I stand corrected...again

I thought this was the year.  It's not that I thought that: this really WAS the year, if there was ever going to be a year.  Next year, UNLV will be better, BYU will just hope to not drop off too much with 3 of the top 6 (and 4 of the top 9) leaving the team this offseason (Chris Miles and Jonathan Tavernari to graduation and Tyler Haws to a mission), with solid replacements for only 1 of the 3 (incoming freshman Kyle Collinsworth to replace Haws: Chris Collinsworth returns from his mission, but he's no JT).  Now some of the backups can step up and fill starting roles.  But then the 3rd stringers have to become the backups: that is no good if you've ever seen BYU's third string center, James Anderson.  The year after that, Jimmer Fredette graduates, along with defensive and 3-point specialist Jackson Emery and 12th man Logan Magnusson.  Point is: next year's team won't be able to take down UNLV at UNLV.  The year after that is shot, too.  Besides, by then, who knows what will be left of the Mountain West, if anything.

Back to tonight's game: there were certainly plenty of opportunities, but the breaks never went the way of the Cougars.  So what happened?  A couple of shots rimmed out, a couple of no-calls followed by a couple of bad ones, an injury to a starter, a homecourt edge to the lower-seeded team: everyone has their excuse as to why BYU lost THIS game.  My excuse: they got outplayed for 30 of 40 minutes, the fact that they had a chance to win at the end was unbelievable.  But let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

This season, BYU will make its fourth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament.  The previous 3 seasons, BYU played a total of 20 teams that made the tournament the same year they played BYU.  In those 20 games, BYU is 4-1 at home but 3-12 at neutral sites and on the road.  Now the first astonishing fact is the obvious struggles on the road: 80% at home, 25% away from home.  It's all mental.  They can obviously compete with NCAA Tournament teams, they just can't do it consistently at neutral sites.  Unfortunately, the tournament is played at neutral sites.  Hence the 0-3 record in tournament games over those 3 years.  The second astonishing fact is the 3-1 ratio in the location.  Why should a team that has made the tournament 6 of the past 8 years have to play 3 road/neutral site games against NCAA tournament teams for every one home game?  This year's team is improved somewhat record-wise, going 2-4 in road games against tourney teams (most likely 2-1 at home, assuming Arizona State doesn't make the tourney: if they do, 3-1), but there still wasn't enough fight in the team to pull out tonight's game.

Tonight's loss, while heartbreaking and full of coulda, shoulda, wouldas, is just another example of BYU's consistency: they win the games they are supposed to, lose the ones they are supposed to, and split the 50-50 games (winning at home, losing away from home).  I anticipate the loss will move BYU to a 6-seed in the East Regional.  The cynic in me says they'll play in Buffalo against Siena or some other New York-based team, but Buffalo is a Friday-Sunday pod and BYU can't be in that one with their "no Sunday games" policy.  I also would not be totally surprised to see BYU as a 7-seed.  It isn't a blatant out-to-get-BYU-thing that a lot of BYU fans think: it's simply saying, BYU, you get dropped a seed for making us go through the inconvenience of having to figure out how to keep you from playing on Sunday, or BYU, this is the only way we can keep you from having to play on Sunday.  Again, the loss assured them being shipped to the East Regional (the East and West are the two Thursday-Saturday sites) with the West Regional being played in Salt Lake City, and an obvious homecourt advantage for BYU.  The NCAA gets the whole unfair homecourt advantage for a lower seed!

Now to the UNLV home court advantage.  First off, UNLV has been the highest seed in the tourney only once in the 11 years of the MWC, but they have hosted 8 of the 11 tournaments.  The NCAA would never reward such a team with a homecourt advantage, but the MWC seems content to do so.  BYU fans complain about it a lot, seeing as how UNLV has beaten BYU in the Finals twice in the past 4 years, and knocked them out in the semis this year.  How real is it?

UNLV went 4-3 in the tourney in the three years the tourney was in Denver.  They are 14-3 (soon to be 15-3) on their home floor.  57% in tourney play away from home, 82% at home.  UNLV is also heading for their 4th MWC Tournament Championship.  So they have 4 MWC Tournament Championships to their ONE regular season championship (which was a split championship with Utah 11 years ago).  They have beaten BYU in the Finals each of their previous 3 tournament championships: no wonder BYU fans complain about it!  This year, it might cost BYU 3 seeds in the NCAA tournament (I believe they would beat SDSU in the Finals and receive a 4-seed, as it is, they are looking at 6 or maybe a 7).  One man's loss is another man's gain: UNLV probably goes from a 9 or 10-seed to a 7.

Now let's compare UNLV's home success to CSU, the host team in Denver.  CSU is 1-8 in Vegas in the MWC Tournament.  They went 2-3 in Denver.  And that wasn't even their home floor.  And they aren't even a good team.  11% to 40%.  Neither is all that good, but it is a huge difference.

This week is just another reminder of how petty the Mountain West really is.  They give an arbitrary team home court advantage in the tournament every year.  And not just by playing the tournament in their home city, but by doing it on their campus, at their home gym.  I would understand if they were "earning" it by winning the regular season championship every once in a while, but it's been over a decade since their last championship.  There is no real reason that UNLV should get to host every year.  But it helps UNLV get a better seed in the tournament (and as a side effect it hurts BYU).  Most teams in the conference won't complain about that.  It's tough to have "fairness" in a conference where 5 teams consider ONE team their primary or secondary rival (Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, UNLV, and SDSU).  A MAJORITY of the conference considers a SINGLE team their rival.  In a league where all you need is a simple majority to vote on anything, BYU will ALWAYS draw the short end, just on principle.

Beyond that in the past week, Darington Hobson was awarded the MWC Player of the Year.  That was a bit of a joke.  He might have been the Co-Player of the Year.  But he was not THE Player of the Year.  Realistically, he's not even the best player on his team and he's the third one I would pick if I were drafting MWC players (Dairese Gary and Roman Martinez being the first two).  His production actually dropped in conference play.  He never carried the team on his back.  He only scored 30 points once (Jimmer did it 7 times).  Sportswriters, All-American Teams, and Award-hander-outers across the country clearly favor Jimmer Fredette as the best player in the MWC (and really, the best player west of Kansas).

Jimmer shot 89% on free throws including 2 streaks of over 30 consecutive makes.  Jimmer shot 45% from 3-point range.  He did all of that while battling strep throat, mononucleosis, and the stomach flu during the course of the season.  He won player of the week FIVE times this season, including winning at least one time during every month of the season (once in November, December, and January, and twice in February).  Darington Hobson won it 2 times.  Kawhi Leonard was the only other player in the conference to win it more than twice (3 times).  Also, Roman Martinez won it twice for New Mexico and A.J Hardeman and Dairese Gary each won it once for the Lobos as well.  Only the petty Mountain West would be ignorant enough to not give the annual award to Jimmer Fredette when they gave the weekly award to him so frequently.  The rest of the country realizes that.

I understand why Hobson got it.  I really do.  He had a great season for the conference champion and a top 10-ranked team.  He made the play that won the conference title with a last-second block at BYU that won the game for them.  But it's player of the YEAR, not player of a game.  It's the MVP of the conference.  It's the guy you want to have the ball in the waning seconds trying to hit a three, or drive to the bucket and score, or drive to the bucket and kick, or score off a catch-and-shoot out-of-bounds play.  New Mexico definitely has a guy (or two) like that.  It's just not Darington Hobson.

Tonight's prediction: UNLV in a landslide, 80-61.  16,000 UNLV fans, 2,000 SDSU fans.  SDSU will finally learn what it's like to be BYU: 8-1 cheering against you at a "neutral" site.