Host Schools and the Mountain West Tournament

In the Mountain West tournament, there are four teams remaining: conference leader BYU, conference contender TCU, and New Mexico and Utah. If there was a pre-season poll picking the top four in the Mountain West, these teams would probably have been on that list. But New Mexico and Utah have already had to win two games in the staggered-format Mountain West tournament just to get to this point.

Utah, the 5-seed in the Mountain West tournament, is 14-16 this year (7-9 in conference). New Mexico, the 7-seed, is 13-17 and only won five conference games heading into the tournament.

Needless to say, both teams are ineligible for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

But both teams play host to NCAA first and second round games this year. It is common now to have host teams that don't make the NCAA tournament, but the relative geographic isolation of these two schools makes for a real problem in terms of attendance. By comparison the first and second round host site at the University of Virginia, another host school that will not get an at-large bid to the tournament, has the potential to draw a few teams within a couple hundred miles of the site: Hampton, Liberty, Georgetown, West Virginia, Navy, maybe some North Carolina teams. The nearest likely tournament eligible team to Albuquerque is probably Texas Tech, 320 miles away. And besides BYU, the next nearest likely tournament eligible team to Salt Lake City is probably Northern Colorado at nearly 500 miles. And it's not like Bears fans are known for traveling in large numbers for long distances.

But what luck for tournament organizers should New Mexico win the MWC Tournament! A home game for one of the best-attended sites in women's basketball would mean the potential for profit. Even in this less-than-stellar year for the Lady Lobos, the Pit has not hosted a game attended by fewer than 7,000 people. Now all that New Mexico has to do is win two more games...

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Now in: (same as yesterday)
Now out: (same as yesterday)

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 10
Big 12: 7
ACC: 6
Big Ten: 5
SEC: 4
PAC-10: 4
Atlantic 10: 2
Colonial: 2
Mountain West: 2

Atlantic 10 Ruling; Mountain West Drooling

Of all the mid-major conferences (defined as conferences that are not the Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, Atlantic Coast and Southeast Conference), two of the 26 (counting the Great West) rank higher than all others in terms of the number of at-large bids garnered over the past few years: the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West. It seems like it's a rare year when the Atlantic 10 doesn't get three teams into the NCAA tournament, and the Mountain West is so full of parity that the annual conference tournament is often completely up for grabs.

But this year there is no question as to which conference is better. The Atlantic 10 is having a great year as a whole. As of right now, eight teams from the 14-team conference are ranked in the top 75 of RPI. Three Atlantic 10 teams are in Charlie Creme's field of 64, and two more are on the cusp. While the College Women's Hoops S-Factor only lists two, the S-Factor is unreasonably stingy to mid-major conferences at this point in the year. Xavier is being talked about as a 2 seed; Duquesne has been on everyone's list since they beat Ohio State; Temple, Charlotte and Dayton are all very close to being in the big dance; and St. Joseph's, St. Bonaventure, and Richmond have all been competitive in their biggest games.

The Mountain West, however, has been pretty weak as a conference whole. Many of the traditional powers are having off years. Both the Utes of Utah and the Lady Lobos of New Mexico lost a lot of games in a difficult non-conference schedule, but kept losing once the conference season began. San Diego State has achieved an 8-8 record so far with their best win coming against Dayton and a loss to the non-aligned Roadrunners of Cal State Bakersfield. BYU and Wyoming are the only two challengers to what is looking like a dominant run by TCU this year. Wyoming was crushed by TCU last week, and BYU travels to Fort Worth to play the Horned Frogs tonight. With only a single top-50-RPI win in the entire conference this season (that being TCU's victory over 50th ranked Oklahoma earlier this year), the Mountain West is looking like a one-bid conference this year.

Now in: Vanderbilt
Now out: Missouri State

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 9
ACC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 6
SEC: 5
PAC-10: 4
Atlantic 10: 2