A club rest of WCC should want to join

Everything that’s wrong with the West Coast Conference, I learned by trolling the Internet.

Actually, it only took one post.

In the vigorous and often silly cyberdebate that buffeted the WCC’s postseason tournament this past weekend – the site, the refs, the league’s stature and geographic arrogance both perceived and real – a contribution from a fan of one of the California schools was particularly instructive.

“Why are all game passes $65 for this tournament?” he wrote. “There are going to be 5,000 Zag fans there that pay several thousand dollars for their tickets. The WCC should charge $300 at least for the pass, it would still sell out.”

Damn right.

If these Zagophiles are going to be silly enough to take this basketball business seriously, let them pay the freight. No need for anybody else to even, you know, actually attend.

The Bulldogs won their seventh WCC tournament in the last eight years Monday night, setting a record for fan apoplexy in the process. And Tuesday, the one-point escape against Loyola Marymount was getting the Zags roasted from coast-to-coast and justifiably so, given the dismal show they put on until the obligatory heroic comeback.

The irony is the Bulldogs wouldn’t be on the spit had they the good sense to lose a time or two in January and February and not climb to No. 4 in the polls. Achievement just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Gonzaga’s NCAA readiness and seed worthiness will be tugged and twisted like taffy for another full week, the more fun for us. But it’s going to get old for the home team.

In fact, it already is. The Zags have been getting zinged all winter for either their inability or unwillingness to boat race their WCC brothers. Too many narrow escapes, critics say, given the relative strength of the league.

It is not an argument without merit. But the hilarious thing is that it’s being put forth up and down the league, as well.

Quite the badge of honor, that: Gonzaga’s not that good, because we’re lousy.

Naturally, rival coaches understand that the better the Zags are made out to be, the better they seem by comparison. And some math suggests the league isn’t all that bad – the conference RPI is 12 out of 31 leagues, or exactly the WCC’s average over the previous seven seasons. This despite the fact that the other seven WCC teams went 6-23 against Top 100 teams in the RPI outside the conference.

“You have to schedule good teams and beat them,” said commissioner Mike Gilleran. “This year we scheduled folks. We just didn’t beat them.”

But this is the bigger problem: Gonzaga won the league by six games, a first in the WCC’s 53-year history.

And no matter how cyclical the talent pool, it’s an embarrassment.

Gonzaga does figure to “come back” to the rest of the league a bit next season, but Gilleran understands that’s not what the WCC should be looking for.

“I don’t want Gonzaga to ‘settle,’ ” he said. “I want the rest of the teams to rise.”

The question remains, do the other schools want it?

Even Gilleran acknowledged that “envy has kicked in” a bit in the relationship between GU and the WCC’s seven hoop dwarfs. And there is also an undercurrent that the Zags have grown too big – you know, that it was cute for a couple of Cinderella turns, like the Loyola shoot-‘em-up years. But now the Zags are on a tear equaled only by USF’s domination of the 1970s – and let’s face it, those Dons weren’t liked much.

Gilleran has the perspective of time and said he tells people that the Zags “are a multidecade overnight success.

“My first swing through the league after I got hired, I came up here and Gonzaga’s non-league opponent was Whitworth. And it was a close game. The thing is, you have to let things develop and not worry so much today that you’re not Gonzaga.”

But that may not even be the issue. There has always been this feeling about the WCC’s schools that administrations would just as soon everybody went 14-14. Nearly every program has had its turn at the top, but since those USF days only Gonzaga has made bold gestures – facilities, coaching salaries, a broadened recruiting net – to build on success. Marketing has been dreadful, and audience participation worse. GU has sold out every game but one in its 6,000-seat arena – the league’s largest – in two years; this season, the other WCC gyms were filled to just 49 percent capacity when GU wasn’t in town.

Yes, they are the only show in this town. But once upon a time their small-town “remoteness” wasn’t considered an asset.

They made it into one. And now it’s time for some of the others to help pay the freight.