Mountain West Hopes to Improve Tourney Showing
Ryan Fagan - SportingNews.com
Mar 16, 2011
Last year, the Mountain West sent four teams to the NCAA Tournament, and three of the four were single-digit seeds.
Most impressive, no doubt. Problem was, not one of the four made it past the first weekend.
The conference's top seed, No. 3 New Mexico, slipped past Montana in the opener and got waxed by Washington—a No. 11 seed—in the second round. BYU, a No. 7 seed, beat Florida in a memorable double-overtime contest before losing to No. 2 seed Kansas State.
UNLV, seeded eighth in the Midwest, lost by three points to a Northern Iowa squad that knocked off No. 1 seed Kansas in the next round. And San Diego State, a No. 11 seed, lost by three points to Tennessee, which advanced all the way to the regional final.
Good efforts all around, but the conference schools want more this year.
"I even hope that BYU has a good showing and makes the Mountain West look really strong," San Diego State guard D.J. Gay said at press conference on Monday.
The conference schools are in position to make that happen. Well, at least two of the three are. UNLV was woefully under-seeded and finds itself in the dreaded 8/9 game against Illinois. Win that one, and it will have to play top-seed Kansas in the next round.
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Not that the Rebels are thinking about that quite yet. For now, the focus is on themselves and the Illini.
"We've just got to go in there right from the beginning, playing hard from the get-go instead of feeling our way through the first half, working out those first half jitters [like we did last year] being in the NCAA Tournament for the first time," sophomore guard Anthony Marshall said. "This year, we're a lot more mature than we were last year. We have a couple of veteran guys who have been playing basketball for a long time. We've just got to go in there and play basketball for the full 40 minutes."
UNLV coach Lon Kruger, ironically, was the Illinois coach for four years before he left for the NBA. If the Rebels beat the Illini, they'll face Bill Self's Kansas team. Self was, ironically, the coach who replaced Kruger at Illinois. Small world.
BYU, the No. 3 seed in the Southeast, is in an interesting situation.
Obviously, they have Jimmer Fredette, the shooter capable of 40-point outbursts in any given game. And, obviously, they'll be without Brandon Davies, their primary low-post threat who was kicked off the team for violating the school's honor code. Since that point, the Cougars have lost twice in five games, which was as many as the lost in the first 29 games of the season.
They'll face a patient Wofford team that came oh-so-close to upsetting Wisconsin last year, and then they'd face the winner of the 6/11 game between St. John's and Gonzaga.
San Diego State is the No. 2 seed in the West region, which means if the Aztecs hold seed, they'll play their first two games in Tucson, Ariz. and their next two in Anaheim, Calif. That's quite an advantage for a school that's looking for its first NCAA Tournament victory, one they almost got in the near-upset of the Volunteers last season.
"I know that opportunity slipped away, but we've been fortunate enough to have another opportunity this year," said Gay, a senior. "The experience helps. We took a lot from that game and just built on that through this year. From that game against Tennessee, up until this day, we're a completely different, stronger team."
They'll face Northern Colorado, a team that has several holdovers from the group that beat San Diego State during the 2007-08 season and almost did it again the next year.
"It's probably good for us that we had that experience, not that our kids would not respect and be ready, but they firsthand saw how good this team is and how they competed," Aztecs coach Steve Fisher said.
Assuming they make it past the opening game, the Aztecs would have the winner of the 10 vs. 7 game between Penn State and Temple. Like UNLV and BYU, the Aztecs are preaching first things first.
"I know we haven't ever won a game, so that's our goal, to win a game," Fisher said. "We want to win a game and we are going to be expected to win a game. So we'll just go in and compete hard and hopefully win a game. Then go from there."
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