Utah State Wonders What It Will Take to Get Into Tournament

Geography being what it is, it would be difficult for Utah State to play in the Big East Conference or the ACC. The SEC and the Big Ten would be a bit of a stretch, too.

Given that circumstance, the Aggies operate in the Big West Conference, along with a couple of branches of the University of California, Long Beach State, Pacific, Boise State and Idaho. This makes map sense if not March sense.

Each March, when the NCAA tournament selection committee gathers to pick over peanuts and pretzels and assemble the tournament grid, the heavyweight conferences get their four, five, maybe six berths, and the Big West gets its obligatory one.

This conference is a perpetual NCAA also-ran, annually providing its leftovers for the NIT, March’s consolation prize. Stew Morrill, coach of the Aggies, thought he had this whole thing all figured out a year ago.

“I’ve been a head coach at three different universities,” said Morrill, who spent time at Montana and Colorado State before settling in Logan. “Whenever you didn’t get into the tournament and you asked for an explanation, you’d get told that your RPI wasn’t high enough. We’ve been down that road quite a few times.”

The Ratings Percentage Index is an esoteric formula that considers record, where a team won games and where it lost them, strength of schedule and other factors. It is college basketball’s Dow Jones average.

Last year, the Aggies finished the regular season at 28-5, including a 19-game winning streak, and won their conference tournament. That translated to an RPI of 28, thoroughly pleasing to the folks at Utah State.

“We were hearing that we’d get an eighth seed, probably get to stay out West,” Morrill said.

The committee had other ideas.

The Big West champs became a No. 12 seed, shipped South to Birmingham, Ala., to play defending champion Connecticut in the first round of the tournament.

“That was a little curious,” Morrill decided. “Before our tournament, the talk in our league was we were in the NCAA, win or lose. We win and it’s a 12th seed. That means we probably weren’t in if we had not won that last game.”

UConn beat the Aggies by eight in the tournament opener. The season was over at 28-6. Thank you for coming and arrive home safely.

“Don’t get me wrong, we were happy to be in the tournament.” said Morrill, sounding as diplomatic as a coach can. “But, we would have loved to stay in the West with a better seed. With an RPI of 28, to get a 12th seed, well, we had some questions.”

There were, however, no answers. There never are. The message is always the same. Go win your games and then we’ll let you know if it’s good enough.

Last March, the Aggies thought that fancy RPI would take care of them. Now, equipped with another 20-plus win season, they wonder what the committee has in store this time.