Former Gonzaga All-American Dan Dickau breaks down how the West Coast Conference's struggles in nonconference play reflect in the NET Rankings, which could open the door for the Bulldogs to go through the league unscathed in the regular season.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 Hey, everybody, it's Christian Pedersen, joined as always by Dan Dickow.
00:02 Welcome you back to another episode of the Gonzaga Nation podcast.
00:06 Thanks for tuning in, Dan.
00:08 This is a WCC themed episode because we like to keep the Gonzaga fans.
00:12 And trust me, we tie in the loop.
00:13 Always we like to keep the Gonzaga fans informed about what is going on
00:17 in the rest of the WC, you know, the Cliff Notes, if you will.
00:20 Everybody, I think we can all agree.
00:22 Cliff Notes is what got us through any level of education.
00:25 The quick summary.
00:27 So, Dan, give us the Cliff Notes.
00:29 What's going on this week in the WCC?
00:31 Because it seems like St.
00:32 Mary's continues to be kind of the center of if you're not looking at Gonzaga.
00:37 That's where the focus is right now, results wise, but almost in the wrong direction.
00:41 Yeah, 100 percent.
00:43 I mean, I just pulled up the standings right here.
00:45 So in a separate box on my computer as we record this,
00:49 I'm looking at the standings and WCC
00:53 coaches poll had St.
00:55 Mary's predicted first.
00:58 St. Mary's is three and five.
00:59 Another big loss this time at a neutral site game against Boise State last week.
01:04 And things don't get any easier for St.
01:06 Mary's because they play at
01:09 Colorado State this next weekend.
01:11 Colorado State was ranked 20th.
01:13 I would expect they move up this week.
01:14 They just had another big win
01:17 beating Pac-12 UW in a neutral site game when they had injuries
01:21 and when they had early ejections.
01:25 Did Colorado State with St.
01:26 Mary's. They got to right the ship in a hurry.
01:29 The league is not performing as well as they all would have hoped.
01:34 And that's not necessarily going to help Gonzaga
01:38 in regards to their Ken Palm, in regards to their net rankings.
01:41 The first net rankings came out today.
01:43 Gonzaga falled, fell, I believe, in the 24 range.
01:47 I'd have to double check that really quick.
01:49 But the surprise a former WCC member
01:54 sits at number two in the net rankings, if you can believe that.
01:58 BYU sitting at number two.
02:00 So when we've talked about the strength of the league
02:03 over the last couple of years and how good it's been,
02:05 BYU never was able to break through and win the league or the league
02:09 tournament title.
02:11 They leave and oddly enough, the league goes down a little bit.
02:15 Now, I don't think that's indicative of because BYU left.
02:18 I think just unfortunately, a few of these teams have struggled
02:23 getting the wins that they needed as of as to now in the non-conference.
02:28 You look at Santa Clara.
02:29 They started off great looking at seven and one.
02:32 They go play Cal and lose to Cal, who might be
02:36 the bottom feeder in the Pac-12 this year.
02:39 San Diego sitting at six and three, San Francisco five and three.
02:43 They just lost to Arizona State after a good win against Minnesota.
02:48 Loyola Marymount five and four, Portland five and four.
02:51 They lost to Big Sky, Portland State on a buzzer beater.
02:56 That's not good.
02:57 Pacific four and five, Pepperdine four and six.
02:59 And as we mentioned, St.
03:01 Mary's sitting at three and five, everybody behind Gonzaga at six and one.
03:06 And again, Gonzaga, as we all know, they were number two in the preseason poll.
03:11 Let's talk maybe best case, worst case.
03:14 Is this something where at one end, how how much can this truly hamstring
03:20 Gonzaga's national rankings?
03:22 I mean, is this this isn't going to keep them out of the tournament,
03:24 but is this going to keep them?
03:25 You know, they can only be a five seed this year.
03:28 They can only be a six seed just because of the bias or the math or however you work out.
03:30 Also, is there a best case other version of this where it's like, oh, now parody
03:35 and, you know, someone new is bound to rise up to fill that spot?
03:39 Maybe USD is going to finally put it together.
03:42 You've mentioned San Francisco.
03:44 They you really liked what they did in the transfer portal.
03:46 So maybe address both ends of the spectrum.
03:48 Best case, worst case is where we go from here.
03:50 Well, I think Gonzaga's resume historically is going to help them.
03:56 You know, the fact that, you know, the NCAA
04:00 tournament committee always looks at, you know, your current net ranking
04:05 and your your Ken Palm and a number of other analytics.
04:09 But net is really the biggest analytic they look at when they do seeding,
04:15 as well as when they look at where they're going to put you in, what pod
04:19 they're going to put you in, whether you get to stay close to home
04:22 or you get shipped a little further away.
04:24 But I think when it looks when you look at it with the totality of the league,
04:27 the net is based a lot on quad one, quad two, quad three, quad four wins.
04:34 And that has to do with a quad one win would be a home game where you win
04:41 a quad one game would be at home against a team ranked in the top 30.
