In a recent WAC coaches conference call, several spoke about BracketBuster games and if they were in fact good for the conference as a whole.
Many said that television is the key. When ESPN puts a BracketBuster game on, it's great for both teams - last year, NMSU played Ohio on TV and won. Did the game do a whole lot for the Aggies in the long run? It depends who to talk to but winning on ESPN didn't hurt with a ton of fans and high school basketball players watching. As far as making the NCAA tournament is concerned, NMSU had to win the WAC tourney to get in and that's what it did.
This year's game for the Aggies was kind of worthless. They rolled a poor Long Beach team who won't get into the NCAA's anyway. Good for confidence I guess and Marvin Menzies said he is looking forward for the return game next year. But for postseason play this year, it means nothing. Look at the other WAC schools too. San Jose vs. Pacific, Fresno vs. Cal Poly, Utah St. vs. Santa Barbara and the list goes on.
Truthfully, a part of me likes the BracketBuster because of the scrapiron matchups it presents and it kind of breaks things up from the conference schedule. But that's also not a great thing in many respects. If the games have real meaning, then great. But if they don't, why are they being played? That's a question that needs to be answered.
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6 comments:
From a consideration for the NCAA, this game really didnt mean anything. The only way the Aggies will get to the big dance is to win the WAC tournament. And if they had been on the bubble, Long Beach State was too weak to help give them any more consideration. However, it did help the Aggies blow off some rust after the long layover, especially with Nevada and Fresno State coming up on the road.
I agree w/ JJ. This game helped get some of that rust off.
That first half was awful!
I hope the rust is gone and we are running on all cylinders from here on out.
If we want a better match up for next years Bracket Busters, we need to play better.
We were a .500 team when we got matched against LB State.
I still think we should have been matched up with a better team.
Anyways, can't cry over spilled milk.
Time to saddle up and go on a post season ride! Go Aggies!
Vic
It's more detrimental than it is good...
A lot of the better midmajor conferences don't participate because they know theres no good coming of two good midmajors going at each other.
All this system does is help to ensure that only one of the two teams that play has a chance at an at large.
The MWC, and some of the other high end midmajor teams are noticably absent.
There are a couple points to make here. First of all, if we were not participating in the BB, a game would be inserted in its place long before the season started. So using the argument the BB is "good to get the rust off" is not valid. Secondly, Karl Benson's quote in the LCSN is right on target. The WAC is very soft this year, and only BSU drew a competitive team (and we all saw what happened there!). NMSU is the only WAC team with a decent SOS, but we underperformed and were wildly inconsistent our first 20 games, hence our bad BB draw. So I think the BB can be a good thing, as long as WAC teams bring something to the table. This year, with a sad conference RPI of 19, things did not work out for the WAC. But WAC teams, including us, lost nothing because no teams were on the bubble anyway. Heck, even the Sun Belt has a higher RPI than the WAC this year. Ouch!
On a more important topic, I just noticed where ESPN Fast Break does not have NMSU/Nevada among their TV games. Wonder if the channel surfing.net option will work w/o PPV TV?
-Aggie Glare
"They already have very good players that start, but what really makes them better and special and probably right now, makes them the team to beat in our league is that they have so much depth."
Fresno State head coach
Steve Cleveland
"New Mexico State is really playing well and has just been steam rolling people the last few weeks."
"They are playing their best basketball so we have our hands full with them."
Reno head coach
Mark Fox
My best bet is the channelsurfing.net option won't be available.
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