MORGANTOWN — The facts won’t officially become the facts until some point Saturday, when the 16 regional hosts are announced for next week’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
It is widely expected 12th-ranked West Virginia will be one of those 16 hosts, which would bring the NCAAs to Morgantown for the first time since 1992, when the women’s field was just 48 teams and the women’s game was thought of in such a different light than it is viewed today.
If the Mountaineers (27-6) are not one of the 16 hosts, that would be a much larger issue that – and we’re totally serious here – should spark a federal investigation into collusion and racketeering against the NCAA and its selection committee.
For now, there is but a smaller issue to address, which is the excessive amounts of slings and arrows WVU and head coach Mark Kellogg had to endure just to get this opportunity.
For starters, Kellogg and his staff had to severely upgrade their nonconference schedule. That included a neutral-court game against Duke. It included signing on to play in a Thanksgiving tournament that would pit WVU against Ohio State. The second-best team in the Big East (Villanova) was brought to Morgantown and WVU will travel to Villanova next season.
There were other Power Five matchups against Georgia Tech (home) and on the road against Texas A&M.
Duke, Ohio State and Villanova combined for a 76-21 record this season.
“Kayla Scott does our scheduling and she did a great job finding the right places, the right opponents,” Kellogg said. “The schedule was good, it was beefed up.”
Here’s the difference that nonconference schedule made: This time last season, WVU’s overall strength of schedule was in the 50s. Today it is 14th.
That led WVU into the conference season, one in which it played a game of survival, of sorts, for three months and one that went down to the final game of the regular season before it was decided TCU would finish first in the Big 12 and WVU would finish second. The Mountaineers went 14-4 in Big 12 play this season.
You already know what happened in the Big 12 tournament. Three grueling days that led WVU to winning its first Big 12 tournament since 2017, following a 62-53 victory against TCU.
That is a lot of crawling through the mud and a ton of scratching and clawing just to earn a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament and the right to host a regional.
“Yes, the second place team in the Big 12 should absolutely be hosting, assuming they have a good enough resumé to do that,” Kellogg said. “The other leagues, one of them may get seven of the 16 to host, that just seems crazy to me. That’s your seventh-place team getting to play at home and not a second-place team in another power league that had a good nonconference year.”
The issue at hand is WVU had to be exceptional just to get a No. 4 seed. Remember, if WVU had lost to TCU in the finals, the Mountaineers would’ve likely remained a No. 5 seed.
Currently, here are the other projected No. 5 seeds: Ole Miss, Kentucky, Michigan State and North Carolina.
Michigan State and North Carolina both have an overall strength of schedule in the 50s. Michigan State was the seventh seed in the Big Ten tournament.
Ole Miss and Kentucky both have an overall strength of schedule very comparable to WVU, but that’s because of a superior conference schedule – the SEC has eight teams in the AP Top 25 and half of the top 10 – but neither Ole Miss or Kentucky was better than 8-8 in conference play.
“You’re just beating each other up (in conference play), which we’ve talked about that quite a bit,” Kellogg continued. “Other leagues beat each other up and get rewarded and the Big 12 beats each other up and it was kind of held against us. I never quite understood that narrative.”
If one team in the SEC only has to go 8-8 to challenge for a regional host, while a Big 12 team damn near has to be perfect to get awarded the same honor, that is an issue.
It’s an issue for so many people. For ESPN. For the NCAA selection committee. For all the bracketologists out there and even for the voters of the AP Top 25.
That collective group has fallen into this narrative that the Big Ten and SEC is so superior – and from a financial standpoint they are – that the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth-place teams in those leagues have to somehow be better than the top teams of the other leagues, when it’s just not true.
Sure, South Carolina, Texas and LSU are great in the SEC. UCLA is a dominant force in the Big Ten. The rest of the teams in those leagues are nothing better than what the Big 12 has to offer.
And someone please explain to me the respect Duke has received this season. I get it, the Blue Devils went on one heck of a run in ACC play, but that narrative should have been maybe the ACC just isn’t that good this season rather than the top 25 voters continuing to shove Duke up the polls each week.
WVU beat Duke on a neutral court with just five players. Baylor beat Duke, and trust me, this wasn’t a Baylor team that’s going to go up on the school’s Wall of Fame.
Yet Duke is ranked No. 8 in the AP Top 25, while WVU is 12th. The voters should be ashamed of themselves.
“It’s why you have to do a deep dive, and it just can’t be analytically driven,” Kellogg said. “The human element and the eye probably have to challenge that as well.”
