March Madness: 16 things to know about the West Region, plus who wins

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Sixteen things to know about the West Region, plus who wins:

Rating the Region: Third of the four.

Contenders to cut down the nets in San Jose: Gonzaga, Arizona, Florida State, West Virginia, Notre Dame.

Pretenders who will be bounced early despite favorable seeding: Sixth-seeded Maryland was susceptible to a first-round knockout, but got a nice draw with struggling No. 11 seed Xavier (see below). That means the one higher-seeded team in the region that could and should go down right away is none other than No. 8 Northwestern. The Wildcats drew a dangerous No. 9 in Vanderbilt, which has won seven of its past nine and seriously threatened Kentucky in Rupp Arena on Feb. 28.

Cinderellas: Are you ready for Dunk City Part Two? Fourteenth-seeded Florida Gulf Coast breezed through the Atlantic Sun tournament to earn a second straight NCAA bid, and the experience gained last year could help fuel a run like the Eagles memorably made in 2013. Athletic FGCU gets a regionally favorable draw, playing in Orlando, but that location also is favorable for first-round opponent Florida State. Gulf Coast will have to handle the Seminoles’ length, but Joe Dooley’s Eagles are unlikely to be intimidated.

[Pat Forde’s regional breakdowns: South | Midwest | East | West]

Team that doesn’t belong: Xavier deserves credit for regrouping to get a bid after losing No. 2 scorer Edmond Sumner for the season 13 games ago – but that doesn’t mean the Musketeers are playing at an NCAA tournament level now. They’ve won four games in the past 11, and three of them are against woeful DePaul. If they hadn’t beaten Butler in the Big East quarterfinals, they probably wouldn’t be here. Overall, they’re 5-12 against NCAA tournament teams.

Chances of a 1-16 shocker: A bit higher than nonexistent. Top seed Gonzaga’s one loss was a shocking home defeat on Senior Night against BYU, so a clunker from the Zags isn’t completely inconceivable. And although the opponent is 18-16 South Dakota State, the Jackrabbits do have one big thing going for them: Mike Daum, a 6-foot-9, 245-pound problem of a power forward. He’s the nation’s No. 2 scorer at 25.3 points per game and also pulls down 8.2 boards. In a taut Summit League championship game, Daum dropped 37 points and 12 boards on the University of Nebraska Omaha and made five 3-pointers. If he has a legendary performance, maybe the Jackrabbits make history.

Best potential round-of-32 game: Fourth-seeded West Virginia against fifth-seeded Notre Dame. Both have tough, veteran players. Both play difficult, taxing styles. Both have tournament coaches who have made deep runs. The questions: Could the Fighting Irish execute their patient passing game against WVU’s chaos-inducing pressure? Could the Mountaineers score enough points to keep up (it would help if big man Nathan Adrian relocates his shot, after missing 12 of his past 13 threes)?

Best potential Sweet 16 game: Gonzaga-Notre Dame would be a Roman Catholic throwdown, with interesting matchups galore. The primary intrigue would come in seeing how the smallish Irish would handle 7-foot-1, 300-pound Polish mountain man Przemek Karnowski – quite likely with more minutes from 6-10, 255-pound Lithuanian Martinas Geben. On the other end, the Zags would need to figure out how Karnowski could chase undersized stretch-five Bonzie Colson around the perimeter.

Best potential regional final game: Gonzaga-Arizona is the game we want and need. It would mean one deserving coach – Mark Few or Sean Miller – finally breaks through and reaches the Final Four. It would mark either the ultimate validation of Gonzaga’s program, or vindication for a Pac-12 that hasn’t put a team in the Final Four since 2008. And it would be a heck of a game between two teams that enter the tourney a combined 62-5.

Best coach: Only one of the 16 coaches in this region has been to a Final Four – and Bob Huggins has been to two, 18 years apart, with two different schools. This is the West Virginia coach’s 23rd NCAA tournament appearance, tying him with Denny Crum for seventh-most in history. His 14 straight tourney berths while coaching at Cincinnati ties for the ninth-longest consecutive streak in history. Perhaps most impressively, Huggins has reinvented his approach in recent years, embracing the Press Virginia defensive frenzy that he adopted in order to better compete when WVU moved into the Big 12. Not many coaches are that flexible in their 60s.

Underrated coach: Randy Bennett just completed his 10th straight 20-win season at Saint Mary’s, and if it weren’t for Gonzaga you probably would have heard more about the 28-4 Gaels. Bennett ran into trouble with the NCAA a few years ago and was suspended for five games for a failure to monitor his program, but the on-court product has been awfully good. The seventh-seeded Gaels play highly skilled offensive basketball, with a premium placed on passing and shooting – but this year’s team might be Bennett’s best defensively.

Best player: It’s worth mentioning Arizona freshman Lauri Markkanen, Maryland’s Melo Trimble and Notre Dame’s Colson, but the correct answer is Gonzaga guard Nigel Williams-Goss. He’s a highly efficient offensive player, shooting 57.4 percent from 2-point range, 37.2 percent from outside the arc and 91 percent from the foul line, while also handing out a team-high 4.8 assists per game. Then there’s the rest of it: 5.7 rebounds per game and 1.9 steals. Williams-Goss produced this masterpiece stat line in the West Coast Conference final against Saint Mary’s: 22 points on 10 shots, six rebounds, six assists and six steals.

Best player you never heard of: The previously discussed Mike Daum would easily fit here, but let’s give some love to Jock Landale of Saint Mary’s. The 6-foot-11 junior from Australia revamped his body, got in better shape and became a star this season. He’s had 15 double-doubles this year and is averaging team highs of 16.8 points and 9.3 rebounds in just 27.7 minutes per game.

X-factor: With Allonzo Trier attacking the basket, how good can Arizona be? Perhaps national championship good. After being suspended half the season for a positive PED test, Trier has instantly upgraded what was already a good team – and he took it up another notch in the Pac-12 tourney. He was 23 of 28 at the foul line and averaged 20.7 points in three games in Las Vegas. With Trier integrated into the offense, Arizona will have a very good chance to reverse a December loss to Gonzaga. (If that game comes to pass, Sean Miller probably won’t do to Mark Few what he did to Steve Alford with the late, rub-it-in timeout.)

Welcome March sight: Northwestern. At last. Good to see you, Wildcats.

Best part of this bracket: Two Dakotas in the same region. Neither has much of a chance of advancing, but Thursday will be a big day in two of the more overlooked states in America – they’ve never both put teams in the Big Dance in the same year. That afternoon, South Dakota State takes its shot against Gonzaga. That night, 15 seed North Dakota gets a crack at No. 2 Arizona. From Grand Forks to Rapid City, let the Dakota party begin.

Pat’s pick: Arizona

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