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Provo • As top-seeded Gonzaga began to pull away from second-seeded BYU in the final five minutes of Tuesday night's West Coast Conference men's basketball tournament championship game, national experts around the country started analyzing the Cougars' chances of getting an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
Are they in or out?
Most say they're in, although an awful lot depends on what happens in the bulk of this week's conference tournaments. Beware of bid-stealers, BYU fans, those mediocre teams in major conferences that suddenly get hot and win their respective conference tournament, thereby taking an automatic bid that was presumed to go to a more worthy team.
Of the 41 brackets that had been updated by midday Wednesday at the website bracketmatrix.com, 33 had BYU in the field, despite its nationally televised 91-75 loss to the No. 7 Zags. Most national reports painted a positive picture for the Cougars, mentioning they were playing without No. 3 scorer, Anson Winder (sprained knee), and were competitive and entertaining to watch until the final few minutes.
BYU coach Dave Rose's jacket-throwing tirade that earned him a technical foul from referee Tommy Nunez was captured on video and went viral on Wednesday. After he had calmed down a bit Tuesday night in the postgame news conference, Rose was asked if he is confident that the Cougars did enough in going 25-9 this season to earn a bid to the Big Dance.
"I think there is a committee put together that is going to decide this, and if they watched us play, I think they will feel pretty good about putting us in that tournament," Rose said.
A night after posting his sixth triple-double of the season, an NCAA record, BYU junior guard Kyle Collinsworth had a career-high 28 points in a losing cause against the Zags (32-2), and could have gone for close to 40 if six or so inside shots hadn't fallen off the rim.
Asked about BYU's at-large chances, Collinsworth said it isn't his job to decide.
"You know what? We are just going to keep our heads up, keep working hard and let the people that take care of that take care of it," Collinsworth said. "But we have had a great run this last stretch and are playing the best basketball we have played all year."
ESPN's Joe Lunardi, pretty much the gold standard in bracketology, still had BYU among his "Last Four In" on Wednesday morning.
BYU senior guard Skyler Halford also played well in the Cougars' fifth straight conference title game loss, scoring 13 points in 27 minutes. However, Halford was injured with 26 seconds remaining and needed help getting to the locker room.
Rose called Halford's injury a "lower leg nerve contusion" and did not elaborate on its severity.
Injuries to Halford and Winder continued a string of late-season bad luck for the Cougars that started six years ago when Tyler Haws suffered an eye injury in the Mountain West Conference tourney and missed the next game, a semifinal, in 2010.
In 2011, star center Brandon Davies was suspended two games before the conference tournament.
In 2012, star forward Noah Hartsock injured his knee late in the season and was not as effective in the postseason.
In 2013, Haws suffered a concussion before the WCC tourney and the Cougars were upset in the quarterfinals by San Diego.
Last year, Collinsworth tore his ACL in the WCC championship game against Gonzaga and missed the Cougars' big loss to Oregon in the NCAA tournament.
"We were short again tonight with Anson [out]," Rose said. "That's kind of been the story of our season is that we are trying to find a lineup and reinvent ourselves a couple of times. The fact that we had a really nice run late in the season, I am just really proud of our guys. We had a lot of times where we could have gone sideways, even tonight. In a competitive game, and an environment like this, we stuck together and we fought to the finish, as a group."
Twitter: @drewjay —
Select BYU rankings
ESPN's BPI • 31st
Ken Pomeroy • 29th
Jeff Sagarin • 34th
Jerry Palm RPI • 36th
ESPN RPI • 43