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Yesterday's West Coast Conference Media Day was a wildly successful event for both the Gonzaga Bulldogs and for the conference in general. The WCC continues to show an incredible dedication to new trends in media and they are doing a nice job capitalizing on their new found attention. In case you missed it, here are some relevant links on the happenings of media day:
Watch The Full Tip-Off Preview Show Featuring Each WCC Coach And One Select Player
Note: Gonzaga's Mark Few and Elias Harris appear at around the 1 Hour, Eight Minute Mark
Zags Get Seven First Place Votes, Enter The Season As WCC Favorites
Four Bulldogs Named To Preseason All-Conference Team
The whole day was very well planned out and executed and it was impressive to see how professionally done the live show was.
One of the big pieces of news that we are still waiting to see how it plays out was news that the conference inked a deal with Time Warner Cable to broadcast 15 teams in the 2012-13 season and 22 in future years. While we don't know the exact specifics on how this will impact local programming, we do know that two games are part of that initial 15. Gonzaga at USF on February 16th and Portland at Gonzaga on March 2nd will be featured on Time Warner Cable. How those games get distributed to the Pacific Northwest is still up in the air but we will provide updates as we get them
KenPom Ranks Gonzaga 14th
Call it nerdy, call it too stats-related, call it whatever you want...but I can't help but love the KenPom's and Dan Hanner's of the world. Advanced statistics guru Ken Pomeroy has released his preseason rankings and, as expected, it varies greatly from what we saw in the Coaches & AP Polls. The headline difference is that Indiana checks in at #3 rather than a near unanimous #1 in the two major polls. Kentucky and Ohio State come in at #1 and #2, respectively.
Pomeroy ranks the Zags 14th in the country at this time and, if you recall, his peer Dan Hanner ranked the Bulldogs 13th in his advanced stats ranking. Pomeroy and Hanner have quickly become commonplace in the NCAA Hoops world. While the AP & Coaches Poll get the major publicity, folks have begun shifting focus to these ranking methodologies and you can bet that you will start to see the two major polls influenced by Hanner & Pomeroy in coming weeks.
To get more color around Pomeroy's rankings, take a look at this latest blog.
NBA Starts Tonight!
The publicity around the start of the NBA tonight revolves around the Heat and Celtics squaring off (a matchup I feel like I watch about 50 times per season) but Zag fans should be checking out the two other games tonight. While you likely won't see either former Bulldog play, both Jeremy Pargo and Robert Sacre's teams will be in action tonight. Pargo's Cavaliers take on the Washington Wizards tonight while Sacre will get his first taste of NBA regular season action when the Lakers take on the Dallas Mavericks.
Austin Daye and Ronny Turiaf make their respective debuts tomorrow night.