Can The Zags Answer The Big Question?

It’s the $94,000 question, if you have to put a number on it.

That is, on the current scale, what a “unit” of the NCAA Tournament pie is worth when the check comes in the mail to West Coast Conference headquarters every April. Or at least this April. Next April, it’ll balloon again, as advertisers pony up even more to be the bridge between Billy Packer’s blather. A few years ago, the NCAA started doling out its television booty by units, based on a conference’s performance over a six-year period. It’s a typically convoluted educratic alternative to the dreaded $100,000 free throw, where an 18-year-old’s miss in the West Regional might send State Tech’s athletic budget into such a depression that women’s bumper pool would have to be dropped from the varsity mix.

The upshot is still the same - the more teams you get into the Dance, the more units. But if you don’t call it money, then it isn’t really money, right? And with college players ever-so-slowly starting to whiff the scent of unionization, the NCAA wants to keep the m-word out of it.

So start telling your 10-year-old his allowance will now be meted out in units.

But back to the $94,000 question, which is: Does this get Gonzaga in?

“It better,” said coach Mark Few after his Bulldogs dispatched San Diego 80-70 in a WCC tournament semifinal in which the Zags had to play with uncommon zeal to make it look as routine as it seemed.

Yeah, but will it - as an at-large invitee if the Zags happen not to earn the WCC’s automatic berth with a win in tonight’s championship game?

“It has to,” Few reasoned, remembering the death-march December he scheduled so long ago. “I mean, it better - or I’m gonna go off.”

Off a bridge? Or off like a firecracker?

In the suburbs of tournament week - the WCC, the Mid-American, the Midwestern Collegiate - tension used to be limited pretty much to championship night, when the lone NCAA berth would be decided. But at least there was tension. In the inner cities - the ACC, the SEC, the Big Ten - virtually none of the games are meaningful when four, five, six and even seven teams get passes to the Dance. But there was some serious sweat on semifinal night here at Toso Pavilion, where the WCC managed to impanel four good teams, twice as many as it really needed.

For what it really needed was for at least one of its top two, Pepperdine and Gonzaga - that is to say, the at-large-worthy teams - to survive to tonight, and then let the bricks fall where they may.

As it happened, both survived - Pepperdine keeping the WCC’s record clean in never having the tournament host win by outlasting Santa Clara 58-55 in the other semi. For the first time ever, the WCC’s No. 1 and 2 seeds will meet for the championship, which must have commissioner Mike Gilleran with visions of units jitterbugging in his head.

Even the loser, he thinks, should get in. At least if it’s Gonzaga.

“I’m biased, of course, but I think they’re probably in,” he said. “In fact, I’d be shocked if Gonzaga wasn’t in in that situation.

“The unfortunate reality is that our top two teams, you’d have to call them, probably got hammered in the RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) this morning because of who they had to play in the first round. Loyola Marymount and Saint Mary’s are so low that it couldn’t have helped us a bit. It’s almost not fair to them, because there’s nothing they can do about (scheduling) at this point - and certainly that’s the argument we try to make with the committee.”

It’s an argument they might try to make with their presidents, who continue to perpetuate a flawed format that so generously gives - this year, for instance - a fourth-seeded team home court advantage for up to three games. That Santa Clara has never been able to take ultimate advantage of that in any of the seven times it’s hosted the tournament hardly speaks to the wisdom of the policy. The good news is that at least the tournament is being moved to San Diego’s new Jenny Craig Pavilion for a one-year go next March. The bad news is that if the Toreros aren’t the best team in the round-robin regular season, they’re going to be hell on whoever is.

In any case, there’s one way to pre-empt all the hand-wringing. And that’s by being the best team now.

Which Gonzaga may well be, believe it or not.

Their first-round romp over Saint Mary’s was meaningful only in its ease, if you can call losing defender extraordinaire Mike Nilson - in some respects, the emotional center of this team - in the process “ease.” More conclusive was the bludgeoning of San Diego, in which the Zags - certainly inspired by a fallen teammate - once again revved up Casey Calvary and dared the Toreros to stop him.

By losing three of their last six regular-season games, there was some feeling that GU was swooning its way into March - a posture assumed mostly by instant experts unwilling to give Pepperdine, San Diego or Santa Clara their due.

Forgotten, too, was the fact that last year’s Bulldogs finished February much the same way - with losses to the Waves and Toreros, and rather rote dismissals of Loyola and Saint Mary’s. Then came the tournament, and you know the rest. Is Gonzaga in?

If the Zags play as they did Sunday night, you won’t have to ask.