Mountain West should hide after that flop

The NCAA Tournament begins its second week of games Thursday and Cornell is alive. So is Northern Iowa and the player who will have Lon Kruger waking late at night in a heavy sweat the next few months, the one and only Ali Farokhmanesh.

Saint Mary's is still playing.

So is Butler.

The Mountain West: RIP.

San Diego State coach Steve Fisher is correct. College basketball is a cruel business when you lose at this time of year. It hurts far longer than the time it takes little Farokhmanesh to square up for another game winner.

Want pathetic? .277

That's the winning percentage for the Mountain West Conference in 11 years of sending teams to the NCAAs, a forgettable statistic that includes a 2-4 record this March, when the league for the first time was extended four berths into the madness.

The NCAA distributes hundreds of millions of dollars it receives from CBS to conferences in units. This year each unit is worth $225,000. Mountain West officials had hoped to earn at least 10 units, which would have meant six wins by its teams.

Yeah. And the president today wants to re-think that health care reform bill.

Brigham Young and New Mexico managed to survive until the second round, where the Cougars, despite leading 10-0, never really threatened Kansas State, and the Lobos looked more a No. 13 seed than a 3 in getting thumped by Washington. UNLV and San Diego State were home before the first round was complete.

You can't deny the disappointing results. You can't pound your chest for three or four months and tell anyone willing to listen that you deserve four NCAA bids, then not realize how bad it looks when all four are dead and buried before the Sweet 16.

This is why such a poor showing hurts most: The Big East can go 6-6 in the first two rounds and send only two teams into the second week and quickly move past any criticism. Most will continue to assume it's the nation's best conference and carries the rights of supremacy bestowed by the Bowl Championship Series cartel.

It's different for the Mountain West, and I'm not certain it has anything to do with a lack of respect. I'm convinced that many around the country, particularly national media whose faces become household images during the tournament, simply don't know much about Mountain West basketball.

It's fun to laugh when a talking head refers to the league as the Big Mountain, as Billy Packer did in 2007. It's fine to shake your head when Greg Gumbel over the last week wrongly labels UNLV the conference champion and previews New Mexico's first-round game as "New Mexico State against Montana."

But know this: Apathy is a far worse trait for influential types to have about your league than disrespect. At least with the latter sentiment, they have paid attention enough to form an opinion, no matter how mistaken it might be.

I won't reintroduce the many reasons such indifference can be pointed directly to the league's TV contract. It has been written about and debated for years now. But that's part of it. A big part. I don't care how many TV sets pick up your games. It matters little if the right people aren't watching.

The NCAA Tournament selection committee has a member assigned to watch the Mountain West all season, to make notes and form arguments for why certain teams are deserving of a berth.

That worked so well this season that a team (San Diego State) with an RPI of 18 probably wouldn't have made the field had it not won the conference tournament.

It's more discouraging than anything else, but the mindset is only strengthened when the league fares as poorly as it did last week. Next season could be the best in league history for Mountain West basketball.

I know what that means to the conference. What, if anything, it means to everyone else remains a mystery. I'm thinking not much.

"I think our league is progressively getting better year in, year out," New Mexico coach Steve Alford said. "I think our league is making great strides."

It is. It has.

But it didn't represent well last week and hasn't in 11 years. Only twice has a Mountain West team made the Sweet 16, and 10 of the league's 15 at-large qualifiers since 2000 have lost in the first round.

For this, I can think of just one reason: It doesn't appear any conference team recruited Ali Farokhmanesh.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.