Alford, UCLA get lesson in life on NCAA Tournament bubble

I am saddened UCLA’s basketball team won’t repeat as Pac-12 Tournament champion, upset that March won’t include a certain snapshot we in Las Vegas have become more used to than cowboys overtaking the Thomas & Mack Center during the holiday season.

It just won’t be the same without Steve Alford sitting at a dais, his smile broader than Albuquerque and Westwood combined, and a net dangling from his neck.

Man, what a picture.

Alford won’t be climbing any ladder or cutting anything down at the MGM Grand Garden today, his UCLA team having been eliminated by Arizona 70-64 in one tournament semifinal Friday night.

A few minutes after the loss, Alford officially switched hats from coach to impassioned politician.

I’m pretty sure he could give Carolyn Goodman a run for Las Vegas mayor, or at least use his sports knowledge and recruiting skills to get a soccer stadium built.

I’m just not sure how much his sales pitch will play with a certain selection committee holed up in Indianapolis.

The Bruins are more of a bubble than anything Stride ever produced, hoping the numbers break their way when Selection Sunday arrives and the 68-team NCAA Tournament bracket is announced.

If you watched UCLA this week or, really, the last month, you would likely agree it passes the eye test as an NCAA team.

Whether it passes the resume test is an entirely different matter.

This is where things get murky.

UCLA has an RPI of 50 and a Kenpom rating of 41. The Bruins have just five wins against top 100 teams and three losses to sub-100 teams.

They beat Utah and Oregon and, well, who?

Alford said his team has no bad losses. Colorado is a bad loss. Oregon State is a bad loss. California and Arizona State aren’t good ones.

UCLA is the team whose resume will remain on an overhead projector for the selection committee to dissect until the bitter end of choosing 31 at-large teams. It probably will discuss the Bruins as much as anyone.

“I don’t think there is any question we are (an NCAA team),” Alford said. “(Arizona) is a top 5 basketball team. And I thought we played really well. We’ve improved. We’ve gotten better since November, December, January. We’re in a great league. Very competitive. Our guys keep fighting. I think we’re deserving. But we will have to wait until Sunday to see.

“I like our chances. I’ll be hard-pressed — I’ve been doing this a long time — to believe there are 31 better at-large teams than what we are.”

UCLA played people in its nonconference schedule. North Carolina. Gonzaga. Kentucky. Lost them all. It almost lost to Kentucky 164-2, but had to settle for trailing 41-7 at halftime and falling 83-44.

The Pac-12 is another matter, a conference ranked sixth in RPI that includes a great team (Arizona), a few that can be very good at times (Utah and Oregon) and then UCLA.

It’s not a terrific league this season, and how that might play within the committee will go a long ways in determining whether the Bruins will be dancing or settling for a spot at the children’s table of the National Invitation Tournament.

There is also this: As the Bruins wait to learn their fate, so, too, do others, and specific results the past few days might help UCLA jump off the bubble.

Just up the street from where Arizona was sending UCLA home, Boise State fell to Wyoming in a Mountain West semifinal at the Thomas & Mack Center. The Broncos, co-conference champions, are also considered a team that shouldn’t believe anything is certain in regards to making the NCAAs, which is why coach Leon Rice was stumping for his side after the loss.

Indiana lost on Friday. That could help UCLA. Texas went out of the Big 12 a day earlier. That might help.

This is how life on the bubble works. You hope and pray for others to also taste defeat.

What the Mountain West lost when Alford departed New Mexico for UCLA two years ago was one of its finest coaches and a guy who liked to wear a red jacket with his nets.

He lost five of his top eight players from last season, three to early-entry for the NBA Draft and still won 20 games this season. His team hit an awful stretch in late December and early January of five straight losses, which they view around UCLA as they might a 7.0 earthquake, and yet didn’t let things totally collapse.

One criteria used by the selection committee is whether it believes a certain team can win once placed into the bracket. The team that lost to Arizona on Friday could win a game. If the matchups fell really favorably, maybe even two.

UCLA, however, must sit and wait and fret and lose sleep.

Life on the bubble.

What an excruciating reality.

I’d like to think Alford will be wearing one of his nets for good luck when the field is announced Sunday.

March isn’t the same around here without that snapshot.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.