BYU comes in at #18
Pretty awesome!
#18? Really? Why not go up to 12 after beating Oregon? #18 sounds great!
Oregon dropped 14 spots to “26”.
Hopefully we only have to deal with this one more year. The P5 bias goes on…no one outside of Gonzaga has played a tougher 1st 4 games then BYU
Here is a perfect example of the media Bias BYU has to deal with…BYU takes down Oregon in Portland - Arizona takes out #4 Michigan at a neutral court in Las Vegas. Az ends up ranked ahead of BYU in the Associated Press rankings and #18 in Pomeroy. BYU ends up ranked worse in the AP and #27 in Pomeroy.
Take a look at the 1st 4 games of Az and BYU…BYU played 3 Dance teams and will have played 5 dance teams from last year in its first 6 games. Az will have played just 2…it is what it is and I will leave it at that.
They played Oregon, SDSU and Cleveland State which all went to the dance. Cleveland State got blown off the court by Houston in the tourney.
I believe their bias is not specifically against BYU, but rather the conference in which we play. Seriously the last few years, which teams in the WCC has done anything outside of Gonzaga and BYU? I will add “history” has a lot to do with ranking, traditionally Arizona is usually a pretty good basketball team and has been in the tournament most years.
I also think it is a very real reflection on the voters who vastly overrated Oregon team. A top ten team should never get blown off the court like they did. In other words, they had to save face.
I think if Pope stays, I think we will get to the point where the voters will rank us more on what we do than what league we play in.
The good thing is basketball has a real playoff system. So, if we can keep improving and stay healthy, we can right the wrong of the media. But, just like the political media, the basketball media will find a reason not to give BYU the right rankings in their minds.
Right now Lunardi has Gonzaga as the top Bracketology seed, BYU as a 7 seed, SMC as a 12 seed, and SFU as a next 4 out. This could be the year when the WCC gets 4 teams in.
Santa Clara is also making noise,.having beaten Stanford, Nevada and TCU. they are 5-0. They are favored to win all but 1 of their pre season games, BSU.
This is the deepest WCC league EVER.
Few forcing the change in the WCC championship tournament structure has been paying off the last couple of years.
It has forced the likes of St. Mary’s to focus on getting good instead of being good enough to beat the bottom of the conference regularly.
The rest of the conference is finally creating OoC schedules that will qualify them for the Dance even when they lose to the Zags, and are stepping it up enough that they actually stand a chance of doing so.
For what it is worth, Kenpom rating is a purely statistical model that he tweaks occasionally off season but the stats alone determine the rank…yes, he has problems at the beginning of the year because not enough stats to be statistically significant. So to try to make up for it, admittedly not as good as the full set of stats at the end of the season but as close as the numberheads could figure, he amalgamates the individual stats from the players on the team for the beginning of the season stats. By the beginning of the year his numbers are usually much better than this time of the season.
Yea, I do not track basketball as closely as I do football, but outside of this year, my question is still “what has the other teams in the WCC done in while?”
If we get four teams in, that would be great. Looks like there is a chance for four teams from the State of Utah that could get in the tourney, but time will tell. Weber State and USU looked good this past weekend.
#1 Gonzaga, #18 BYU, Saint Mary’s, Santa Clara, and San Francisco are a combined 27-0 so far this season.
Bracketology has 4 WCC teams in the dance right now.
Gonzaga may have fallen to a #2 seed, BYU fell from a #6 to #7. SMC is a 10 seed and San Fran is a 11 seed.
They have UVU as the 1st team out, they know it and a win over BYU would get them the big win they need to be in the dance…they are coming loaded for Cat.
Is that this year record? or last year record? I think the voters do not view the WCC as a very good conference and unless your name is not Gonzaga, you won’t get much respect.
this year, I ran into it last night…while watching Gonzaga dismantle UCLA. They talked in detail about how much better the WCC is this year.
Pope has been hinting that the WCC is no joke this year. Pope calls it a gauntlet.
I think the State of Utah college teams are no jokes this year. I would love to see all of our Schools in the dance this year. Each team has some good quality wins.
Gonzaga 7’ freshman player sounds fun to watch, last night on KSL that they said he played like a Point Guard. This sounds like one player we knew way back in the early 70s Cosic? I never knew about Cosic or BYU basketball during that time.
WCC doing well this year are those five teams which are undefeated and last year was pretty much the same too.
For State of Utah yes they are doing well too and no I didn’t know about weber state. And good for USU win over Oklahoma and I didn’t realize the sooners were 4-0 before facing the Aggies.
Would be cool if they brought back the tournament where all D-1 schools in Utah played?
BYU, Utah, Weber State, USU, SUU and UVU?
I guess most fans didn’t want to go to last time it happened.
Holmgren is the #1 ranked recruit in the nation. 7’ and can shoot from 25 feet. The down side is he is an absolute bean pole, you would not be able to see him if he turned sideways. Sure he beat up on UCLA, a team full of 6’6 and 6’7 utility guys but we will see if Duke has a good matchup for him. BYU has several players that could box his skinny frame out and D him up no matter where he’s at on the court.
Gonzaga is great because Few has 5 good players on the court at all times. Even elite teams has one or two guys that are, let’s say a defensive or a 3 point specialist. Gonzaga is built to win titles. I do think that on a poor shooting night and BYU getting hot at home, we can take these guys.
hasn’t happened since the 1970s I think, maybe early 80s…