A moderately interesting read, albeit without much new information. However, I still find it puzzling that coaches believe they will determine their best team on a neutral floor in the tournament. Or rather, I guess it's coaches like Fish whose teams cannot win the regular season who seem to believe that.
MARCH SADNESS As NCAA Tournament ends, Big Sky still seeks relevance
• BY GREG RACHAC
Emblematic of the nation’s leading scorer, Tyler Harvey buried a 3-pointer to keep Eastern Washington ahead of Georgetown with less than six minutes left in the first half of their NCAA Tournament matchup two weeks ago.The Big Sky Conference champion Eagles actually led through most of the opening 20 minutes, giving credence to the belief that, as the 13 seed in the South Region, they could upset the fourth-seeded Hoyas, a storied program and one of the top teams from the Big East.
But that perception quickly gave way to a familiar reality. Georgetown went to work and took a 10-point lead into halftime. The Hoyas never led by fewer than seven points after that.
“Eastern looked like a team that could win a (tournament) game,” Montana coach Travis DeCuire said. “They had a matchup that they thought was the type of matchup they would want. They went out and they fought, and they came close.”
But at what point are fighting and coming close not good enough?
For the Big Sky Conference, the NCAA Tournament is little more than a prelude to spring football practice. The Big Dance has chewed up and spit out Big Sky teams since it expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
Over that three-decade span, the Big Sky is 3-31 in tournament games. It has lost 10 in a row since Montana knocked off Nevada in a fortuitous 12-vs.-4 matchup in 2006, and hasn’t been close to a Sweet 16 since Weber State almost cleared the hurdle in 1999.
The Eagles’ tournament appearance was just the second in program history, and they held their own. But they didn’t make
enough perimeter shots and couldn’t contend with Georgetown’s size.
"You saw my team has great character and great fight,” EWU coach Jim Hayford told reporters. “We played it down until the end. I'm just really proud. That was a Top 25 team that beat us and we gave them a really good game."
Fair enough. But as another NCAA Tournament comes to a close Monday night, and after another one-and-done performance, the Big Sky Conference is still stuck in mid-major purgatory.
In a world where upsets happen regularly, and programs you’ve never heard of make the Sweet 16, simply being competitive in an opening-round game isn’t what the league aspires to anymore.
“I’ve been here 20 years and we’ve had (three) wins in that time,” said Ron Loghry, the Big Sky’s deputy commissioner and its director of championships. “When we sat with the coaches, we challenged them to find ways that we can make basketball better in the Big Sky. We’ve got to get better.”
A Sweet prospect
Is it possible? A Big Sky team in the Sweet 16 or beyond? The fact that nobody’s gotten there in the 30 years since the tournament expanded doesn’t jibe with mid-major trends.
Since 1995, the average seed for the Big Sky’s automatic tournament bid is 15. It’s true that 15 seeds have won only seven games since 1991, but Florida Gulf Coast of the not-so-vaunted Atlantic Sun Conference, who nobody saw coming, went all the way to the Sweet 16 just two years ago after knocking off second-seeded Georgetown in the opening round.
Other leagues of the Big Sky’s ilk have monumental first-round upsets on their resumes. Lehigh, of the Patriot League, knocked off Duke as a 15 seed in 2012. That same year, another 15-seed, Norfolk State of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, stunned second-seeded Missouri.
Montana State coach Brian Fish was a part of three tournament wins as an assistant under Dana Altman at Oregon. He’s seen it first hand.
“When you’re a team like Montana State, you’re probably playing a team that’s been there before and is expected to be there,” Fish said. “Getting your emotions under control is a big battle. Matchups are obviously a key. Managing the players’ lives and keeping them focused is also very important.
“When you’re a Montana State, the first-round team you play is expecting to win a game or two, so you have to battle against
your team just being happy to be there.”
Go down the list: Gonzaga's huge run 1999; Hampton’s shocker over Iowa State in 2001; Bucknell’s victory over Kansas in 2005; Mercer’s upset of Duke last year; Georgia State's stunner over Baylor just two weeks ago ... none were just happy to be there. These were mid-level programs taking down teams with legitimate national championship aspirations.
La Salle, a 13 seed from the Atlantic 10, crashed the Sweet 16 party (with Florida Gulf Coast) all the way from the preliminary First Four round in 2013. Ohio, a 13 out of the Mid-American Conference, made the Sweet 16 the year before that. In 2006, Bradley, a 13 from the Missouri Valley, got there.
Butler, out of the Horizon League, made it all the way to the national championship game in back-to-back years (2010 and 2011), where it lost to Duke and UConn. That was unprecedented.
These days Butler is a member of the Big East and no longer fits the mid-major profile.
And then there’s the Colonial Athletic Association, which had the gall to send two teams to the Final Four in the past 10 years — George Mason in 2005 and Virginia Commonwealth in 2011. The CAA, like the Big Sky, is one of the top FCS conferences in football, but that’s where the comparisons end.
Beyond that, the SoCon, the Southland, the Summit and the Sun Belt — all similar to the Big Sky in size and scope — have Sweet 16 appearances under their belts in the past 30 years.
“I don’t think as a league we’re really happy with where we’re at,” Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said. “As a collective group we want to raise the level of basketball and get a team that can advance further into the tournament.
“There has been a lot of strategizing and talking among ADs, coaches and the commissioner. How can we lift the level of play so that we’re all rising, so we get a better seed to win a game or two and increase visibility and revenue for the conference?”
Both George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth eventually headed for greener and more lucrative pastures in the A-10. Meanwhile, George Mason coach Jim Larranaga is now at the helm at Miami (Fla.). VCU’s Shaka Smart just parlayed his success into securing the coaching job at Texas.
