Will it be madness this March for the WSU faithful?
Get this, Coug fans: Tonight, your Washington State Cougars could be tied atop the Pac-12 standings. It would mean WSU beat Oregon on the road, and Arizona lost to Colorado in Boulder. It could happen! And, technically, based on the Pac-12’s tiebreaker rules, WSU would be in first place because of its win over Arizona back on Jan. 13.
Yes, they two teams play again on Feb. 22 in Tucson, which would be its own tiebreaker, but let us have this one.
With eight regular season games remaining, our Cougs sit 17-6 overall and 8-4 in conference play, tied with today’s foe (that game tips at 2 p.m. on the Pac-12 Network).
So, the Cougs are in a pretty good spot, all things considered. Last week we used this space to look at WSU’s NCAA Tournament chances. Not a ton has changed since then, as the Cougs are still in ESPN’s bracket projection as playing in one of the play-in games, as does USA Today (it even has WSU playing in Spokane should the Cougs win the play-in game).
CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm pegs WSU as a 7-seed playing St. John’s in Omaha. Blogging the Bracket has WSU as an 11-seed playing South Carolina in Pittsburgh.
And Bracket Matrix, which collects all bracketology predictions, both mainstream and obscure, shows WSU in 84 of 94 total bracketology exercises with an average seed of 10.37.
T-Ranketology still has WSU in as an 11-seed and a 71.4% chance to get a bid.
Make sure you read Jeff’s piece on WSU’s tournament chances from earlier this week. WSU is in a good position so long as it wins the games it should win. Here’s WSU’s resume as it stands at this moment before today’s games, and here’s who you should be rooting for the rest of the season.
Who would have thought we’d be in this position after last year and all those departures? The work Kyle Smith and his staff have done in building this roster has Pac-12 Coach of the Year written all over it. Enjoy the ride, folks. These kinds of seasons don’t come around too often.