America, meet Marvelle Harris and Fresno State. On the strength of a 68-63 win over perennial Mountain West power San Diego State in the conference’s championship game on Saturday afternoon, the Bulldogs will be dancing for just the sixth time in program history and the first since 2001 (back when Jerry Tarkanian was still chewing towels on the sidelines). Harris poured in 18 confident points en route to the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award, backing up league coaches’ decision to name him the Mountain West Player of the Year. There is no doubt that Harris is the type of talent that can carry his team to some success in an NCAA Tournament game. He’s a versatile senior scorer (20.7 PPG) who can hit from deep (witness his 25-footer to end the first half on Saturday), score at the rim (62.9% FG on his 175 attempts at the rim this year), or draw defenders and create for his teammates (assists on 26.1% of his teammates’ field goals while on the floor). On a team with six upperclassmen among the eight players who saw significant minutes on Saturday, there’s enough experience joining Harris to making the Bulldogs’ NCAA Tournament stay extend beyond Friday.

Marvelle Harris And Fresno State Are Heading To The NCAA Tourney (AP Photo/David Becker)

It’s been a rough road for head coach Rodney Terry in his first head coaching job after nine seasons as an assistant at Texas. His first season at Fresno was the school’s final season in the WAC, a year in which the Bulldogs won just three conference games. His first full recruiting class (which led into the program’s first year in the Mountain West) was highlighted by the addition of prominent recruits like Robert Upshaw and Braeden Anderson, but it turned out that Harris was the only player in the class able to make a lasting positive contribution. From there, Terry mined his Big 12 roots and pulled in players like Cezar Guerrero (transfer from Oklahoma State), Julien Lewis (transfer from Texas) and Karachi Edo (a high school recruit from Texas). The Bulldogs have improved in each of Terry’s five years at the helm: five wins in the first year in the Mountain West; a .500 record in 2013-14; an additional conference win last year; and now this season a surprising 13 league wins, a second place regular season finish, and the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

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Nate Kotisso (@natekotisso) is a Big 12 correspondent for Rush The Court. Last night, he covered Fresno State-Rice from Houston.

It’s been awhile since the Fresno State Bulldogs made the NCAA Tournament. 14 years, in fact. To give you a sense of how long it’s been, the coach that last got them there (in 2001), the legendary Jerry Tarkanian, passed away earlier this year. Since Tarkanian retired, the program has undergone two coaching changes, NCAA sanctions and a change in conference affiliation. Between 2003 and 2008, Fresno State’s home arena, the Save Mart Center, averaged around 11,700 fans per game. From the 2008-09 season into the present, the Bulldogs have played host to an average of 4,000 fewer fans per game (average attendance in that span is a little more than 7,200). As a result, the Fresno State athletic department has gotten creative with how to fill those empty seats. Two years ago, former Bulldog and current Indiana Pacer superstar Paul George agreed to buy every ticket at Save Mart Center for the Bulldogs’ home opener so fans could get in for free. This season FSU ran a promotion that delivered a free ticket to last week’s game against Lamar to anyone who could prove they followed any of the athletic department’s social media accounts.

In his fifth season at Fresno, head coach Rodney Terry may be field his most talented Bulldog team yet. (Photo: Fresno Bee Staff)

In 2011, Rodney Terry was hired as Fresno State’s head coach. Terry was well-known for his recruiting efforts at Texas, where he was able to secure commitments from the likes of current NBA players Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson, as well as current Miami (FL) guard Sheldon McClellan (who is averaging 19.8 ppg as a senior this season). It made sense that it would take a few years to get the Fresno State program back on its feet, and it finally feels like the Bulldogs are beginning to walk on their own in Terry’s fifth season.

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We’ve talked about it a lot around these parts this year, since before the season even began — so many Mountain West teams putting all their eggs in a very small scheduling basket. For instance, Utah State’s only really quality non-conference game was its rivalry game with BYU. After losing that one, it was assured that their best win prior to the calendar flipping over to conference play would be at UC Santa Barbara – a good victory for sure, but not one to pin your NCAA Tournament hopes on. To make matters worse, Utah State backed up that BYU loss with a home loss to Pacific. So now the Aggies sit at 5-2; they’re lucky to have an RPI in the low 40s; and they face the prospect of needing a very strong run through the Mountain West on their first go-round in order to get themselves in the NCAA Tournament talk later this year.

Preston Medlin And Utah State Don’t Have A Lot To Cheer About After Dropping A Home Game to Pacific (Rick Egan/Salt Lake Tribune)

Likewise, Boise State went out and put together a schedule not befitting for a squad with borderline Top 25 talent and arguably the best team in school history. Certainly, they’re in the midst of the toughest stretch of their non-conference schedule, what with a trip to Kentucky on Tuesday night followed by a visit from an undefeated Saint Mary’s team on Saturday. But, as could have been expected, the Broncos struck out against the talented Wildcats, getting killed on the glass and at the rim and not being able to find enough good clean looks from deep against their long and athletic guards. Now all their hopes for a quality non-conference win get pinned on Saturday’s game against the Gaels. Again, on the basis of six wins in seven games, the Broncos are fortunate to have an RPI of #40, but with no resume wins in the non-conference, those four conference games against New Mexico and San Diego State in conference will loom large.

You see, it is only the Aztecs and the Lobos who have succeeded in coming away with some quality wins in the non-conference. SDSU has scalps from Creighton and Marquette, while New Mexico’s got UAB and Cincinnati on the wall already, with Kansas in Kansas City looming on Saturday and Marquette up the following Saturday. None of the victims of the Lobos or Aztecs are elite teams, but they’ve at least helped their teams to RPIs of #11 and #17, respectively. At the quarter-pole of the year, those two squads are alone among Mountain West teams on the good side of the resume ledger.

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