Michael Vernetti is the RTC correspondent for the West Coast Conference.
When you’re smaller and lesser-known than the competition you’ve got to do things differently from them – and preferably smarter.
That’s been the operating philosophy of Jamie Zaninovich in his four years as commissioner of the West Coast Conference, a basketball-first league of faith-based institutions with no pretense of BCS connections. It showed in the contract Zaninovich negotiated with ESPN in one of his first acts as commissioner to bring WCC games to a wider audience than the mighty Pac-12. It worked last August when Zaninovich snuck in under the radar and convinced Brigham Young University to leave the Mountain West Conference and play all sports outside of football in the WCC. (Granted, BYU’s inclusion in the WCC might be short-lived as the Cougars’ infatuation with membership in the Big 12 continues even though the Big 12 apparently doesn’t return the affection. For now, though, Zaninovich has seen his conference rise to seventh place among Division I basketball leagues according to CBSSports.com analyst Jeff Goodman.)
Jamie Zaninovich's Progressive Ideas Are Pushing the WCC to New Heights
Zaninovich’s flair for innovation manifested itself again last week when the WCC held a groundbreaking Media Day. Rather than the dreary non-event most conferences schedule once a year to allow coaches to make their pre-season predictions, the WCC’s event was all about new media and new ways to reach the public. For starters, the conference took advantage of its high-tech neighborhood and staged the event at the headquarters of growing media giant YouTube, which counts some 450 million monthly viewers. Chew over that figure a second and then compare it with the few millions that the biggest traditional media outlets brag about.
Michael Vernetti is the RTC correspondent for the West Coast Conference.
Reader’s Take I
Top Storylines
No. 1. The West Coast Conference has a ready-made top storyline for 2011-12: the addition (and possible subtraction) of Brigham Young University to the league. Initially seen as a coup for highly-regarded WCC Commissioner Jamie Zaninovich, BYU’s status as a WCC member got caught up in the latest craziness involving BCS football conferences. With some sources insisting the Cougars were just waiting for an opportune moment (or invitation) to bolt to the Big 12, much criticism has come down upon the institution for flirting with WCC membership while seeking greater opportunities elsewhere. Sadly, as in all the BCS conference upheavals, the uncertainty is driven by football and possible revenues therefrom. BYU officials have done little to reassure WCC members that they’re in it for the long run, so fans will just have to watch and wait to see what happens. Regardless of long-term prospects, however, the Cougars are competing in the WCC for the 2011-12 season and that is the top storyline.
BYU is a Member of the WCC, But For How Long?
BYU’s inclusion brings a perennial top 25 team into a league that was already on the upswing with the continued success of Gonzaga, the emergence of Saint Mary’s as a postseason regular and the upsurge in other programs such as Portland, San Francisco and Santa Clara. Expectations that the WCC might become a consistent three-bid NCAA conference have fueled excitement for the coming season, and sparked hot stove league discussions over which of the conference’s consensus top three programs will emerge as the champion and recipient of an automatic NCAA Tournament invitation. Strong arguments can be made for BYU, Gonzaga or Saint Mary’s capturing that prize, and strong arguments are what fuels fan interest.
No. 2. Will Elias Harris have a break-out season in 2011-12 and carry Gonzaga past the early-round NCAA departures (GU’s last Sweet Sixteen appearance was in 2009) that have haunted the Zags the last two years? It is hard to pinpoint where this surge in Harris excitement comes from – certainly not the tight-lipped Gonzaga basketball program under non-boaster Mark Few – but it has been repeated enough to take on a life of its own. It seems to be based on the fact that he burst on the scene as an explosive scorer and rebounder as a 20-year-old freshman from Germany, posting 15/7 scoring and rebounding averages. He fizzled somewhat last season, at least partially stemming from shoulder and Achilles injuries, and so the stage is set for a comeback. What Harris boosters don’t take into account is that the league may have found ways to defend him based on his weaknesses in putting the ball on the floor, a sameness in his offensive moves (you can only make that power spin move so often) and his penchant for giving up the ball when pressured. Whether it’s a break-out or something less, Harris’ junior season will establish whether he is a superstar or just a good small forward.
