West Coast Conference (conference rank: 11th)
March 3-7
All games at Las Vegas.
kPOY: Jock Landale, Saint Mary’s
Regular season champ: Gonzaga (preseason #22 / 2nd WCC, current #1)
Overachiever: Gonzaga
Underachiever: Pepperdine (preseason #139, current #295)
Pacism is alive and well in college basketball and one need look no further than the WCC, where Jock Landale was as productive as any human in the nation this season. But because his team, Saint Mary’s, plays at the nation’s second-slowest pace, he will not make any all-American teams nor was he selected as the WCC’s player of the year by the league’s coaches. Let’s compare how he stacks up to the winner:
ORtg %Poss TS% Williams-Goss 122.7 24.4 62.0 Landale 122.0 31.0 63.8
These numbers aren’t the end of the discussion, but Landale has been nearly as efficient as Nigel Willams-Goss while using a much larger share of his team’s offense. Throw in the fact that Landale is one of two players nationally to rank in the top 20 of both offensive and defensive rebounding percentage and the case for him becomes even stronger.
True, Williams-Goss played slightly more and I’m guessing there’s a bonus that a point guard gets in consideration for such awards. There’s also the issue that Williams-Goss played for the league champs. But if the possession counts of the respective teams were reversed – Gonzaga played over 10 possessions per game faster than Saint Mary’s – I’d image Landale would have won the WCC’s player of the year and Williams-Goss would be the one criminally underrated.
No matter, chances are that the two will match up in the title game of the tournament. Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga cover approximately 97% of the champion’s probability, a dominance among the top two that even the MVC can’t match.
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 Gonzaga 100 99.5 95.4 70.4 2 Saint Mary's 100 95.4 78.3 27.0 3 BYU 100 76.3 18.1 1.6 5 San Francisco 100 58.5 2.7 0.6 4 Santa Clara 100 41.5 1.7 0.3 6 Loyola Marymount 100 23.7 2.9 0.1 9 Pacific 62.4 0.5 0.1 0.009 7 San Diego 55.1 2.9 0.5 0.006 10 Portland 44.9 1.6 0.2 0.003 8 Pepperdine 37.6 0.08 0.02 0.002