04:45 A road, a quad one
04:48 road win would be you beat someone in the Ken Palm top 50.
04:53 I believe it is.
04:54 Obviously, this is so early in the season.
04:56 I've never had to look at Ken Palm.
04:58 Excuse me.
04:59 I've never had to look at the net ranking so early in the season.
05:01 But there's a number of different variations.
05:04 The past couple of years, because BYU has been in the league
05:08 and because St. Mary's has been so good and because San Francisco has been solid
05:14 and because Santa Clara has been solid, Gonzaga has had a ton
05:18 of quad one and quad opportunity games.
05:23 Once you get to league, if the league stays in the way that they're
05:27 they're they're moving in regards to results in the nonconference
05:32 and none of these teams are able to really move the needle
05:35 in the next couple of weeks.
05:36 The the difficult thing is you're going to get to the league
05:40 and Gonzaga is not going to have any quad one opportunities within the league.
05:45 So you're really not going to be able to bolster your your net rankings
05:50 once you get into mid-January or beyond, other than that Kentucky game.
05:55 So that Kentucky game becomes very important later in this season.
05:59 And even when you look at the the quad twos,
06:02 there's not going to be a ton of those opportunities.
06:06 If the WCC other teams continue to struggle now,
06:11 you got to look on it on the flip side.
06:14 Gonzaga and all the other teams in the league, you know,
06:17 they were all in agreeance that we're all going to bolster
06:21 our nonconference schedules, give us more opportunities
06:25 to improve our net rankings, our Ken Palm analytics,
06:29 so that when we get to league, if we all are in a position
06:32 or the majority of us are in a position where we're solidly in quad twos,
06:38 maybe a couple in quad one like a Gonzaga St.
06:41 Mary's, maybe one other team can sneak in there.
06:43 We can all stay away from the quad fours.
06:45 That's going to really help everybody.
06:47 Well, that's kind of backfired because the league hasn't performed
06:50 the way that they all hope they would and would expect it to have.
06:54 You know, so that's a little bit of a disappointing thing. So.
06:58 I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this.
07:02 If Gonzaga beats Washington
07:05 on next Saturday, that would make it 17 straight Pac-12 wins.
07:11 That's impressive.
07:13 Their next challenge would be Connecticut, UConn.
07:17 It's a neutral site game in Seattle.
07:19 UConn just lost to Kansas.
07:22 They're a really good team.
07:25 After that, you could start talking about Gonzaga
07:29 running the table in league.
07:31 You could start talking about Gonzaga running the table
07:34 until the NCAA tournament, because that next biggest challenge.
07:39 And now this is granted the WCC teams don't continue and improve.
07:43 And this is all hypothetical.
07:46 The next huge challenge would be Kentucky on the road.
07:49 I believe that game is February 10th.
07:52 So there's a there's a case to be said that Gonzaga has got
07:58 a huge runway in front of them to, you know, really stack some wins together.
08:03 Dan, let me take one step back and hit people with some of the actual numbers
08:07 so you can get all of this kind of in real perspective, because like you said,
08:10 net rankings is something that we don't normally cover really ever
08:14 in the course of this podcast season, but especially this early in the year.
08:18 But right now, BYU is sitting at number two.
08:21 Obviously, though, you touched on repetitively,
08:24 they are not part of the WCC anymore.
08:26 Going down, Gonzaga is the first one at thirty one overall.
08:30 Then thirty one. I thought it was twenty four.
08:33 So I misread that this morning going through.
08:35 Yeah. Then you've got San Francisco at forty nine.
08:38 Santa Clara at one twenty four.
08:42 St. Mary's one fifty five.
08:44 LMU one seventy three.
08:46 The rest are all in the two and three hundred rankings.
08:49 And those two and three hundred rankings, those are quad three games
08:53 and quad four games, and that's not going to do anything beneficial for Gonzaga.
08:59 When you look at St. Mary's in one fifty five range,
09:03 that right there is hard to believe and hard to understand,
09:09 because last year St.
09:12 Mary's was ahead of Gonzaga for most of the season in regards to the net rankings.
09:17 I mean, they were flirting around seven, eight, nine for much of WCC
09:22 conference play.
09:24 Say again what Santa Clara and San Francisco were at.
09:28 So Gonzaga thirty one.
09:29 Then it goes.
09:30 San Francisco is forty nine.
09:33 Santa Clara is one twenty four.
09:35 Yeah. Santa Clara is one twenty four.
09:37 And then St. Mary's is one fifty five.
09:39 So that's San Francisco.
09:41 A road win at San Francisco
09:45 would be the only truly good win for Gonzaga
09:48 if that stays true to what these net rankings are right now.
09:52 You know, a win against one hundred and twenty one hundred twenty four
09:55 can net team like Santa Clara, you mentioned that's that's not even
10:00 I don't even I don't know if that's a quad to win even that might be a quad three.
