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LAS VEGAS — West Coast Conference tournament Most Outstanding Player Sam Dower and Gonzaga had their way with BYU in the first half Tuesday night, creating an insurmountable deficit and consequent uncertainty clouding the Cougars’ NCAA tournament hopes.
Blame it on the grueling overtime win one night earlier, a lack of preparation, or Gonzaga just having too many offensive weapons.
Whatever the reasoning, the Cougars dug themselves too big of a hole in the first half and, despite a furious rally, came up short of the WCC championship and its accompanying NCAA tournament auto-bid.
Nearly seven minutes into the contest, the Zags were already up by 12, and BYU had switched from man-to-man to zone, with neither achieving the desired result. Dower only had six of his 20 points by that time, but the Cougars seemingly couldn’t generate a stop.
The 6-foot-9 lefty’s seventh basket of the half pushed the lead to 19 less than 10 minutes later, giving him 14 first-half points to go with seven rebounds. When he finally took a breather 12 seconds later, it looked like the Cougars might build some momentum.
Instead, the Zags stretched their lead to a game-high 21 points, before Kyle Collinsworth scored the final two buckets to cap an uninspired half that had BYU down by 17 — the largest discrepancy by which the Cougars have trailed at halftime this season.
The sluggish effort brought to mind the latter two games of BYU’s four-game losing streak to close the 2013 calendar year, when the team trailed by 15 to Loyola Marymount at half, and 12 to Pepperdine — two of the losses that the NCAA selection committee will likely brand “bad losses” when evaluating the Cougars.
But this was Gonzaga, a team that has now made it to March’s coveted field 16 seasons in a row. So while hopes of a comeback peaked when BYU eventually closed the gap to a single-digit margin for the first time in just under 29 minutes of game action — after WCC all-tournament team performer Collinsworth had gone down with a worrisome knee injury — accepting a defeat to distinguish the Cougars’ at-large chances became a reality.
Tyler Haws worked hard for each of his 24 points; Collinsworth had 13 before exiting with 13:43 left to play; Eric Mika had 8 points, 10 rebounds and 2 blocks; and Frank Bartley provided a spark off the bench with nine points and four boards. Outside of those four, it’s hard to quantify, or even illustrate, BYU’s lackluster execution.
You've got to look at the schedule they played. I thought they played the toughest schedule in the country. … There's not a question in my mind they're an NCAA tournament team.
–Mark Few
So where do the Cougars stand prior to judgment day, aka Selection Sunday?
"You've got to look at the schedule they played,” Zags coach Mark Few said after the game. “I thought they played the toughest schedule in the country. … There's not a question in my mind they're an NCAA tournament team."
Maybe when Few’s coaching career ends, he can ascend to a position that allows him a say in the matter. Until then, we’ll have to trust the various factors — schedule being one of them — that go into the system in place.
Rating Percentage Index, or RPI, is one of the most influential statistics the 10 decision-makers that compose the committee implement into their thought process. The stat integrates multiple variables, but none is more important than a team’s record and strength of schedule. The committee only has 36 at-large slots to give out, since 31 are awarded to conference tournament champions and one is given to the regular season Ivy League champ, which doesn’t have a conference tournament.
As of Wednesday, BYU’s RPI is 35th in the country. The Cougars boast wins over one top-25 RPI squad (Gonzaga, 19) and another two against top-50 RPI teams (Texas, 32, and Stanford, 44).
BYU was 5-1 versus teams with an RPI 51-100 — the lone loss coming at Utah (80) — and has two defeats to teams with a very poor RPI — Portland (180) and Loyola Marymount (183) — mixed in with two other eye-opening losses — Pepperdine (161) and Pacific (132).
“I feel like we have done enough to get in," Haws said.
It should be noted that among the 10 members of the selection committee, at least three will be directly influenced by results that happened within their immediate realm of work.
Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir surely noticed the Cougars beat the Cardinal on its home floor in November by nine. Scott Barnes, Utah State athletic director, knows BYU well and watched the Cougars upend the Aggies by 11 at Energy Solutions arena just after Thanksgiving.
More importantly, WCC commissioner Jamie Zaninovich will be angling to get an extra one of his league’s members in the big dance.
What does cause concern is the extent Collinsworth’s injury. His MRI should reveal the seriousness of it, and after committee chair Ron Wellman assured ESPN’s Andy Katz Tuesday that he and his colleagues will be “monitoring and communicating with Kansas” to determine the Jayhawks’ seeding based on star freshman Joel Embiid’s status, one has to assume BYU’s second-leading scorer going down doesn’t bode well.
Some have said it won’t have an impact on whether the Cougars get in, but it will on the seeding. It seems they are essentially the same thing at this point, with BYU either on the fringe as a 12th seeded play-in candidate or one of the last four to miss the cut.
The latest ESPN forecast has the Cougars in the field of 68, and teamrankings.com has them listed as a 11 seed with a 90 percent chance of securing a bid. BYU’s probability of being called Sunday is slightly lower according to statjunkie.org but is still 91.35 percent.
All the Cougars can do now is hope that there aren’t any surprise conference champions — that otherwise would not have made it to the big dance — in the five days leading up to the reckoning, and that their 2013-14 opponents can come up with victories to boost BYU’s SOS.
Though it won’t have any impact, Mount St. Mary’s, which the Cougars drummed at home, 108-76, won the Northeast Conference championship Tuesday. BYU can only anxiously await Sunday’s announcement.
