Every season when people are filling out their brackets for March Madness, people are looking for the next Gonzaga, George Mason or Davidson. As we’re more than halfway through the conference schedules, there are a couple of teams out West that are flying under the radar and have the potential to open some eyes come tourney time. For those that closely follow college basketball throughout the season, Utah State and St. Mary’s are two legit programs that have enough talent to compete with the big boys. I must not be the only one that seems the possibilites, as they were paired against one another over the weekend in an installment of ESPN’s BracketBusters.
I assume part of the ignorance stems from the fact that they play in smaller conferences. Part of it is that they play in tiny towns west of the Rockies and part of it is that most of their games start at 10:30 Eastern time. By then a lot of the television personalities have already gone to bed after watching their Big East and ACC games of the night. But if some of the bigger name schools take these teams lightly in the Big Dance, they won’t be wearing those dancing shoes past the first weekend.
Stew Morrill has been producing good teams for years-- just know body knows about it
As much as it pains the UC Irvine Anteater in me to say it, the Utah State Aggies are a really good team. Really good. Only recently did the national media start to take note as they broke into the Top 25, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been good all season. Stew Morrill has had a good program in Logan, UT for quite a while now. Even back when they were dominating the Big West for years, the program never got its due. They’ve switched to the WAC, but they are still getting about the same amount of love. I’m starting to think that the voters couldn’t find Logan with a GPS and a full tank of gas.
The Aggies are 24-2 with only a single loss in conference play. In the ever important RPI, they’re currently #32 and ahead of ranked teams like Gonzaga and LSU. It certainly doesn’t help that the RPI has the WAC rated as the 12th best conference in the country. But this is the major problem for mid-majors to overcome. Even though they win the vast majority of their games, pollsters and the RPI will look at the strength of their opponents. Since Utah State’s strength of schedule is currently 169th in the country, I understand why they’re struggling to get recognized. All I know is that they win their games. Just about all of them. I’ll take the team that wins all the time against the team that loses half their games any day. Just remember that when they are matched up with the 7th or 8th best team from the Big East in the NCAA Tournament!
The other team out west that has the potential to make noise in the tournament is St. Mary’s. The Gaels have the same problem that the Aggies do, their conference RPI is God awful. Even with Gonzaga and St. Mary’s, the West Coast Conference is ranked as the 15th best conference in the country. To give you an idea of where that stands nationally, the Colonial Athletic Conference is #14. Aside from the two contenders, the conference only has one other team in the top 200 (Portland – #103)! Ouch.
Oh no! Another Aussie for Mrs. Cheap Seats!
The Gaels RPI is 61 and dropped like a hot rock after do-it-all guard Patrick Mills went down with a couple of broken bones in his right hand. At the time that Mills went down with his injury, the Gaels were in the midst a nation’s best 15 game winning streak. Funny thing happened, as Patrick Mills went down in St. Mary’s first game against Gonzaga, so did their winning streak. But Mills is slated to return around the WCC conference tournament—so the team that was able to run off 15 straight will be the one that makes the dance (not the one that struggled mid-season).
It might be the whole WCC thing, or maybe it’s the international thing; but the sophomore from Australia’s capital has a little bit of the Steve Nash quality to his game. He can make all of his teammates better when he’s running the point guard position. He can take over games and score points in bunches if the time calls for it. He’s just one of those players that seem to thrive in the tournament—so I can see him leading Gaels to a Cinderella type run in March. Everyone will be wondering, “Where did this guy come from?” But those of us that watch basketball for more than one month per year will know that his play isn’t a fluke. Add in the fact that the Gaels frontcourt play has grown by leaps and bounds in his absence and you have the makings of a legitimate team.
Utah State and St. Mary’s are the kind of teams that should be getting more attention than they currently are. Even with the best player on either team going down for a month in the middle of the season, they still only have a combined 7 losses between them. March Madness always promotes the David-vs.-Goliath aspect of the games and we always see shocking upsets during the first weekend of play. Just remember, if Utah St. or St. Mary’s are winning games, they aren’t as shocking as everyone says they are.
Matt Reitz
Matt Reitz is an NHL Writer for ProHockeyTalk on NBCSports and the Editor-In-Chief here at ViewFromMySeats.com. When he's not shoving a mic in the face of NHLers or explaining why home teams should wear white, he's usually trying to figure out what song to play next on his iPod. It's a never-ending job.
