Santa Clara associate head coach Jason Ludwig greeted Monday morning with a big smile. So did others in the West Coast Conference.
The NCAA had just unveiled the men’s basketball season’s first edition of the NCAA Evaluation Tool, better known as the NET rankings, and they brought good news for the conference with three teams checking in among the nation’s top-32.
Gonzaga was on familiar ground at No. 5 and Saint Mary’s, seeking its fifth straight trip to the NCAA Tournament this season, was positioned very nicely at No. 29. Pacific is at No. 76, giving the conference four teams in the top-100.
For Santa Clara, winner of at least 20 games the past four seasons but still chasing its first NCAA bid since the days of Steve Nash three decades ago, landing at No. 32 in the NET was validation.
“Great starting point. I was excited because that showed that we scheduled the right way and we’re winning,” said Ludwig, who handles scheduling for head coach Herb Sendek’s program. “Our philosophy is we’re trying to position ourselves to get an (NCAA) at-large bid. In order to get an at-large bid, we have to have a non-conference schedule that’s competitive enough to give us the metrics that we need to be in consideration for that.”
West Coast Conference Commissioner Stu Jackson, who also serves on the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee that will choose the 68-team tournament field, felt just as gratified by the initial NET rankings as Ludwig.
“We as a conference felt strongly that the early non-conference portion of the schedule and performance of some of our members was very positive. And with the release of the first NET rankings, our enthusiasm, our optimism was confirmed,” Jackson said. “I think having three teams currently ranked that high means that if selections were held today that we’d have a pretty strong case for at-large bids for three of our teams.
“It’s encouraging because if we continue to perform and close the deal through the month of December, by the end of the month we’ll have a pretty good idea about the chances of getting two or three teams into the tournament.”
The season is only about 20 percent complete, but Santa Clara’s 8-1 start is making believers beyond the NCAA computer. ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, in his three-months-premature projection of the 2026 NCAA Tournament field this week, has the Broncos in the mix for an at-large berth.
Lunardi rates the West Coast Conference as the only non-Power 5 league in the country he envisions securing multiple NCAA bids. And Santa Clara would like to make it three teams from the conference for just the fourth time ever, the first time since 2022 when Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s and San Francisco all earned bids.
That uphill climb against the Power 5 conferences — ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East — is at the heart of how mid-majors must arrange their non-conference schedules in order to maximize their postseason chances.
The NET is not the sole resource used by the NCAA committee, but it’s an important sorting tool that measures winning percentage, game results, strength of schedule, game location, the quality of wins and losses and team efficiency.
The first NET rankings this week had Michigan at No. 1, followed by Duke, Purdue and Vanderbilt — all still undefeated this season. Gonzaga, beaten by the Wolverines in the championship game of the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas last weekend, is the highest-ranked team with a loss. The Zags (7-1) hold that ranking because they already own victories over the likes of Oklahoma, Creighton, Arizona State and Alabama.
Gonzaga has three more high-level games on its schedule before the start of conference play: Kentucky in Nashville on Friday, UCLA at Seattle on Dec. 13, and Oregon at Portland on Dec. 21.
The Kentucky game, in particular, can boost Gonzaga’s NET standing because it’s what is classified as a Quad 1 game, which is any home matchup against a 1-30 NET team, neutral game vs. a 1-50 team and road contest vs. 1-75. Kentucky was at No. 19 on Wednesday.
For the Broncos, and just about every non-power 5 program, convincing power schools to play in the non-conference can be a discouraging task. Asked how the big schools respond when the Broncos call about scheduling a game, Ludwig says the response is consistent. “Zero interest. No thank you.”
Back in 2007-08, a different era in college hoops, coach Randy Bennett had guided Saint Mary’s to just one of the program’s 11 NCAA Tournament bids they now have earned under his leadership. Bennett wanted Ernie Kent to bring his Oregon team to Moraga so the Gaels could honor the man had led them to the 1997 West Coast Conference title and a spot in the NCAAs.
Fans applauded their former coach before Gaels smoked the 11th-ranked Ducks 99-87. Kent never brought his team back to Saint Mary’s.
“The problem is it’s the perception at the Power 4, Power 5 schools,” Ludwig explained. “They know we’re good enough to beat them, but if we do they’ll get killed as far as perception. Their fans don’t get it. Perception-wise, it hurts them even though metrically we’re probably better than a lot of Power 4, Power 5 programs.”
