CAN THE MWC HIT THE MARK?
League used to receive multiple NCAA Tournament invites, but lately it has been a 1-bid conference
March 17, 2013.
In the eyes of the Mountain West Conference, that was the high-water mark. The golden era. The good ol’ days.
That was the Selection Sunday of the 2012-13 college basketball season in which the then-nine-team league had five of its members — No. 3 seed New Mexico, No. 5 UNLV, No. 7 San Diego State, No. 8 Colorado State and No. 13 Boise State — selected to play in the NCAA Tournament.
That was one automatic qualifier (UNM won the league tournament for that honor) and four teams deemed worthy of at-large selections into the field of 68.
Oh, how the times have changed.
In the four seasons since then, the MWC has had seven teams play in the Big Dance, just three being at-large selections. In the past two seasons, it was a one-bid league and the seeding attached to those teams — No. 14 Fresno State in 2016 and No. 12
Nevada last March — indicate neither would have been invited had they not first won the league tournament.
So, will it change? Can the league that once landed 56 percent of its membership in the Big Dance ever get back to that status?
“I don’t know if we’re a onebid league or not,” said Colorado State coach Larry Eustachy. “We’ve got seven teams I think should be in the top 100 (of 351 Division I teams in the country). We know what’s going on. ESPN might as well just do the brackets instead of the committee because it’s all about TV. It concerns me where this whole basketball environment is going, because there’s been some good teams in our league that were tournament worthy that didn’t make it.”
To Eustachy, that includes the 28-win SDSU team in 2016 that went 16-2 in league play and won the conference’s regular season title by three games and his 2015 Rams team that finished with a 27-7 record and a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) ranking of 28. Not getting his dance ticket that season didn’t just hurt the league. “It cost me $200,000, my bonus,” Eustachy remains quick to point out.
Ultimately, what the MWC, and most other non-elite conferences want, is a more specific set of guidelines on how to get to the tournament. Some seasons, it seems the selection committee weighs the RPI higher than anything else. Others they focus on road wins. And yet others it seems simply random.
“Just give us a list with the boxes we can check and we’ll check them,” Eustachy said, before again suggesting it’s all orchestrated by ESPN.
Aside from becoming more television-worthy (it should be noted CBS, not ESPN, owns the broadcast rights to the NCAA Tournament), the league has been focused in recent years on trying to build it’s overall conference RPI and KenPom ratings — computer metrics that are used as tools by the NCAA Selection Committee to help determine which teams should get in the tournament.
But doing so requires better non-conference scheduling and actually winning those games. And, from a perception standpoint, a little success once getting in the tournament wouldn’t hurt.
“We haven’t had a lot of success and I think that’s unfortunate because I think our league has been better than our NCAA record shows,” MWC Commissioner Craig Thompson said. “... We need three or four programs to get back to that top 30, top 40 caliber play (in the regular season).”
According to KenPom’s rankings, the league hasn’t had a top 40 team in the past two seasons and just three total since 2013.
Some point to the trio of teams that was once considered the pillars of the league — UNM, SDSU and UNLV — to get back on track to help the MWC get out of its rut.
SDSU’s last NCAA appearance was in 2015, UNM in 2014 and UNLV hasn’t been back since that 2013 season.
“Historically, they’ve been the stalwarts,” Thompson said. “They’ve been the foundation in the NCAA and the postseason. It is important to maintain and sustain those programs.”
UNM coach Paul Weir, who made the NCAA Tournament last March in his first year as a head coach with the New Mexico State Aggies, said he thinks it’s important for the league for its top three programs to get back to pulling their weight atop the league.
“We’ve become a one-bid league, I believe, because our three programs have not been where they’ve traditionally been,” Weir said. “So, I think, us three getting back to where we’re supposed to be means we can all go to the NCAA Tournament and we’re not all going to Vegas in March trying to win three games and that’s all that matters.”
But that doesn’t mean other teams can’t, and aren’t trying, to become one of those pillar programs.
“I came to Nevada because I thought we could win the Mountain West,” said Eric Musselman, the third-year Nevada coach who made his first NCAA Tournament appearance last season. “That’s why I took the job . ... We weren’t worried about anybody else when we took the job. We didn’t concede that there was a top three.”
Boise State coach Leon Rice, who has twice led the Broncos to at-large berths (2013 and 2015), says this year’s crop of league teams has a chance to build a solid non-conference resume.
“This group of teams may be the most balanced, from top to bottom, that we’ve had,” Rice said. “Hopefully that will help the numbers.”
It all starts this weekend as the league begins non-conference play — the portion of the season that builds, or destroys, a league’s overall postseason profile.
“We have to go out and win some of those games,” said Fresno State coach Rodney Terry, “and get the credibility piece back because our league should always be a two-, threebid league every year. I know we’ve been one, but we’ve got too good of basketball in terms of the talent level, the coaches and venues to not have more than one team in the NCAA Tournament.”