This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Provo • First, an admission: For purely selfish reasons, I love that the college basketball team I've covered for the past seven seasons, BYU, now plays in the West Coast Conference, as opposed to its old home, the Mountain West.
Why?
I spent two of the last three weekends in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area. Saturday, I will hit sunny San Diego and its mid-70s temperatures. The first weekend in February will find me in one of the most gorgeous places on earth, Malibu, Calif.
In 2010-11, BYU's final season in the MWC, chunks of my January and February were spent in Albuquerque, N.M., Fort Collins, Colo., and Laramie, Wyo., where it was 23-below outside Arena-Auditorium that particular night.
OK, enough of that. You get the picture.
But what about the basketball?
Critics of BYU's move to the WCC have asked, and will ask every time pictures of the Cougars playing in small, high school-like gymnasiums against schools not known for basketball prowess are flashed across their television screens.
Yes, it is different. No argument there.
Only Gonzaga's McCarthey Athletic Center (aka, The Kennel) and intimate McKeon Pavilion at Saint Mary's, which seats 3,500 but holds hundreds more when the fire marshal is out of town, come close to rivaling The Pit, San Diego State's Viejas Arena or UNLV's Thomas & Mack on the difficult-places-to-play list.
The Mountain West's postseason tournament/venue is better, too, even with UNLV's home-court advantage.
But I'm here to tell you, after three and a half seasons watching BYU play in the WCC: The so-called church league's basketball teams are just as good as those in the MWC.
Utah and Utah State fans will probably snicker at that. Remind them what happened to the now-No. 12 Utes in their NIT game at Saint Mary's last March. Then show them Jerry Palm's Conference RPI ratings at CBSSports.com, where the Pac 12 is currently sixth, the WCC ninth and the MWC 11th.
Salt Lake City's own Ken Pomeroy, publisher of the college basketball ratings and analysis website known as kenpom.com, says the WCC has gotten better, partly because of BYU's entrance, partly because of Gonzaga's continual climb, but mostly because "the bottom of the league [is] getting significantly better."
Pomeroy says the WCC ranked between 13-15 in his system four years before BYU joined, but has been 8-11 since. It has a perception problem, he says, because of the late-night TV times and the lack of a recent NCAA Tournament run by a conference member not named Gonzaga. The smaller venues obviously don't help.
"Well, I can tell you this — there is definitely a misconception of the league," BYU coach Dave Rose said last week when asked if it is better than he expected. "I think you take any league across the country, and you take a team [Gonzaga] that is consistently in the top 25, and more often than not in the top 10, the competition in the league is going to be pretty good."
Rose and the Cougars predicted in 2011 when they joined the league that it would be awfully difficult to overtake Gonzaga, No. 3 in the major polls this week, and have their way with the rest of the league. They were right. It has been tougher than anyone in Provo imagined.
BYU has gone 40-18 in regular-season games in the WCC, including 23-6 at home. It went 53-11 its last four seasons in the MWC and lost just three league games at home from 2007–08 to 2010-11. Of course, the Cougars had Jimmer Fredette those four years.
BYU has "slightly underperformed from what I was expecting," Pomeroy said, noting that BYU's average kenpom rating in the four years before the switch was 20 and Gonzaga's was 30, but the Zags had the better overall program in the decade leading up to it and the Cougars haven't been able to reach the level they were at in the Jimmer years.
"Still, the difference was close enough that I would have expected BYU to be in the mix for a regular-season title at least once in four years," Pomeroy said.
Of the Cougars' 18 WCC regular-season losses, 10 have been to Gonzaga and SMC (five each). BYU has lost to LMU and Pepperdine twice apiece and once to Portland, Pacific, San Francisco and San Diego.
"I can't remember the league being more balanced," Saint Mary's coach Randy Bennett said last week. "We're sitting 6-0 and … We've had to do some good things to get where we're at."
The weather is hard to beat, too.
Twitter: @drewjay —
A Step Up?
BYU's Last Four Seasons in the MWC:
Season Record League finish
2007-08 14-2 First
2008-09 12-4 First
2009-10 13-3 Second
2010-11 14-2 First
BYU's Three-Plus Seasons in the WCC:
Season Record League finish
2011-12 12-4 Third
2012-13 10-6 Third
2013-14 13-5 Second
2014-15 5-3 ???