Perhaps the winds of change are in the air after all. Not a month after Taylor Branch’s opus in The Atlanticexcoriated the NCAA for its stubborn adhesion to the twin tenets of amateurism and the “student-athlete,” and not five months after Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney floated an idea to provide a “full cost of attendance” stipend to its players, the NCAA’s president, Mark Emmert, appears to be on board. Emmert told the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics Monday that he feels the time is ripe for addressing such an inequity for the first time in a couple of generations. What does the NCAA say the gap between the value of tuition, fees, room, board, and books versus the full cost of attendance amounts to? Try $2,000 per year.
Emmert Appears Willing to Open the Floodgates
This week, I’ll be asking the board to support a proposal to allow conferences — not mandate anyone, but allow conferences, not individual institutions — to increase the value of an athletic grant in aid to more closely approach the full cost of attendance. […] We are going to create a model that would allow — probably… up to $2,000 in addition to tuition, fees, room and board, books and supplies.
Interesting. A couple of grand may not seem like much considering the astronomical dollar figures that schools make on the backs of these players, but it’s not insignificant either. A two-semester school year encompasses roughly nine months for an athlete: dividing that figure by 39 weeks results in an allowance of roughly $51 per week. What college student couldn’t use a little shy of ten bucks a day to buy pizza, fill up his gas tank and occasionally join his buddies for an evening out to the movies and some greasy spoon afterward? It seems a pittance given the figures going into the coffers of the power conference schools, right? But therein lies the problem.
This Texas A&M to the SEC thing has certainly gotten interesting. Despite previous assurances from the Big 12 that none of its ten institutions would create a legal barrier to TAMU leaving the conference, Baylor, perhaps seeing the CUSA or WAC writing on the wall, has other thoughts in mind. Mike DeCourcy is correct in writing that Big 12 schools (and really, all of the schools around the country) are being extremely shortsighted in their our-time, right-now mentality, but the SEC has been clear in that it will only take a school into its league if it is free and clear of any legal liabilities. Texas A&M was all set to join the SEC on Wednesday, but Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe stated in an email to the SEC on Tuesday night that previous conversations in fact only referred to conference obligations, and that individual schools would still need to waive their rights in order for A&M to move to the new league. Apparently eight of the nine remaining conference members, with Oklahoma as the lone exception, are currently unwilling to waive their rights. “We are being held hostage right now,” TAMU president R. Bowen Loftin said on Wednesday. So what next? Our best guess is that Texas A&M will negotiate some kind of settlement agreement with Baylor that will ultimately destroy the Big 12, but the truth is that nobody really knows at that point.
Washington announced that its junior point guard and former McDonald’s All-American, Abdul Gaddy, has been cleared by his doctors to go 100% back on the court in practices. The much-maligned player tore his ACL on January 4 last season during a Husky practice, and after 13 games at 21 MPG, he appeared to be slowly adjusting to his role as a pass-first point guard on a deep and athletic Washington team. His 3.1 assist to one turnover ratio was very promising, though, on the heels of a freshman season where it was much closer to even (1.3 to 1). Lorenzo Romar’s team lost a huge amount of its production from last season’s NCAA Third Round squad, but big things are expected from sophomores CJ Wilcox and Terrence Ross so the Huskies will need Gaddy at full strength to get them the ball on the wings in the right spots. Most every analyst believes that the 19-year old Gaddy has some talent, his problem has been simply a matter of harnessing it.
Yesterday Luke Winn brought us a list of the top ten most efficient guards of the so-called ‘efficiency era.’ Today he moves on to the wings. If you are in the business of guessing who the top players are in the last decade from an efficiency standpoint, you probably won’t do a lot better than JJ Redick, Adam Morrison and Brandon Roy in 2005-06 season. These three players in that single year represent three of the top five seasons from the wing in the last ten years — perhaps you’re not surprised by Redick and Morrison as a college hoops fan, but Roy’s 2006-07 NBA ROY season perhaps was a clue to just how good he was in college too.
Unfortunate news from the WCC, but Santa Clara senior star Marc Trasoliniwill miss his senior season after tearing his ACL in an exhibition game in his hometown, Vancouver, British Columbia, on Tuesday night. He came down awkwardly just a mere two minutes into the game and doctors diagnosed his injury soon thereafter. Trasolini was the second leading returning scorer for the Broncos at 13/6 and his absence in 2011-12 definitely puts a crimp in plans for Kerry Keating’s team to make a run at Gonzaga and St. Mary’s in the league next season.
