.
“You can play your way out of a bad seed,” he said, but teams that don’t get selected don’t get that chance.
Benson said despite the publicity the Ratings Percentage Index [RPI] gets in the media, RPI numbers are only one of many sources the committee uses in the selection and seeding process.
“The RPI is simply one of the tools we use to evaluate,” he said.
“If it were the primary tool, there would be no need for the committee.”
Many sources say that only a season-ending meltdown will keep USU out of the tournament, saying the Aggies’ Top 25 rankings should help their standing with the selection committee even if they don’t get an automatic bid by winning the BWC tourney.
Despite the speculation about the NCAA
tourney, Morrill hasn’t forgotten there’s one more game to play in the regular season.
“Obviously, Idaho is greatly improved and anytime you go to Moscow, it’s a challenge,” Morrill said. “We’ve got to get ready for all the things they do and how much they’ve improved. It’s always hard to win in Moscow, but I am awfully excited that we’re going in there off two road wins. That’s the position we wanted to be in. I think we’ll be excited to play, too and we’ll need to be.”
The conference game will be a rare Friday matchup for the Aggies. Morrill said arrangements with Idaho to move the date were made possible because the Vandals are USU’s
traveling partner.
If history is any indication, the move bodes well for Morrill’s Ags. The team is 12-1 in games played on Friday since Morrill’s arrival, with the only Friday loss coming to Connecticut in the first round of the 2000 NCAA tourney.
USU has won 15 of its last 17 meetings with Idaho. The Vandals are third in the Big West right now and have clinched at least a No. 4 seed in the Big West tourney.
“It’s kind of odd just having one game the last week of the regular season,” Morrill said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in that situation and it’s good in a sense, especially where we’ve traveled and are going to travel several weekends in a row.”
Several weekends in a row would put Utah State right where Aggie forward Spencer Nelson has set his sights. Earlier in the season, Nelson said his goal is “to win games in the NCAA tournament.”
Games. Plural.
-royburton@cc.usu.edu