The WCC Tournament kicks off with the most glorious bracket that every single mid major league should use (I’m very serious here) on Thursday, with the Gonzaga Bulldogs not hitting the court until the semifinals on Monday.
The Gonzaga Bulldogs find themselves in a not normal position: the No. 2 seed, which unfortunately means an 8:30 pm PT tip-off at the earliest.
Gonzaga is probably a lock for the NCAA Tournament. Saint Mary’s should be as well. The big story will be whether or not the WCC can pull off a rare three-bid league. This year, it seems more possible than ever.
Some storylines to watch:
Can Gonzaga finally win a game against Saint Mary’s?
If both teams win their semifinal matchup, this will be the seventh-straight year the Zags and the Gaels have met in the WCC Championship. For the most part, they have traded blows, with the Gaels winning the past two WCC Tournament titles.
Saint Mary’s seems and plays like a team whose sole purpose in life is to beat Gonzaga, largely at the expense of a style that is capable of winning multiple NCAA Tournament games.
Ask any coach out there, and they will tell you how hard it is to win against a team three times in a season. The Gaels have never beat Gonzaga three times in a season in the Mark Few era.
This season, Saint Mary’s won in Moraga by four points and then in Spokane by seven–however the Spokane game was a bit of an asterisk thanks to the Gonzaga Senior Night lineup fiasco.
Can a dark horse emerge?
The Vegas odds will definitely favor Saint Marys or Gonzaga, but the real degenerate gamblers should take a hard look at the Santa Clara Broncos.
The No. 4 seeded Broncos have demonstrated multiple times during conference play that they can absolutely bomb the living shit out of the three ball, hanging 103 on Gonzaga and 109 on Washington State, both on the road.
On the season, the Broncos are shooting 37.5 percent as a team from three (good for No. 20 in the nation) and that figure rises to 40 percent during conference play. During conference play, nearly 50 percent of their shot attempts are threes. It is just as easy to envision Santa Clara going down in a flaming blaze of glory as it is to cut down the nets in Vegas.
Why no love for San Francisco?
In the way that the Saint Mary’s Gaels are designed to disrupt the Zags, San Francisco isn’t. The Dons have legitimate scorers in Malik Thomas and Marcus Williams. But they do not have the interior presence to compete with Gonzaga whatsoever, which is problematic because the identity of this Zags team is interior presence.
The Dons are one of the nation’s best teams at denying the three, but that doesn’t matter as much when your theoretical opponent (Gonzaga) doesn’t rely on the three.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good San Francisco team and if they had a shot in the NCAA Tournament I bet they could compete. But this year’s squad just isn’t quite it and I don’t see them making it past Gonzaga in the semifinals.
Does Gonzaga need the automatic berth?
Short answer, no. The Zags are ranked way too high in all of the metrics used by the selection committee. With last week’s wins over Santa Clara and San Francisco, the Zags are a more respectable 3-6 in Quad 1 wins and 5-2 in Quad 2 wins.
For seeding purposes, a loss maybe dooms them to the No. 8/9 seed and if they win the whole thing then perhaps they land as the No. 7 seed. Either way, not optimal seeding to try and make your 10th-straight Sweet 16 because you are either facing a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed in the second round.