- Griz coach Pat Kennedy
January 2003
But at least it could be called a solid mid-major: Stocked with coaches on the way up, and athletes who weren't high-school blue chippers, but played hard and often earned their degrees. Only the overlooked and the late blooming - Exhibit A would be a Griz legends Micheal Ray Richardson and Larry Krystkowiak - had a prayer of making the NBA.
Rivalries were heated; the gyms were jumping.
Every once in awhile, by dint of sweat and good fortune, the league pulled an NCAA tournament surprise. Montana almost upset UCLA's national champs in 1975. Idaho State beat post-John Wooden UCLA in 1977, advancing to the Elite Eight. Idaho cracked the top 10 in the polls and reached the Sweet 16 in 1982. Weber pulled first-round upsets in 1995 and 1999, coming within a basket of the Sweet 16 both times.
That was plenty good enough.
There's never been any reason to puff the Big Sky's "incredibly bright future." It's a chimera. It's snake oil.
Rules changes such as the 3-point shot and scholarship limitations haven't significantly altered the Big Sky's standing over the past 15 years. A wider, deeper talent pool hasn't made a difference. Decent arenas haven't opened the heavens. Nor has the presence of capable coaches and recruiters, some of whom have succeeded in higher-profile conferences.
The truth is, the conference's RPI was already slipping last season, even as Northern Arizona upset UCLA and Montana stunned Stanford. Weber State ripped through the fuzz to post a 14-0 league record, earn a No. 12 NCAA seed - the Big Sky's highest since 1984 - and bowed out, rather meekly, in a first-round loss to Wisconsin.
Weber's seeding didn't signal some kind of "turning the corner" for a league that has notched only two NCAA tourney victories in the past 21 years.
Let's hope, on the flip side, that the league's underachieving non-conference performance this season is an aberration.
The Big Sky is 23rd out of 31 Division I conferences in the NCAA's computer-generated RPI rankings; only Weber State is ranked among the top half of the nation's 327 teams, barely coming under the wire at No. 154. Not one Big Sky team is among the top 30 in CollegeInsider.com's mid-major coaches' poll.
The league entered Saturday night's games with a 28-57 record against Division I competition, and only six road victories. Its lone quality victory came on Dec. 18, when Northern Arizona won at (unranked) UNLV 74-73. The Big Sky is 0-7 against the Pac-10, 0-6 against the WAC, 1-7 against the Mountain West, 5-9 against the Big West, 5-7 against the WCC.
Of course, one man's mediocrity is another man's parity. Only twice in the Big Sky's 40-year history has a team won the regular-season title with as many as five losses. Who knows what 8-6 might do this year?
Looking back on Kennedy's prediction, it's good to know that the art of the oversell isn't dead. But a little more truth in advertising wouldn't hurt either.
Rial Cummings can be reached at 523-5255 or rcummings@miissoulian.com. His column, which runs on Sundays, won't appear the next two weeks because of vacation.
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