Few furious with committee for not selecting Gonzaga’s women’s team, John Blanchette says.

There was a time, dating back to his days as an assistant and then as a newbie head coach, that you could get a pretty strong take on the NCAA bracket from Gonzaga’s Mark Few every Selection Sunday.

Nothing geeky or drunk on math, but informed and unsparing.

He’s been a lot more que sera the last couple of years – until Sunday, when he took a roundhouse swing at the tournament committee.

Not his committee – Few is fine with the No. 3 seed and the trip to Tucson, Ariz., for a first-round game Thursday against Winthrop. But he’s hot about the women.

“That was the biggest travesty of the day,” he said of the exclusion of Gonzaga from the women’s tournament despite a 27-3 record. “It’s just shocking. It’s appalling.

“They’ve got to get some basketball people on that committee. They don’t have the same type of expertise and experience that we have on our committee. You can’t go 23 for 24 down the stretch, go undefeated in your league and then have it come down to losing one game without the best player in the league in your lineup. Those people just don’t know what they’re doing.”

Well, he’s right, although they could be just an old recycled men’s committee.

Remember back four years when the Zags had won 17 of 18 going into West Coast Conference tournament final? They won again to go 24-6 – and then were rewarded with a 12th seed, and it was easily inferred that there would have been no at-large invitation from the NCAA had they not been tournament champions.

You’ll also recall that team made it to the Sweet 16, which suggested the picking party wasn’t just consulting the RPI but possibly smoking it as well.

Still, those halcyon days are warmly recalled. Back when the Zags were being treated as an afterthought by the committee, they were treating their fans to all sorts of amazing gifts. The magic has been mussed a bit in the years since as the Bulldogs have earned the relative respect of single-digit seeding, but there is a different feeling this time around.

“The days of innocence are gone,” Few acknowledged. “We’re the marked team and the marked program now, and there’s no going back.

“That being said, the youth of this team and the approach it takes – that kind of sheds the whole expectation aspect of it and puts us back into the roles we played before, in a different kind of way.”

In other words, only a single line on the bracket sheet separates this year’s third-seeded Zags with last year’s No. 2s – but it may as well be eight or 10.

“Last year at this time, with the burden of carrying such a high ranking and such lofty expectations, there was just kind of a cloud hanging over us,” Few said. “It was great to go to Seattle, but I think our guys felt pressure over in Seattle. What we have this year, with freshmen and sophomores and you throw in a guy like J.P. (Batista) who hasn’t been through this before – is a youthful exuberance, a tendency to just roll it out and play.

“I just don’t feel like we have the burden we were carrying last year down the stretch. It doesn’t feel like that, due to our youth and some of the personalities on the team.”

He’s talking about the ebullient leadership of Ronny Turiaf and the cut-loose temperaments of Adam Morrison and Derek Raivio, the defining identities on this very different Gonzaga team.

They are more confident than assured, if that makes sense – and because of that they may be a better bet to do damage against bigger name teams further into the bracket than to they are to dispatch the likes of Winthrop in the manner the seeding would suggest.

Not that the Zags are suggesting any such thing.

“If seeds meant anything,” said senior Brian Michaelson, the team’s resident bracketologist, “the favorites would win every game every year. What better program than us to show that seeds don’t mean anything?”

In this case, the seeds go to show just how capable these Zags truly are – owning victories as they do over a No. 1 (Washington), a No. 2 (Oklahoma State) and a No. 5 (Georgia Tech). There are three other wins over tournament teams, too.

No doubt the Washington seeding is causing some consternation among the Zag faithful who can’t reconcile it with the outcome of that December date in the McCarthey Athletic Center. They should really get over it.

The Huskies are more than deserving.

“I think we were all surprised that Washington got a one, but when you looked at who they beat it made sense,” Few said. “People just hadn’t been talking about it.”

Except the committee, which this year did its job better than ever. Of course, it may have been an easier job. The so-called bubble teams like Maryland, Notre Dame, St. Joseph’s and DePaul simply didn’t do enough to enhance their arguments; the arguably underseeded teams like Louisville, Syracuse and Pittsburgh scheduled too many stiffs.

“Although if the Memphis kid could have made those free throws (against Louisville),” Few noted, “it could have really impacted the way some things came down.”

But just how much? Instead of Winthrop, maybe the Zags get Louisiana-Lafayette. As Few himself noted, it’s all about matchups “and even the twos are sweating this year.”

The seeds – they’re for entertainment purposes only.

As the Gonzaga women now know all too cruelly, the point of Selection Sunday is, after all, selection.