SCU Men's Basketball - To BE Good - You Need to BEAT Good

                                                                                    

Last Saturday's home victory over Cal pushed the Broncos to a 9-2  start to the season.  That's only happened once since 2004.  While this season start feels good, let's not get carried away.

There's no doubt this roster has more athleticism and depth.  In our Pac 12 wins against Washington St. and Cal, it was SCU who had the better athletes and they proved it on the floor.  

That's all good news.  BUT.

We were outplayed against our only two sub 100 ranked opponents.  Stanford (53) and Nevada (95) dominated us after the first 10 minutes in those games.  That's not good news.

Looking at the remaining non-conference games and the WCC schedule, 21 or 22 wins is very probable.  Call it 21-10.  It would be only the fourth time in the past 15 years with 20+ wins.  

What would 20 wins mean for us?  It would be a nice platform to build on, recruit and for a contract extension, but if you're thinking post season bids, it's an "outside" chance at best.  Granted, it's nice to be headed in that direction after a 25 year drought, but it takes more.

In order to BE good, you have to BEAT good.  

Stats are always misleading, but selection committees do use them.  If we take out the WCC top three ranked teams, our wins will come against the rest of the WCC whose "average" ranking is 168.  St. Mary's has already painfully proved a weaker SOS* doesn't fly for post season.  

IMHO, it will take 23 wins and two wins vs the WCC top three to even sniff post season.  Knocking off the Zags would be awesome, but a moon shot.  That leaves St. Mary's (45) and BYU (54) to get those wins.  Issue is, we play BYU only once and you guessed it - on their home court.  Last chance would be a monumental upset in the WCC tourney - a guaranteed bid.

Bottom line, we need to play tougher against better teams.  It's a conundrum.  Sometimes it looks like we lack the "fire" or belief that we can compete against those teams.  Blowouts in those games are a "flat tire" to post season.  

Don't get me wrong.  I like what we see so far.  Getting to 21 or 22 wins would start to ignite the pilot light on our program.  The AEC will offer no compromise recruiting and a real future to build upon.

The University and Commission on Athletics envisioned national prominence in Athletics in 2020.  It appears the focus, commitment and measurement for that plan may have waned; we just don't hear about it any more.  What about the next five years or five years from that?  It took Gonzaga 15 years to build a bona fide National program.  Where are we?

For Coach Sendek that is the 2020-2021 season.  Until now, it continues to be just Women's Soccer in the National convo.  

For MBB, the trend is up and it's fun to watch.  We need the University, season ticket holders, students, and the entire SCU community to to be up to the task, or we'll never catch "up" to the WCC top three or National relevance.



S.O.S. = Strength of Schedule