BYU Basketball: Cougars now on the outside looking in – Lunardi

For the first time this season, BYU Basketball is now projected to be out of the NCAA Tournament.

On Friday morning, Joe Lunardi released his most recent Bracketology and BYU Basketball is now the first team outside of his tournament field. This is despite that just a week and a half ago following a four game losing streak, the Cougars were the fourth to last team in. Since then, the Cougars have gone 2-0 and fallen five spots in his projections.

Meanwhile, Iowa State and Oklahoma who are each 4-9 in the Big 12 are projected in the field. Why is this? How is this even possible to be so far below .500 in conference play and be in the tournament.

Prestige.

The Big 12, which personally as a BYU fan I can not wait for, took a very unique non conference schedule strategy. Looking at some of the top teams, many of them did not test themselves all that often leading to really good records.

Let’s take Texas Tech for example. In their non conference games, they only played three games against teams that a common fan has probably ever heard of; Tennessee, Providence and Gonzaga. In these three games, they went 1-2. Despite this, the Red Raiders came into Big 12 play with a 11-2 record.  To a common fan who isn’t invested in the TTU, this seems like a great team. The reality though is that most teams in a mid-major conference would be 10-3 with that same schedule.

Another team we can look at is Texas. The Longhorns played Seton Hall (Loss), Gonzaga (Loss) and Stanford (Win). Their other games were against the likes of Arkansas Pine-Bluff, San Antonio and Lamar. They also entered conference play with an 11-2 record.

You can go down the line and see this same pattern for just about every team. Is it wrong? No, it’s a strategy. Essentially what happened was the Big 12 came into conference play with just about every team having a record of 9-3 or better. In fact, the worst record was Oklahoma State who finished their non conference slate 7-5.

What this does is make all of the conference members look extremely strong. So now, Iowa State is losing just about every conference game, but because they are losing to these great teams it doesn’t hurt them, at all. In fact, it appears to help their seeding.

Because of this, mid major teams like BYU lose control of their own destiny to some extent. Suddenly, winning isn’t good enough. At this point, BYU can not lose to St. Mary’s this Saturday. They just can’t. On top of that, they may need to make to the WCC Championship game.  If they lose a game between now and then, they are out.

Again, I’m not criticizing the Big 12, or any other major conference that takes on this scheduling tactic. They are taking advantage of a situation, and in two years BYU Basketball will be doing the same.