‘The Valley’ sets pace

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Frustrated on the phone for a few minutes now, Wichita State men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon’s voice turns optimistic. He’s hinting at what at first appears absurd: a Missouri Valley Conference team with seven league losses trying to squeeze into the NCAA tournament on an at-large invitation.

“We’ve won three out of four,” Turgeon said on his conference’s coaches teleconference this past week. “And we’ve got four of our next five at home. So I believe. And our kids still believe.”

There’s nothing fresh about the league, known in hoops vernacular as “The Valley,” sending multiple teams to the tournament. Next month’s bracket will be the ninth in a row to feature at least two Valley teams.

Other conferences carrying the mid- or low-major label hope to mimic The Valley’s rise. Their commissioners say it starts with sending multiple teams to the NCAA tournament. And with less than four weeks from Selection Sunday, as many as nine leagues outside the nation’s established Top 6 (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC) harbor hopes of sending at least one at-large team to the 65-team tournament.

The Valley, though, remains the standard. The 2006 NCAA tournament featured four Valley squads – as many as three of those big six leagues sent to the field – and two of them reached the Sweet 16.

This season’s most recent Ratings Percentage Index ranks the league fifth among the 31 Division I conferences. Those factors keep middling Valley teams, such as the Shockers, in this year’s early at-large debate.

“It’s a measuring stick for where we are as a league,” MVC commissioner Doug Elgin said. “We’re as deep as any league in the country. I’m not saying our top teams are as strong as any other leagues. But 1-10, we’re right there.”

This year’s selection committee should help show the truth of Elgin’s statement. The big guys look better – the ACC and Pac-10 figure to receive at least six bids each – and after league leaders Southern Illinois and Creighton, the Valley teams possess lower RPI numbers than a year ago.

So maybe there’s less room for schools such as Bradley, the fourth Valley team from a year ago, or George Mason, an at-large team from the Colonial Athletic Association that lost to Florida in the Final Four.

Elgin and Turgeon would debate that notion, and their argument looks like none seen in recent tournament-selection discussion. The Shockers started 9-0, rising as high as No. 8 in December’s national polls and snagging road wins at LSU and Syracuse. Yet just inside four weeks out from Selection Sunday, Wichita State sits 4 1/2 games out of first in a league some expected them to dominate.

“It’s really a roller-coaster ride for me,” Turgeon said.

CAA commissioner Tom Yeager played head cheerleader during George Mason’s amazing run last season. The Patriots, a No. 11 seed most analysts didn’t feel belonged in the 65-team field, eliminated Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and Connecticut to become the first mid-major team in 27 seasons to reach the Final Four.

Searching for a candidate to match Mason should start with the Valley and the Mountain West. The MWC has three teams in the top 24 in the RPI – Air Force, BYU and UNLV. Each team, though, has lost to at least one of the others and has at least two conference losses.

Next comes a bevy of smaller leagues hoping to snuggle closer to at-large contention over the next two weeks.

One is the West Coast, where tourney regular Gonzaga could become the rare mid-major to reach the NCAAs with double-digit losses.

The Zags have played the nation’s eighth-toughest non-conference schedule. The pre-league slate featured three cross-country trips, 10 of 15 games away from their home gym and a four-game losing streak that sent them out of the national spotlight. Throw in league losses to Saint Mary’s and Loyola Marymount, and Gonzaga, a Sweet 16 team four of the past eight seasons, might need to win the WCC tournament to reach the NCAAs.

“It’s a possibility, but the committee has always talked about playing a tough non-conference schedule,” WCC commissioner Michael Gilleran said. “And I believe Gonzaga’s is right up there.”

Schools such as Virginia Commonwealth and Winthrop can’t stake a similar claim. Both schools have reached 20 victories and led their conference standings, the CAA and the Big South. But neither has a victory against a Top 50 RPI team, which questions what their gaudy overall records mean.