Bubble Teams Are Big Gonzaga Fans This Weekend

The West Coast Conference tournament starts tonight in Las Vegas, but nobody is really going to be paying attention until Sunday when St. Mary's Patrick Mills makes his much anticipated return. No offense to LMU, San Diego, Pepperdine or USF, but like most opening acts in Las Vegas, nobody cares.

(Well not nobody. The WCC did sell out all of its all-tournament passes before the first tonight's tip-off. So maybe that move to a neutral court in Las Vegas wasn't a bad move afterall. Remember this when the Pac-10 and the other big schools play conference tournaments in front of empty crowds.)
And the WCC tournament will draw a lot of interest from the bubble teams. Gonzaga is already in the NCAA tournament. If the Bulldogs can win the conference tournament, then St. Mary's could be left on the bubble. That's the rub for the WCC commissioner Jamie Zaninovich. To be honest, I don't know how he does it.

Now, you can't just keep Gonzaga out of the tournament. And you can't exactly turn into Marsellus from Pulp Fiction ... "Listen Mark, in the second half, your butt goes down. Say it." Though, you couldn't really blame the commissioner if he turns into Bobby "the Brain" Heenan for a day. You know, Matt Boldin comes running down the court and the Zaninovich throws sand in his eyes. Or maybe he gives Omar Samhan a foreign object to use.

The crowning achievement would be if St. Mary's held a one-point lead with only seconds remaining and Zaninovich ran out on the court and screamed, "Sound the horn, sound the horn!" ending the game in the Gaels' favor. (Though, that seemingly happened with the screw-job ending in the Super Bowl.)

Not that Zaninovich has to go to any of those extremes. St. Mary's probably ends up winning the tournament anyway. The Gaels have much more on the line and have something to prove. Gonzaga does not, it's human nature.

Not that it will be easy. Mills figures to come out rusty in his first game. And St. Mary's opponent will already have at least a game under its belt. But the Gaels will find a way to win that semi-final game before running the Bulldogs out of the building. Which, of course, would be bad news for the bubble teams out there.