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Gonzaga's conference

TheRealVille

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Apr 27, 2015
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Had Gonzaga played in the Pac 12 conference and had 2 or 3 losses on the season, they may have been able to beat Baylor. I was saying it all year. The Zags would falter when they had to play a championship quality team in the big dance.

And then they didn't have to play a team like that until the championship game. They faced Cinderella like UCLA while Baylor had to beat teams like Arkansas and Houston.

I was very confident that Baylor would win going away and won some cash on the ridiculous betting line that had Baylor 4.5 underdogs.

Until Gonzaga leaves that conference they will suffer the same fate as last night.
 
Had Gonzaga played in the Pac 12 conference and had 2 or 3 losses on the season, they may have been able to beat Baylor. I was saying it all year. The Zags would falter when they had to play a championship quality team in the big dance.

And then they didn't have to play a team like that until the championship game. They faced Cinderella like UCLA while Baylor had to beat teams like Arkansas and Houston.

I was very confident that Baylor would win going away and won some cash on the ridiculous betting line that had Baylor 4.5 underdogs.

Until Gonzaga leaves that conference they will suffer the same fate as last night.

They don’t play football so I don’t see how they will get a bigger conference. It’s be cool to see a pacific coast team in the Big East.
 
Zags were a good team with a nice OOC showing, but I agree playing in that conference for the majority of the season doesn't prepare them for the best teams in the NCAAT most years.

It also allows them to put up a gawdy win record every year leading to high seeds in the tournament. Would like to see them in a more competitive conference.
 
They have played in 2 championship games playing in that conference and almost won one. And they usually play a good out of conference schedule—they were supposed to play Baylor in regular season. It isn’t too different from us in the metro. It was mostly us and memphis with a few solid FSU southern miss Virginia tech teams thrown in. Then we played a good out of conference schedule
 
Winning the UCLA game in OT shot their wad. The first 5-10 minutes Baylor was much the quicker team and had fresher legs to boot. Then the Bears built their lead with some lights out 3 point shooting....a very hard combination to beat...especailly playing from behind like they had to do.

If they played a 7 game series....I think that the Zags would have fared much better... than the less than 48 hours after the later the game was played. And remember the Zags played the late game on Saturday night.

The Bears cruised against a weak Houston team and played the bench as much as they wanted to to stay fresh....and it showed up on Monday night.

Timme (C) looked gassed the first 10 minutes before he caught his second wind. All of the Zags looked a step slower than they showed vs the Bruins.

All that being considered...the Bears were clearly the better team in the NC game and deserved the win. Still hats off to the Zags for a great year. Coach Few will be back again....learning from this experience.
 
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Media is already saying had Gonzaga played that December game against Baylor, they would have fared better in the title game.

Imagine if they had to play conference games against Kansas, Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and West Virginia. Then have to play a couple of those teams again in the conference tournament.

Gonzaga was playing Weber State, St. Marys, BYU and San Francisco. They have great players, certainly enough talent to win a national championship. No denying that but for them to cut down the nets, they need to join the Pac 12.
 
They don’t play football so I don’t see how they will get a bigger conference. It’s be cool to see a pacific coast team in the Big East.
Notre Dame has never played football in a conference, but the Big East and ACC took them in just fine. Wichita got in the AAC without football.
 
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Notre Dame has never played football in a conference, but the Big East and ACC took them in just fine. Wichita got in the AAC without football.

There aren’t many options on West Coast. Maybe Mountain West would make a move like AAC but not sure that’s much better than WCC.
 
UCLA took a lot out of the Zags, but no one in America was going to beat Baylor Monday night. Not a fan of the Bears, but that is one of the best performances of an NCAA Championship team in my memory.
 
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I agree with a lot said here. UCLA for sure took something out of them.

As far as the schedule, I do agree their league does hurt them. It's not just about not having marquee games against top teams, but also not getting to play middling or even bottom feeding P5 teams that can be dangerous and play their top game to test them - they also miss that scenario. So they don't experience as much adversity as other teams. They don't get that lesson learned about needing to play a full 40, etc, because they play so many bad teams.
 
Looking at it from Gonzaga's perspective, they are the biggest fish in a small pond right now. Maybe they like it that way and wouldn't want to change, even if fans would like to see them battle against bigger opponents in conference. They have built their brand dominating the WCC and probably don't see the need to shake things up.
 
I think there’s definitely something to be said for playing great competition at least every other game. Mistakes get exposed and corrected more often that way. While it is important to win often to instill confidence in your abilities and reinforce team chemistry, winning streaks can become distractions after a while.
 
Looking at it from Gonzaga's perspective, they are the biggest fish in a small pond right now. Maybe they like it that way and wouldn't want to change, even if fans would like to see them battle against bigger opponents in conference. They have built their brand dominating the WCC and probably don't see the need to shake things up.

I don't think they have a choice without a football program they don't have a lot of options.
 
Let's put this in perspective.

In January, Baylor had a stretch of five games, four against ranked teams.

Oklahoma
Texas Tech
Kansas
Oklahoma State

Then when February came and five out of the next 6 teams were

Texas
Kansas
WV
Oklahoma
Texas Tech

Now does anyone really believe if Gonzaga played Baylor's schedule they would not only not be undefeated but have 4 or more losses?

Baylor should have been a 6 or 7 point favorite.
 
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