10:05 So really, there's not a lot of quad one quad two opportunities left
10:10 for Gonzaga throughout the rest of the year.
10:12 You look at UW, you look at San Diego State at home.
10:16 That should be a quad one, although it might drop to a quad two
10:20 because San Diego State, you know, it depends on how they play in league.
10:24 I would imagine they're going to be top two or top three in the Mountain West
10:28 when things are all said and done.
10:31 But then Kentucky would be the next one to really give them an opportunity
10:35 and a shot for a quad one or quad to win.
10:38 This I'm trying to filibuster here for a second to see.
10:43 Huh. OK, yeah.
10:46 WCC 0 and nine against quad one teams this year collectively.
10:50 That's that's not going to move the needle.
10:55 And, you know, I was about the strength of the league and they scheduled up.
11:00 They just haven't been able to come away with those victories.
11:03 Like a bad producer for bringing that up.
11:09 Yeah, but you got to do it.
11:10 I mean, that's the thing is, you know, we're going to try to cover
11:13 the WCC objectively and we got to cover Gonzaga objectively
11:18 when the time's right.
11:19 Well, so then let's talk about that.
11:21 That feels like the worst case scenario side of it
11:23 is that everything continues in this trend and we end up a season
11:25 where Gonzaga has really no
11:27 no laurels to rest upon in that second half, according to the voters
11:32 or traditional conservative bias or whatever you say.
11:34 So let's say best case scenario.
11:36 Do you see this being the dawn of the dawns?
11:39 Is this USD and Coach Lavin's time to finally start?
11:43 Like, is there a team that could arise from this or do you just
11:47 is there no permutation where somehow cream rises to the top and we end up?
11:52 Hey, it's OK.
11:54 Two and three behind Gonzaga ended up winding up having good seasons.
11:57 Well, I mean, I think I think St.
11:59 Mary's going to right the ship.
12:00 They've got too good of a head coach and Randy Bennett.
12:02 They got too many good players to not play better down the stretch.
12:07 And once you get in the league,
12:10 you know, San Francisco, that Arizona State game
12:13 would have been a nice win for them on the road.
12:15 They also let one slip against Boise State.
12:19 Actually, sorry, against Grand Canyon.
12:22 So, you know, they had a couple other close games
12:24 that they could have pulled away with.
12:26 Actually, it was Boise State and Grand Canyon they lost to.
12:30 So those would have been huge opportunities for them.
12:34 And when you look at USD, you know, I like what Lavin's doing down there,
12:38 but he's got a really young basketball team and they haven't necessarily
12:42 challenged themselves with their nonconference.
12:45 You know, and that's that's going to show when you look at the net rankings,
12:49 that's going to show when you look at the Ken Palm analytics as well.
12:52 Fair enough.
12:54 Anything specific Gonzaga wise that you want to focus in, hone in on?
12:58 Seems like every time we're checking back in on that front
13:02 for as much doom and gloom as we front loaded this podcast with,
13:04 it seems like things are going still quite well in terms of the individual
13:08 player progressions, the lineups.
13:11 Anything, though, you want to close out just team or player
13:14 specific wise on the Gonzaga front?
13:16 I mean, you just look at the balance of this team,
13:19 you know, that continues to stand out, you know,
13:23 that USC game, five zags and double figures.
13:28 Anton Watson had nine.
13:31 You know, they they really did a nice job defensively on on Isaiah Collier,
13:36 making things difficult.
13:37 He's such an aggressive player that he's going to create scoring opportunities
13:42 and he's going to make plays,
13:44 but they never really made anything allowed him to get anything easy.
13:47 So I think you got to give a lot of credit to the three backcourt guys.
13:52 Nolan Hickman had stretches on him.
13:55 Nemart had stretches on him.
13:56 Dusty Stromer had stretches on him.
13:58 I thought all three of those guys did a nice job.
14:01 Earlier in the season, you touched on earlier this podcast.
14:05 Apologies. You touched on still up to come.
14:07 This season is the stretch of Washington, UConn,
14:10 and then leading into this state.
14:13 They've got a couple of other big games coming up over the next few weeks.
14:15 So just a reminder to everybody out there, Gonzaga Nation is your source
14:19 for all of the great coverage you need pre and post game.
14:22 Dan is literally sprinting across from this studio
14:27 that he records into the in-person studio to have Adam
14:29 and gang in like there's going to be a ton of great coverage.
14:32 So if this alone did not get you to hit subscribe and follow along,
14:37 just know that there is a lot more to come.
14:38 Dan, until next time, we'll talk to you soon.
14:41 Yeah, absolutely.
14:42 And Gonzaga fans that are listening are going to love today's guest
14:46 that Adam and I are recording with in studio.
14:48 One of the most beloved Zags of all times, David Pendergraft.
14:52 So that should be fun because Adam and Pendo were teammates for a short stretch
14:57 and Pendo is one of the best Zags of all time
15:00 in regards to doing whatever it took for his team to win.
15:04 Love it. Talk to you soon.
15:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]