LAS VEGAS — According to bracketology experts, No. 15 BYU is a lock for the NCAA Tournament, no matter what happens at the West Coast Conference Tournament at Orleans Arena, which tipped off Thursday.
Unlike recent seasons, the No. 2 seed Cougars, who play in Monday’s semifinals (9:30 p.m. MST, ESPN2) with a shot at advancing to the WCC final Tuesday, don’t need to capture the tournament title to get to the Big Dance.
Still, BYU is motivated to win it.
The Cougars haven’t won a conference title in 19 years. It last happened on March 10, 2001, when BYU edged New Mexico 69-65 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas to win the Mountain West Conference Tournament title and earn an automatic bid to the NCAAs.
What would it mean for this BYU team, which has won nine consecutive games, to finally win a league title for the first time in nearly two decades?
“It would be incredible. I think we’re due. It’s time. We’re all so locked in on that,” said senior forward Yoeli Childs. “We’re locked in on taking one game at a time. We’ve been lucky enough to put ourselves in a position where it’s Monday and Tuesday. If we take care of business Monday, then we’ll worry about Tuesday. Yeah, we’re due. It’s about time we take care of business.”
“Whoever we’re playing on Monday night, it’s going to be monstrous. It’s going to take everything we have. I hope we get to have that conversation where we’re engaged in the game that would give us the chance to do that.” — BYU coach Mark Pope
The only other times that BYU has won a conference tournament — the 1991 Western Athletic Conference title, when it knocked off No. 8 Utah in Laramie; and the 1992 WAC crown, when current Cougar forward Dalton Nixon’s dad, Kevin Nixon, sank a 54-footer at the buzzer to beat UTEP in Fort Collins.
For now, of course, BYU coach Mark Pope is only thinking about winning that semifinal game on Monday.
“Whoever we’re playing on Monday night, it’s going to be monstrous. It’s going to take everything we have. I hope we get to have that conversation where we’re engaged in the game that would give us the chance to do that,” Pope said. “We’re not spending a lot of time on that. What I’m concerned about is this time off and this long winning streak and these veteran guys and all the publicity that we’re getting. All the normal human-being response to all that is to kind of lose you edge and kind of get distracted and kind of start to have your own agenda and not to have the desperate urgency you might have after a loss, which sometimes can be such a gift. Our focus is how to recapture that. That’s what every team in America is trying to focus on and it’s not an easy task.”
If the Cougars are able to win what is expected to be a matchup against No. 3 seed Saint Mary’s in the semifinals, it’s very likely that the top-seeded Zags, who are ranked No. 2 in the country, will be waiting for them in the title tilt.
If that showdown happens, Gonzaga will be looking to avenge a 91-78 loss to BYU in Provo on Feb. 22.
Since joining the WCC in 2011-12, the Cougars have proven it can beat the Zags in Spokane and in Provo. But they’ve never accomplished the feat in Las Vegas, where Gonzaga has a distinct homecourt advantage. The Cougars are 0-5 against the Zags at Orleans Arena.
Last season, Saint Mary’s ended Gonzaga’s six-year reign as WCC Tournament champions with a 60-47 victory in the title game.
The Gaels were sitting on the NCAA Tournament bubble at the time and needed an upset of the Zags to punch their ticket to the Big Dance. How did Saint Mary’s do it?
“It was kind of like a road game. It was a neutral site but 95% of the crowd was Gonzaga fans. We had a strategy going into that game, we stuck with it and it paid off,” Saint Mary’s guard Tanner Krebs recalled earlier this season. “We believed in each other. We had played them at home and played them pretty close. We knew we had a shot at these guys. We believed we could get it done. We held them to 48 points, the lowest score they had that year. That helped a lot. Everyone talked about it like it was an upset but we went into that game knowing we could win it. We knew we needed to win that game to get into the tournament. If we don’t, we’re not going. We didn’t want to leave anything to chance.”
For BYU, the circumstances are different than they were for Saint Mary’s a year ago. Will the Cougars be able to play loose knowing they don’t have to win it all in Vegas to get into the NCAA Tournament?
“We haven’t functioned that way all year long. We haven’t functioned past Monday all year long. We’ve really fought hard to take the one thing that’s ahead of us,” Pope said. “We just know that Monday is the biggest game we’ve ever played. Just like last Saturday was the biggest game that we’ve ever played. I’ve repeated that all season to stay in the mind frame. Clearly, the guys understand that we’re in a pretty good position right now but that’s in the background noise. This team has felt the success that you can have when you focus 100% on the next game.”