“Of course we’re saying we want more,” said DeCuire, who was an assistant in the CAA at Old Dominion under former Montana coach Blaine Taylor when George Mason made its run.
DeCuire inherited the Griz program from previous coach Wayne Tinkle, who guided it to the tournament three times between 2010 and 2013.
“To get to the tournament three out of four years, at some point it’s not about just getting there anymore,” DeCuire said. “It’s about trying to advance. When you see the Wichita States and the Butlers of the world doing what they’ve done, you want to be a part of that. There’s no question about that.”
It’s all about matchups
Since 1985, the Big Sky has been a 13 seed or a 14 seed a combined 16 times. In history, there have been 45 first-round tournament victories by those seeds, but the Big Sky has just two of them — Weber State in 1995 and 1999.
In 1999, after stunning third-seeded North Carolina in the opening round, the No. 14 Wildcats took sixth-seeded Florida to the wire before losing in overtime.
And in 1995, after shocking No. 3 Michigan State, the 14th-seeded Wildcats had Allen Iverson-led Georgetown on the ropes but lost on a last-second tip-in.
Two great chances went by the wayside, and the league, aside from Montana’s 13-point loss to Boston College in the second round in 2006, hasn’t come close since.
Aside from the Grizzlies’ 2006 meeting with Nevada, the Big Sky isn’t getting good opening-round matchups.
Montana’s 12 seed that year was a big-time anomaly, but it was earned in the non-conference season — notably with a blowout victory over Stanford — and led to a tournament win and a chance to play for a Sweet 16 berth. In 2010, the Grizzlies, as a 14 seed, nearly knocked off New Mexico. But in 2012 and 2013, when they had a roster conducive to winning on the national stage with guards Will Cherry and Kareem Jamar, the Griz were trounced in opening-round games, first by 24 points to Wisconsin and then in a 47-point blowout at the hands of Syracuse. Both times, UM was a 13 seed.
Tinkle was especially critical of the matchup with Syracuse, calling it “a joke” that the Griz, who’d won 25 games, were pitted against a team that eventually went to the Final Four.
But UM’s RPI number (Ratings Percentage Index, which ranks teams based on quality wins and strength of schedule) was buried at 75, and it did not have a significant non-conference win.
What it takes according to the latest available data from the Office of Postsecondary Education, Montana incurred about $1.8 million in men’s basketball expenses in the 2012-13 season, the most of any Big Sky Conference program. Florida Gulf Coast spent $1.6 million. La Salle spent $2.8. By contrast, VCU’s expenses topped $5 million that year. Butler’s hovered around $4.3 million. USA Today reported that in 2011, after Smart guided VCU to the Final Four, his annual salary of $460,000 was bumped to $1.2 million. The raise was facilitated, the newspaper reported, by an increase in student fees.
(For the record, Smart’s salary at Texas, according to the Dallas Morning News, will be worth roughly $3 million.)
Haslam said DeCuire’s base salary is about $140,000, but with incentives can reach as high as $200,000. Coaches’ salaries in the Big Sky are comparatively low. “We certainly don’t measure up to other mid-majors,” Haslam said. “We don’t measure up to them with what we pay our coaches or what we put into our programs. “There’s a fine balance between selling yourself to generate revenue. The investment other mid-majors are making revolves around recruiting and getting games for the non-conference schedule. Our travel is certainly very expensive because of where we have to go. We cover a big area, and we invest highly in football. It’s the main revenue-generator for us.”
The road to the Sweet 16 or beyond for the Big Sky Conference starts with scheduling teams from power conferences, winning those games, building your RPI and securing a favorable seed.
Montana, for instance, will play games against Kansas, Washington and Gonzaga next year, which provides a good opportunity.
It also may consist of a neutral-site conference tournament, which Loghry said is a big priority for the league’s coaches. The league has listened, and is closing in on a decision whether or not to consolidate the league tournament at a predetermined locale. Billings is a finalist to potentially host it.
“You want your best team to win, so maybe a neutral court would determine that better than the way we’ve been doing it,” Loghry said. “That’s why we need to play a neutral-site tournament,” Fish added. “Getting on a neutral site, playing in front of a good crowd ... that might prepare our teams for NCAA Tournament much better.” Or maybe there is no answer.
So much has to come together for a mid-level team to make a big tournament run. Maybe the fact that the Big Sky has been little more than a blip on the NCAA Tournament radar for the better part of 30 years is just dumb luck.
“That’s why it’s March Madness. There is no formula,” DeCuire said. “Sometimes teams that are expected to win don’t. I think at the end of the day the teams that have a chance to make a run or create an upset are the teams that are just playing really good basketball — maybe their best basketball at the tail end of the season.”
Dry decade
A look at the past 10 games played by Big Sky Conference teams in the NCAA Tournament:
2015
No. 4 Georgetown 84, No. 13 Eastern Washington 74
Round of 64
2014
No. 1 Arizona 68, No. 16 Weber State 59
Round of 64
2013
No. 4 Syracuse 81, No. 13 Montana 34 Round of 64 2012 No. 4 Wisconsin 73, No. 13 Montana 49
Round of 64
2011
No. 2 San Diego State 68, No. 15 Northern Colorado 50
Round of 64
2010
No. 3 New Mexico 62, No. 14 Montana 57
Round of 64
2009
No. 4 Xavier 77, No. 13 Portland State 59
Round of 64
2008
No. 1 Kansas 85, No. 16 Portland State 61
Round of 64
2007
No. 2 UCLA 70, No. 15 Weber State 42
Round of 64
2006
No. 4 Boston College 69, No. 12 Montana 56
Round of 32
