Where in the AP?
Now that they have won the respect of the punditry (yesterday I heard Lunardi say that when the team barely lost to SMC without Yoeli, he decided they would be a second-weekend team), and only have two weeks left of the AP regular-season polling, where are they likely to land.
First, the team only has at most two games to impress any voters that they should have been ranked higher in the first place. The voter who forgot BYU this week is an example of such voters. https://kslsports.com/429227/byu-basketball-top-25-basketball-ap-voter-john-feinstein-forgot/
So not much movement likely on that front.
That leaves teams losing ahead of the Cougs, or teams below the Cougs impressing enough to leapfrog.
The leapfrog option is possible with the Power Conference Tourneys, but given BYU’s next game is a consensus tourney team in SMC, and likely a No. 1 seed Gonzaga, the leapfrog options are limited.
To move up, the Cougs need teams above them to lose: yesterday that includes 12 Villanova, 9 Maryland, though probably too far above the 17 line to immediately affect BYU, and 16 Penn State losing.
So probable rise of two maybe three. BYU 14 or 15 in the AP this week. Possibly another couple next week, so max out in the low teens.
Where in the Dance?
This week I heard an interview with an NCAA Committee bureaucrat boasting how well they nailed the sweet 16 last year. The NET ratings were 14 of 16 accurate with a 15th right outside in the upper teens and one wild card that was the real slipper last year.
BYU’s current NET rating (https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats%20Library/NET%20Team%20Sheets%20-%20Feb%2029,%202020.pdf, as of midnight Feb 29) has BYU a 14. So the committee is likely to be seeding them into the second weekend.
If they can win out till dance invite Sunday, they may well rise as two quad 1 victories will likely be positive. Yesterday KenPom had them up to a 12 until some later calculations came in and pushed them down to their current 13th.
So probably a 4 or 5 seed and possibly a 3 seed. A 3 seed would mean the committee considers them one of the 12 best teams in the land or that the no Sunday BYU rule had the unusual effect of bumping them up one. Ceteris paribus it usually pushes them down a seed.
Where in the annals of BYUbasketball history? All-time? Recent?
Impossible to answer fully because their body of work is incomplete.
If they lose their first game in the WCC and NCAA, then their body of work ended with a high of a nine-game WCC winning streak, a no loss Feb, a beating of No. 2 Gonzaga Bulldogs at home, and a 2 seed in the conference tourney. Not a bad resume, but disappointing given the rise in expectations.
What has fed the expectations? The resume, especially the overtime loss to the Utes and the one-point loss to SanFran. Meaning that with Yoeli and Gavin providing an extra big body, the team is living up to the LP3 expectations for the first time.
I expect the team to have two more losses. WCC Tournament final and either Elite Eight or Final Four. I simply do not see the combination of having their hunger slaked and their potential opponents having the talent and hunger to assuage them until late in the dance.