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Women
bouncing strong into tournament; men may need luck Schedule strength, ranking in the rating percentage index (RPI), tough road wins and key losses. It’s time for every prospective NCAA Tournament team to pull out the résumé. It’s the tournament or burst for all those bubble teams teetering on the brink of elimination. Well, not quite yet. Selection Sunday is less than a week away, but there’s drama to be had all over the country as teams vie for automatic bids and those precious few at-large positions in the field of 65 or 64 in the case of the women. Championship Week brings what many schools will live or die by, the conference tournament. For women’s basketball, the tourney tips off today, while the men play Thursday. The women enter the tourney as the top seed for the first time in the program’s history. The Frogs (21-7, 13-3 WAC) will play the winner of the play-in game between San Jose State and Texas-El Paso, the two teams at the bottom of the conference. The men (20-10, 9-7 WAC), by virtue of their win against Southern Methodist and UTEP’s win over Hawaii Saturday, are the No. 4 seed and will face Hawaii in the first round. The only similarity between the two squads going into the conference tourney is that both teams are headed to Tulsa, Okla. However, these two will be headed in completely different directions come Selection Sunday. Simply put, the women are headed for another program first, a bid in the NCAAs. The men are hoping and praying not to miss the postseason for the second straight year under head coach Billy Tubbs. I know I skipped over the fleeting chance the Horned Frog men could, by an act of divinity, upset the likes of Fresno State and Tulsa in the tournament. That’s because it won’t happen. Sorry, guys. I’ll give credit where credit is due. The game in Dallas against those Ponies was impressive. Overcoming a 10-point deficit on the road is never easy, especially without two of the leading scorers. There was a lot of heart exhibited on the court, and that’s to be commended. However, that comeback is not enough to impress the committee into a bid. The venue of the tournament is reason enough to believe the men could be bound to National Invitation Tournament at best. When’s the last time TCU won at the Reynolds Center? I don’t know either. Well, I do, but it’s almost better not to bring it up because they’ve never won there. Not many teams have won in Tulsa since the Reynolds Center opened Dec. 29, 1998. In fact, the Golden Hurricane men are 34-4 at home since that date. Three of those 34 wins have come at the expense of TCU. The Horned Frogs have lost by an average of more than 19 points in those three games, including a 103-70 loss last season and most recently, 82-66, Jan. 17. That doesn’t bode well for Horned Frog fans. That doesn’t bode well for anybody hoping to steal the automatic bid from the WAC. Only two teams have won in Tulsa this season, Fresno State and Creighton. Nope, that doesn’t mean Fresno State has the tournament locked up. The Bulldogs very well could win the tournament on the strength players like Melvin Ely and Tito Maddox, who were awarded WAC Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year respectively. But if two of Fresno’s last three road games were any indication, that team’s in some trouble. The Bulldogs lost convincingly at TCU and UTEP by an average of 16 points. However, they’ve won four straight including a win against Tulsa in Fresno. Barring any major upsets, Fresno State and Tulsa are on course for a meeting in the conference championship. Call it a hunch, but it’s just too tough to win in Tulsa, especially twice. So that leaves the women. Head women’s coach Jeff Mittie shrugged off what has become quite the monkey on the back of the TCU basketball programs by simply pointing out that his squad picked up a scant four-point win Feb. 2. It should be said that the Tulsa women have been complete opposite of their male counterparts at the Reynolds Center going a meek 4-11 this season. Perhaps he and his team have reason to exhibit such a confident air. After his version of the Frogs completed a 21-7 season and went 13-3 in the WAC, the Frogs seem poised for at least an at-large bid, if not a run through the tournament for the automatic bid. Simply put — a better RPI, key wins against SMU and Hawaii and a competitive game with No. 1 Tennessee — the women’s résumé is far more attractive than the men, whose résumé package features quality losses to Rice (twice) and San Jose State. Add a conference tourney championship to the women’s accolades, and they will be dancing. Associate
Editor Danny Horne is a senior broadcast journalism major from Carrollton. |