Every Monday, Nevada Sports Net will post a weekly poll question on its main Twitter account. On Tuesday’s NSN Tonight, we’ll reveal the final poll results and discuss the topic during a segment. On Wednesday we will post the results and the NSN Daily segment as I offer my vote on the matter.
This week’s poll
This week’s NSN Tonight segment
Murray’s view
MW is coming off four consecutive berths in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, with the conference record being five teams in 2012-13, when MW had just nine members. That five-team mark could be reached again this season as MW entered Tuesday night’s action with five teams in the field, according to The latest bracketology from ESPN. But Boise State’s home loss to UNLV on Tuesday night brought the MW down to four teams on Wednesday morning with San Diego State, Colorado State, Utah State and San State Diego currently projected by ESPN as single-digit seeds, meaning they are comfortably in the field with just under two months to play. CBS Support There’s Boise State and Nevada, so it’s still too early to draw any definitive conclusions.
The MW has six teams with realistic NCAA Tournament hopes, namely Colorado State, San Diego State, Utah State, Nevada, Boise State and New Mexico (listed in this order by non-conference accomplishments). I highly doubt MW will put six teams on the field because (a) those teams are going to start contending in the league; (b) MW ranks seventh in the nation as a conference in NET, and no team ranked seventh in NET has six teams in the field; and (c) MW’s NCAA Tournament history is mediocre, which the committee says doesn’t impact overall berths, but honestly it should.
I voted for MW to get four bids – the majority vote – into the NCAA tournament because of the carnage the teams will inflict on each other. I could see a case for five teams because MW had a better non-conference run this season than last year when they got four bids. If you’re a MW fan, it may not be wise to favor more teams in the field, as that would require teams to fight against each other, which could lead to more deals but with less good seeds. Teams outside of San Diego State need to start winning some NCAA Tournament games, and that’s hard to do with double-digit seeds. If you’re MW, you may prefer four single-digit seeds (preferably seven seeds or better) than six double-digit seeds.
Bottom line: MW put itself in the mix to potentially get six teams in the NCAA tournament, with the worst case scenario being three teams. This is a much better status than the one MW enjoyed from 2015 to 2021, when the team failed to bring more than two teams into the tournament in six seasons.
Columnist Chris Murray provides insight into Northern Nevada sports. Contact him at crmurray@sbgtv.com or follow him on Twitter @ByChrisMurray.
