Who expected a 10th seed?

[MikeWaters]

Not me. I didn't watch the selection show as I normally do. Not really hopeful for this team. Lost our best player.

But Oregon is a beatable team.

1. Historically BYU underperforms in the tournament
2. Lost our best player
3. Can't play defense

But you have to be happy for the guys who had never gotten to the Dance before.

[MikeWaters]

Nate Silver knows who Kyle Collinsworth is.

He'll get to hang his hat on that for a time.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...l-predictions/

[BlueK]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Not me. I didn't watch the selection show as I normally do. Not really hopeful for this team. Lost our best player.

But Oregon is a beatable team.

1. Historically BYU underperforms in the tournament
2. Lost our best player
3. Can't play defense

But you have to be happy for the guys who had never gotten to the Dance before.

All of what you say is true. The thing is, those kinds of "eyetest" factors are not what they use to seed the tournament. IMO, their #1 agenda item the last several years has been to encourage teams to take risks with their non-conference schedules because it's the only part of the schedule a team can control. It's also good for the game for good teams to play other good teams in the first couple of months of the season before conference play starts. You need these matchups to stir up interest and grow the audience for the sport. It's smart marketing for the committee to incentivize this.

And BYU did that better than just about anyone in the country last year, so they recognized it and rewarded it accordingly. In contrast, Utah did it worse than just about anybody and were punished accordingly. You do have to win some of those games, but BYU did that with wins away from Provo against fellow tournament teams Stanford and Texas -- both teams who did not start off with a lot of hype but who actually had very good seasons. BYU had its flaws, and were on the verge of not getting in at all, but were saved by a strong finish with wins over Gonzaga at home and at St. Mary's.

I think for this season BYU has a little smaller margin of error because unlike last year, most of the bigger non-conference games will be at home (Utah, Stanford, UMass). So the committee is going to want to see more wins against our best non-conference opponents. Also, getting at least one key win in Maui is going to be pretty important, which makes the SDSU game one of the most important of the season. If we lose that, we end up with Chaminade in the second game which is worthless, and then a win in the third one for 5th place could very well be against a non-top 50 team, which doesn't help that much. On the other hand, a win over SDSU likely turns the rest of that tournament into gravy as long as we can take care of business at home in those three big games. SDSU has always been a good matchup for us with Rose's style of play. If we can get them to run with us I really like our chances. We were bad defensively last year but SDSU was bad on offense.