And with Gonzaga being the perennial #1 seed it’s bad for the conference. The #3 seed gets to play the 7/10 winner on Saturday to get accustomed to the environment and then gets a day off . The #2 seed has to play the #3 seed right out of the gate without a warmup game and without the opportunity to settle into the environment. In the end, Gonzaga is likely to win the tournament either way, having them play one less game isn’t worth the disadvantage to your 2nd best team in terms of the potential damage a loss has on their tournament seeding/resume. And with a loss, going into the tournament they’ll have played just one game in basically three weeks.

BYU managed to squeak out a win tonight, but all things being equal I’d rather be the 3 seed in the current WCC Tournament format. Pepperdine came out in rhythm while BYU played disjointed and like it was their first tournament game. Just like what happened last year. And that’s how you lose games you shouldn’t in March.