Hawk-Lock":2tz6x5px said:
Hawkstorian":2tz6x5px said:
WCC has some real crap teams... but St. Mary's (25 in KenPom) and BYU (38) are at least as good as the middle of the Pac12 (i.e. UW). San Francisco, Pacific and Santa Clara are all much improved.
I actually expect Zags to lose a game or 2 in conference unless somehow Killian Tillie can come back to full health. He's just a matchup nightmare that no team can deal with until late into March. Sadly, I'm not optimistic that will be the case as he's already on "load management".
Let’s not try to defend the WCC. It’s garbage outside of Gonzaga. The second best team every year is at Mary’s, and they are a bubble team every year. After that it is a bunch of teams that would be near the bottom of any power conference. I’m not trying to take anything away from Gonzaga, because I think they’d win or compete for the top spot in nearly any power conference. But the WCC is a joke, without Gonzaga they wouldn’t be much different than any of those other mid major conferences we know nothing about.
And yet the WCC is 9-11 against the Pac this year. Last I checked GU is part of the WCC. Taking teams out to make arguments is really quite ridiculous. Lets take teams out of the Pac then too. SMC is a good team as is BYU. USF has been a good team recently and Santa Clara and Pacific are getting much better.
WCC will be a top ten league again this year and closely rated to the Pac again. Now admittedly WCC is nowhere close to as good as ACC, Big East, Big 12, and Big 10.
But those trying to push the Pac as a top tier Basketball conference are living in the past. Maybe they get back there some day but they haven't been for about 10 years + now.