The idea is to let everyone get healthy and offer a more-level playing field for the season’s most-important time. Let all of the conference tournaments finish, capped by the Power Five leagues, then everyone gets a week off instead of rushing right into the NCAA Tournament days later. “Even when we were at New Mexico, our best teams, we had some really great seeds, but we didn’t get past the second round and some of that, I think it has to do with getting worn down.”Īlford, whose current Nevada team, despite COVID troubles, has had a solid season in the middle of a top-heavy Mountain West, offered a solution. In the East, you’ve got Duke and Carolina, who are miles apart, so you have a lot of bus trips.

In the East, you have so many more schools together. “You’ve got more land that you’re covering in travel out west.

“When you get out west, you have greater travel,” said Alford, who was the head coach at Iowa and Southwest Missouri State before New Mexico. To the overarching point of Western teams struggling to break through, he has a theory. They were blown out by 11th-seeded Washington in the round of 32 in 2010 and were upset by 14th-seeded Harvard in 2013 in the first round.Īlford went to the Sweet 16 three times in seven seasons at UCLA, but never further. In two of the three, the Lobos had a 3-seed, but never advanced beyond the round of 32. In seven seasons at New Mexico, Alford went to three NCAA Tournaments. Nevada is now under the direction of Steve Alford, who should know a thing or two about coaching with high expectations on this side of the country. Anything can happen in an NCAA Tournament, it’s very much a coin flip.” Too much travel? “There was a time when the team that won the championship every year was in Westwood, but that wasn’t going to last forever either. “I don’t know how many times in the last 24 years a West Coast team was the best team and got upset, but it’s all cyclical,” Cronin said. They were given an NCAA Tournament 2-seed, beat Georgia State in the first round, then got upset by Nevada in the round of 32. In those 13 years, his best Bearcats team was his 31-win outfit that won the American Athletic Conference in 2018. The one-and-done format of the NCAA Tournament means a bad matchup, a bad shooting day, or a bad defensive effort means you’re going home, potentially with nothing to show for an otherwise-strong season.Īs an example, Cronin coached the University of Cincinnati for 13 years before arriving in Westwood. To further Cronin’s assertion on the NCAA Tournament, the 68-team event may crown a champion, but it doesn’t always lead to the best team being crowned the champion. Obviously, they have to play their season, but did you guys not know who would be the four teams? Maybe not Notre Dame, but you knew Clemson, Ohio State and Alabama would be.” Football, it’s obvious, there’s only four teams that have a chance every year. “What I would tell you about the NCAA Tournament, and I mean this, it is so different than any other thing in sports. “I would tell you to quit trying to figure it out,” UCLA coach Mick Cronin said wryly. Beyond no one winning the whole thing, there have been only four Mountain or Pacific national finalists since Arizona’s 1997 title, one of which was the University of Utah in 1998. It is not as if college basketball on this side of the country is a talentless, barren wasteland, but to pinpoint why a team on this side of the country can’t break through isn’t so simple. The closest geographical program to do so was Kansas in 2008, the Jayhawks engaging in an overtime epic that April vs. In the 24 years since Arizona won its first and only national title, no Mountain or Pacific-based program has been able to break through and win the whole thing.

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