There’s been a lot of discussion about how schools might try to game the APR/930 system now that they can actually lose scholarships, and eventually, postseason opportunities, as a result. This article from the off-the-beaten-path of the Dakotas suggests that even at that level, schools might use their last few scholarships to load up on high GPA students in order to make sure they reach the written threshold. As South Dakota head coach Dave Boots states, “all three of the [international] kids that we signed are really good students.” Mid-major games but big-time grades — is that what we’re heading toward? Rest assured that if a marginal couple of D-I schools like South Dakota and South Dakota State are already doing this, the power conference schools have institutionalized it. As we wrote several weeks ago, this is not a good thing.
Now that we’ve spent the last six weeks reviewing most of the Division I conferences, let’s take a look back at the entire list with the summer #1 power ranking for each as we head into the fall… [ed note: to see all of the Summer Updates in order of release, click here]
We currently have openings for conference correspondent roles with the following six leagues. Please email us at rushthecourt@yahoo.com with links to writing samples if you have an interest.
Game #172. The WCC title still goes through Gonzaga, as St. Mary’s and the Zags match up again in the Championship Game for the third season in a row.
Midway through the West Coast Conference regular season, it appeared that St. Mary’s had taken the mantle from stalwart Gonzaga as the “it” team in the league. The Zags were reeling after a home loss to the Gaels, the first such loss in a decade and a half which followed up road Ls at San Francisco and Santa Clara. Randy Bennett’s team, on the other hand, was sitting pretty at 6-0 and seemed on a course with destiny to win its first outright WCC title in a long while. Didn’t happen that way. After that game in Spokane, Mark Few’s Bulldogs got it together and ran off nine conference wins in a row; the Gaels, perhaps feeling the pressure of playing from ahead, stumbled in losses at Portland, at San Diego and at home against the hated Zags. Needless to say, unlike last season, both schools are perched precariously on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament — there is a high likelihood that tonight’s loser will not get invited to the Big Dance next weekend. There’s a decent likelihood that both will be. It’s difficult to say, but both squads will bring everything they have to make sure that they’re not the team sweating through the next six days waiting to hear from about their future from a bunch of Indianapolis fat cats. Join us tonight for what promises to be a battle extraordinaire from two teams that really don’t like each other very much.
That’s Debatable is back for another year of expert opinions, ridiculous assertions and general know-it-all-itude. Remember, kids, there are no stupid answers, just stupid people. We’ll try to do one of these each week during the season. We’re fairly discerning around here, but if you want to be included, send us an email with your take telling us why at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.
This Week’s Topic: Many of the small conferences are starting their tournaments this week. Which one do you find the most compelling in terms of the possibility of upsets and/or creating chaos for the NCAA Selection Committee in a little over a week? Also, pick a relatively unknown team that you’d like to see make a run through their conference tourney so that America will get to watch them play on the big stage in March Madness.
Walker Carey, RTC contributor.
I think the Horizon League Tournament is the small conference tournament that is the most compelling in terms of creating chaos for the NCAA Selection Committee. In my mind, Butler, Cleveland State, and Milwaukee are the only teams that have the capability of winning the tournament. If Butler loses (which is very possible), it will be very interesting to see how the committee will view the Bulldogs’ resume. I tend to believe that Cleveland State will win the Horizon League championship because they have the best player in the league on their team in senior guard Norris Cole. I would enjoy to see the Vikings make a run to the Horizon League championship and shake things up in the tournament like they did when they were a #13 seed and upset #4 seed Wake Forest two seasons ago. With Cole, I think this is very possible for Gary Waters’ Cleveland State squad.
John Stevens, RTC editor.
I’ll take the Colonial. You’ve got six 20-win teams out of twelve, and you’ve got to figure George Mason has a bid locked up with Old Dominion looking good, as well. Let’s say someone like Drexel (a 20-9 team with a resume that includes a win at Louisville, mind you) gets hot and wins this thing. Could we be looking at a four-bid year for the Colonial, with James Madison or VCU sneaking in as a function of the soft bubble this year? And how can you not root for William & Mary, a team that’s never been to the NCAA Tournament, after the fantastic case they made for at-large inclusion last year? As far as a team I’d like to see make a run, I’ll go with Morehead State. It wouldn’t be much of a run, of course, since as a 2-seed they earned that weird double-bye in the OVC Tournament and only need to win two games (same situation as 1-seed Murray State) to claim the title. But the world needs to see Kenneth Faried play at this level one more time. He and the Eagles won a preliminary round game in 2009 before getting cooked by 1-seed Louisville, and two NCAA Tournament games for the Fabulous Faried just doesn’t seem like enough.
