Bursting Bubbles

I have to preface this by saying that did my undergraduate schooling at a mid-major (Valpo), so I'm certainly a little biased. I was watching FSN's coverage of the Pac-10 Quarterfinals last night, and the announcers were lamenting the fact that the West Coast Conference would probably get three teams (San Diego, Gonzaga and Saint' Mary's) in the NCAA tournament, while Pac-10 teams like Oregon and Arizona State might be left on the outside looking in. They argued that the Pac-10 was a much tougher conference than the WCC (a point I'm not going to argue), and it was a shame that the WCC was going to get three teams because one team unexpectedly the conference tournament on its home floor, while Pac-10 teams that went .500 in conference play would be NIT-bound. This is what I say to them: Tell your Oregons (who lost to Saint Mary's and Oakland in the regular season by the way) and your Arizona State's (who's biggest non-conference win outside of Xavier was Nebraska) to beat someone. The Pac-10 plays a true round-robin schedule. ASU beat rival Arizona twice (good wins), but also lost to Washington and Cal. They don't play an unbalanced schedule like the SEC does, so ASU and Oregon both had plenty of opportunities to win one or two more games and could not get it done. Tough luck. I guarantee (and this is where the bias comes in) that teams like VCU (regular season champs in the CAA) and Illinois State (second in the Missouri Valley) have a much better chance of pulling an upset than a couple of .500 teams from the Pac-10 do. It would be a tremendous shame (especially given the recent success of Gonzaga, Butler and George Mason to name a few) if VCU, Illinois State and Saint Mary's were left out of the Dance in favor of teams like Arizona State, Oregon and Villanova. Here's hoping the selection committee wises up.