As a result, Ludwig said, the elite programs generally won’t engage in any scenario. “They won’t buy us, they won’t play us on a neutral floor, they won’t play us on a home and home, they won’t play us in a 2-for-1,” Ludwig said.
Saint Mary’s, whose NET inched up to No. 28 on Friday morning, secured an invite to the prestigious Battle 4 Atlantis tournament at the Bahamas last week and beat Wichita State and Virginia Tech. The Gaels lost to Vanderbilt in the title game, but their computer ranking was largely unharmed because the Commodores’ top-10 NET ranking made it a Quad 1 game.
Saint Mary’s has two upcoming assignments — Sunday at Davidson and Dec. 14 vs. Boise State at Idaho Falls — that qualify as Quad 2 games.
Pacific (7-2) has won its past four games for its best start since the 2013-14 season. The Tigers have the chance to climb higher in the computer rankings over the next couple weeks, starting Saturday at Cal (7-1), which has a No. 55 slot in the NET and Dec. 16 at BYU (7-1), featuring a No. 9 NET ranking.
Pacific athletic director Adam Tschuour said he’s encouraged by the progress made by second-year coach Dave Smart and is excited about the opportunity the Tigers have with upcoming games that should benefit the team’s metrics.
“Where we ended up in the initial rankings certainly is a reflection of the steps forward our program has taken,” Tschuour said. “These next two games for us is our chance to really solidify and put a firm foothold on those ranking spots. This is a really good Cal team, and BYU will certainly be a tough one. I think our guys will rise to the occasion.”
Smart is more cautious about what the early-season NET ranking means for his team. “I don’t think we’re close to that level yet. It certainly helps show we’re moving in the right direction,” he said. “These games are important, but like a lot of teams, we’re just trying to figure ourselves out in November and December. We’re trying to be the toughest out possible in March.”
Jackson credits Pacific with making a good hire in Smart, who was a coaching legend in Canada before spending the 2023-24 season as an assistant at Texas Tech.
“They’re getting fruits of their investment,” Jackson said. “The fact that they’re sitting at (76) exemplifies at a minimum they are making significant progress in their program.”
Santa Clara is seconds away from being undefeated. The sole blemish on the Broncos’ ledger is a 71-70 neutral-site loss to Saint Louis (7-1), which scored the winning basket with 8 seconds left. The Billikens are No. 34 in the NET.
That game was an example of what Jackson sees as one of the key measuring elements of the NET rankings. The Broncos lost the game, but their performance in areas other than 3-point shooting gave them a great chance to prevail against a quality opponent.
“The key with the NET is this: Whether you win or you lose, it’s how efficiently you play,” Jackson explained. “In other words, you can win games where you don’t play efficiently offensively and defensively and it hurts your NET. You can lose some games but play efficiently on both sides of the ball and it can actually improve your NET a point or two. It truly is how you play the game.”
Santa Clara arranged a road game this year against Big East Conference member Xavier, which paid the Broncos to make a one-time visit. “We went for a bargain price, much less than a buy game goes for nowadays,” Ludwig said.
But they got the game, then posted an 87-68 victory on Xavier’s home floor, where the Musketeers had compiled a 340-64 win-loss record over 26 seasons. “Obviously, nothing matters more than winning,” Ludwig said of the opportunity.
The Broncos also completed a two-year, home-and-home with a 79-67 win at McNeese, whose subsequent three wins at the Cayman Island Classic lifted the Cowboys to No. 44 in the initial NET rankings. McNeese since then has dropped to No. 60, but the Broncos will be cheering for them all season, hoping the game winds up being a Quad 2 win on their resume.
Santa Clara’s NET was No. 37 on Friday after a win this week over Utah Tech, a night highlighted by the retirement of NBA champion Jalen Williams’ No. 24 jersey. The Broncos aim to improve that with games Saturday against New Mexico at The Pit at Albuquerque with its mile-high altitude, and Dec. 13 vs. Arizona State at Henderson, Nevada.
“Those are both going to be Quad 2 games — they’re huge,” Ludwig said. “We have to find those top-100 games. Anytime we can find them, we have to do it."