Ags still have one-bid worries

LOGAN — When Utah State left the Big West Conference for the greener pastures of the Western Athletic Conference, Aggie basketball coach Stew Morrill thought the nightmare of a one NCAA Tournament bid league would lag behind.

Not so fast.

ESPN.com, FoxSports.com, and CBSsportline.com, in their predictions for NCAA Tournament participants, have only one team from the WAC getting in: Nevada, the assumed tournament champion.

"The thing I find ironic about our situation is it's no different than what it's been. This league was going to give us that we didn't have to win the tournament. Yeah, right," Morrill said as the Aggies prepare for San Jose State in the first round of the Western Athletic Conference tournament Thursday in Reno.

"Maybe that's the case, but it doesn't feel that way to me. We always knew in the Big West we had to win the tournament to go the the NCAAs."

The difference between the teams in the Big West and teams in the WAC come down to schedules.

No one in the WAC, with the exception of perhaps Hawaii and Nevada, has played a tough enough schedule to merit an at-large berth if it doesn't win the tournament this year. The Warriors played Michigan State and won, UNLV (twice) and Colorado State, while Nevada played Kansas, UNLV, Pacific, Vermont, Georgia and UCLA.

The Aggies had a preseason schedule this season that included South Dakota State, Binghamton, Middle Tennessee (twice), Oral Roberts (twice) and Arkansas-Little Rock. They did beat BYU and Northwestern State, but lost to Utah. If the Aggies (21-7) don't win the tournament, all it can hope for is an NIT home game.

In recent years, the WAC has had two teams in the tournament as did the Big West and the West Coast Conference, all of which are considered Mid-Majors. Last year, UTEP won the WAC Tournament and earned the automatic bid, while Nevada earned an at-large bid and the Wolf Pack played a tough non-league schedule with Georgia, Kansas, UNLV, Pacific and Vermont.

Also, Pacific, which finished second in the Big Wes last season, earned a rare second bid for that league, but it had played Kansas, Nevada and UTEP earlier in the season.

In 2003, Gonzaga lost to San Diego in the West Coast Conference championship game, but earned a bid because of a strong schedule that included Indiana, Kentucky, Washington, Washington State, Georgia, North Carolina State, St. Joseph, and Stanford.