Looking Back at the Schedule

It's not secret that the Gauchos played an extremely strong weak out-of-conference schedule. Combine that with the mighty mighty Big West strength and you have one hell of a whopper schedule. Add to that a few losses to teams that the Gauchos have all no business losing to and you've got no chance at an at-large bid.

With that being said, I got to thinking in my post-March Madness hangover (can't wait for Thursday) about the Gauchos out-of-conference schedule. Yes, it was soft. However, the Gauchos only two out-of-conference losses (except Utah State and Mississippi) during the true OOC "season" came at the hands of Stanford (a Brook Lopez-less Stanford) and UNC.

Considering that these are two of the Sweet 16 contestants, they are looking like much better losses at this point in the season. To digress for a moment - one thing the readers don't know about me is that I grew up near the Stanford campus, went to their games and watched them as a kid so I consider myself a Stanford fan, as well. I was at the Anaheim venue on both Thursday and Saturday and Stanford looks very dominant.

In fact, in my tournament bracket, I have Stanford beating Texas and making it to the Final Four. Unfortunately, I have UNC losing to Tennessee in the Elite 8. If my bracket holds up, as my extremely accurate picks are known to, UCSB will have lost to two of the final 8 teams left in the country.

By the way, if Tyler Hansbrough stays at UNC for his senior year, is he not going to eat any UCSB post player alive? Hope Bob Williams brings the exact same complete opposite philosophy/strategy that caused him to lose to Irvine 3 times in a season. It's just not the same as Stanford losing to UCLA (one by a very bad call) three times in a season.

With that, I'm out.

Check back for updates. I'm planning on reviewing the season, position by position after the tournament is over.