Danny Spewak, RTC contributor.
Vermont won the America East Conference by one game and rightfully earned the top seed in the tournament by avoiding slip-ups against the league’s lower-tier teams. You’ll want to keep an eye on this tourney, though, because Vermont hasn’t exactly faired well against the top of the AE. Second-seeded Boston University swept Vermont this year, including an overtime win Sunday. And the third seed, Maine, routed the Catamounts on their home floor back in January. The Black Bears, a preseason favorite, have since collapsed and lost seven of eight games to finish the season. Regardless, either team could still pose a threat to Vermont’s NCAA tourney hopes at some point during the next week. For sympathy’s sake, I’d like to see Weber State win the Big Sky this March and pluck a spot in the Big Dance. How can you not feel bad for this program? Two years ago, the Wildcats ripped through the league with a 15-1 record but slipped to the NIT. Last year, Anthony Johnson’s legendary performance helped Montana stun the regular season champs again. Finally, 2010-11 appeared to be “The Year,” with two-time POY Damian Lillard returning for his senior year. Naturally, he broke his foot and played just 10 games this year, and he’ll now wait on the status of a medical redshirt. It’d be nice to see the third-seeded Wildcats win three games for their tragic hero.
Game #151. RTC Live is back to cover one of its favorite mid-major rivalries, Gonzaga visiting St. Mary’s in Moraga this evening.
At the mid-point of the WCC season, it appeared that this annual second clash between the two best teams in the conference may not mean much. At the time, St. Mary’s was on a roll, having started off 5-0 in league play before taking down the Zags in their own building for the first time in fifteen long, wrenching seasons. Since that time, SMC has dropped games at Portland in a letdown, at home in a second-half disaster to Utah State in the BracketBusters, and an inexplicable road loss at horrible San Diego that still has people scratching their heads. Gonzaga, on the other hand, hasn’t exactly hit its stride, but since the loss to the Gaels, they’re trending much better. Other than a home loss to Memphis, the Zags have won six WCC games in a row and currently only sit one game back from St. Mary’s in the standings. With a win tonight, the two teams would effectively be tied heading into the last conference game of the season (SMC vs. Portland; Gonzaga at San Diego), setting up an interesting scenario for the weekend and making tonight’s game especially important. It should be a competitive and intense battle tonight on a cold night in Moraga. Join us on RTC Live for all of the action.
Monday’s Syracuse-Villanova and Kansas-Oklahoma State games kicked off Judgment Week at ESPN, and TWTW has no idea what that exactly means. Are our opinions (or “judgments,” if you will) supposed to be dramatically altered based on this week’s outcomes? Syracuse’s win over ’Nova doesn’t mean they’re no longer a flawed team that’s capable of looking great one night and mediocre the next. And barring any game-changing injury, you shouldn’t think differently about a squad based on a couple of games at the end of February. You are who you are at this point — no extra judgments are necessary. So why does ESPN feel the need to dub almost every week now? Just stop at Rivalry Week. Sometimes games are just games, they don’t need any extra labels. There’s only one real judgment to be made this week — Battle: Los Angeles looks like a god-awful movie.
What We Learned
Smith And the Devils Are Back On Top of the Polls, But It Means Less At This Time of Year
We thought that Tristan Thompson was just speaking for Texas when he said that the Longhorns would prefer not to replace Kansas as the No. 1 team in the next AP poll — turns out he was expressing the sentiments for just about every possible No. 1 team in the nation. On Saturday #4 Pittsburgh went down at St. John’s, followed by #2 Texas at Nebraska, and then on Sunday #3 Ohio State lost at Purdue. ESPN Stats & Information said it was the first time that the #1-4 teams in the ESPN/USA Today poll all lost in the same week since 2003 — yikes. But this isn’t the first week that we’ve seen this level of attrition in the polls; remember, it was just a few weeks ago that 13 of the AP’s Top 25 lost and half of the top 10. So who deserves to be #1 now? Duke got the nod on Monday, but do the Blue Devils deserve to be vaulted all the way from #5 to the top? In all honesty, you could probably just put the top six teams on a dartboard (top seven if you want to include BYU who got two first place votes), close your eyes, throw your dart, and there’s your #1 team. Not that it matters — during the season #1 in college hoops has always felt like a superficial title to TWTW. What’s really important is who’s in position for a #1 seed. It’s not important to determine who’s #1 now. The competition to watch is the race to distinguish between teams #4 and #5.
