Men’s
Basketball:
Analysis:
Pac-12 gets it right with 20-game conference schedule, but it can’t stop there
May 3,
2019 at 2:35 pm Updated May 3, 2019 at 5:15 pm
By Jon Wilner of San Jose Mercury News
The Pac-12
got it right with the 20-game conference basketball schedule (starting in
2020-21), but that cannot be the only move.
The addition
of two conference games in late November/early December will generate more
attention for Pac-12 basketball during a slow stretch — the weekend of the
Heisman Trophy, for instance, is one of the lightest of the year in college
sports.
The move
increases the likelihood of the marquee teams meeting twice, instead of once,
in a given year.
And it
should result in an uptick in the conference’s overall strength of schedule:
Where two
nonconference cupcakes once existed — a Cal Baptist and Savannah State here; an
Idaho and Montana State there — each schedule will instead have two Power Five
(i.e., Pac-12) opponents.
But the
changes cannot end there, not if the Pac-12 wants to haul itself out of the
current morass and send more teams to the NCAA tournament on a consistent
basis.
The
conference must take an essential second step and create objective standards
for nonconference schedules.
Currently,
too many teams play too many awful opponents, and those games — win or lose,
but especially lose — drag down the entire conference in the metrics that form
the backbone of the NCAA tournament selection process.
“You don’t
have to tell everybody that they have to play top-10 teams, but you can’t be
playing the bottom third of Division I at home and expect it to help at all,’’
said Greg Shaheen, the former NCAA executive vice president who ran the
tournament for more than a decade.
“There is
a large path of potential opponents that you’re not helping yourself if you
play them. You can’t regard the nonconference thing as one or two games. All of
them have to be better.”
Several
teams already play acceptable nonconference schedules. Arizona and UCLA have
done it for years; Washington and Arizona State have upgraded recently.
But other
programs stock their nonconference lineups with opponents that rank in the
bottom third of Division I, and too few are willing to play true road games.
“Maximum
reward comes by going on the road,’’ Shaheen said.
(Washington
State played five home games last season against teams with NET rankings of at
least 300; Utah played four; Cal, Colorado and Oregon State also played
schedules that could be considered a bit too soft.)
Any
conference-wide upgrade could come about in one of two ways:
The
conference office could serve as a formal adviser in the scheduling process —
the SEC employs this approach — with the authority to put the kibosh on
proposed opponents.
Or the
Pac-12 could establish a minimum acceptable standard by which each team’s
opponents in a given year must have, for example, a collective average NET
ranking of 175 from the previous three seasons.
“We need
better nonconference schedules with meaningful criteria that holds ourselves
accountable for doing things we’re not comfortable doing,’’ Oregon State
athletic director Scott Barnes, former chair of the NCAA selection committee,
told the Hotline recently.
“That
doesn’t mean you have to play murderers row with the schedules, but you have to
be thoughtful.”
The path
is more circuitous than linear, however: The schools must grant the conference
office the authority to force the schools to play tougher schedules.
The topic
is on the agenda when presidents/chancellors meet with conference executives in
June — they must approve any changes in standards to the schedule — and there
are two primary obstacles:
Resistance
by the head coaches, who equate tougher schedules to more losses, and more
losses to quicker terminations. “Head coaches want to protect their career,”
Shaheen said, “but you have to look at what’s best for the conference.”
The
economic aspect: The higher up the Division I food chain you aim in the quest
for quality home games, the bigger the paycheck required. Bottom feeders can be
had for $50,000; midlevel opponents demand $75,000 or $100,000, if not more.
And that’s not a one-time increase.
Upgrading
the overall quality of the nonconference home schedule in a given season would
force programs to increase budgets by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We have
to look at the investment component around this,’’ Barnes said.
And so the
presidents and chancellors will enter the fray.
The
potential benefits that come with greater investment in the nonconference
schedules — more teams in the NCAAs, elevated interest and engagement at the
local level — make this a problem with only one solution.
::::
Cougar Track
& Field
WSU track
& field Wraps Up 2019 Pac-12 Championships
Wells and
Frost post all-time WSU marks during day two.
From WSU
Sports Info 5/12/2019
TUCSON,
Ariz. – The Washington State University Track and Field program concluded
competition at the Pac-12 Championships Sunday evening, as Katelyn Frost and
Emmanuel Wells Jr. each posted top ten all-time WSU marks.
Emmanuel
made a great impact for the Cougars during day two, scoring 11 total points
overall. Wells recorded a time of 10.26 in the 100-meter dash, which elevated
him to seventh best all-time in Washington State history. Emmanuel then posted
a PR in the 200m as well at 20.88 to finish fourth overall and record five
points as well.
WSU saw
multiple athletes scoring points on the men's side throughout the evening,
including in the 110m hurdles as Nick Johnson finished fifth (4 points) with a
time of 13.89, and Christapherson Grant placing seventh (2 points) at 14.12 as
well. Grant totaled three additional points in the 400m hurdles with a PR of
51.29.
Frost
brought home the highest point total for the Cougars on the women's side as she
recorded eight points after placing second in the pole vault. Katelyn posted a
mark of 13-feet 4 1/2 inches (4.08m), which is the fifth best mark all-time in
WSU history in the event.
Molly
Scharmann and Emily Coombs each scored points in the pole vault event as well
with Scharmann totaling five with a mark of 13-feet 2 1/2 inches (4.03m), and
Coombs with four at 12-feet 10 3/4 inches (3.93m). Suzy Pace totaled 2.50
points for WSU in the high jump with a mark of 5-feet 5 1/4 inches (1.66m) to
take sixth place overall.
The
4x100-meter relay team of Jordyn Tucker, Regyn Gaffney, Mackenzie Fletcher, and
Tierney Silliman recorded one point as well for the Cougars with a time of
46.30 for an eighth place finish.
Jacob
Englar posted a fifth place finish (4 points) for the Cougars in the pole vault
with a PR of 16-feet 9 1/2 inches (5.12m). Peyton Fredrickson recorded a fifth
place finish (4 points) as well in the high jump with a mark of 7-feet 1/4 inch
(2.14m), and Robby Flores finished sixth overall (3 points) in the triple jump
at 46-feet 10 3/4 inches (14.29m) as well.
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