Snub Teams

There is always one common denominator in every NCAA tournament: snub teams. Snub teams are teams that are not selected to participate in the tournament, but are deserving due to their complete body of work in the regular season and in their conference tournament.

Only 34 at large teams can make the field of 65. With this limited number of teams getting selected, snub teams are always prevalent during the tournament selection process.

This year, many teams were snubbed by the tournament committee: Saint Mary's and San Diego State. Saint Mary's finished the year 26-6, and 10-4 in their conference. The team finished second in the West Coast Conference behind Gonzaga. Saint Mary's finished the season with an RPI of 48 and a strength of schedule of 159. Saint Mary's had key wins against Providence, San Diego State, Southern Illinois, and Utah State.

The second snub team was San Diego State. This team finished fourth in the Mountain West Conference. San Diego State had an overall record of 24-9 and a conference record of 11-5. Key wins for San Diego State included Utah, New Mexico, and UNLV. Their best nonconference victory came against Cal State Northridge. San Diego State finished with a strength of schedule of 35 and an RPI of 35.

However, each team was not selected into the tournament due to flaws in their resumes. Saint Mary's had very good key wins and a very good RPI, but their strength of schedule hurt them. Rarely do teams with a strength of schedule higher than 100 get into the field of 65. San Diego State had a very high RPI and strength of schedule. However, their non-conference schedule hurt them. Their one quality non-conference win came against Cal State Northridge.

Overall, both of these teams deserved to be in the field of 65. Each team had flaws, but their strengths greatly outweighed these flaws. Saint Mary's and San Diego State are the two major snub teams from the 2008-2009 college basketball season.