LAS VEGAS — St. Mary’s found itself in an odd position Tuesday night: rooting for conference rival and eventual winner Gonzaga.
Heck, the Gaels will be cheering for the favorite in each conference to win its tournament between now and Selection Sunday after Monday’s WCC semifinal loss to BYU placed them on the bubble for an NCAA Tournament berth.
“What we can control is winning, and we’ve done that at a very, very high level,” St. Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett said. “It’s hard to win 28 games. It’s hard to lose only five games. There are very few teams that do that.
“I really don’t even think it should be a discussion, but people make a lot of money discussing it, so it will be discussed.”
It’s a discussion, because despite its 28-5 record and No. 20 national ranking, St. Mary’s resume could be lacking when the selection committee picks the 36 at-large bids — a number that gets smaller with each conference-tournament championship upset. The Gaels’ loss to BYU dropped them from No. 36 to 43 in the ever-important RPI, a qualifier that attempts to rank teams based on wins and losses while taking into account strength of schedule.
St. Mary’s ranks among the bottom third of the nation’s 351 teams in strength of schedule and lost to Georgia (83 RPI), USF (136) and Washington State (173). The Gaels have lost three of their past seven games, and trailed for 33 minutes and by as many as 15 points to Pepperdine (317) in the WCC quarterfinals.
“We’ve got to get our mojo back,” Bennett said. “We got beat, and that doesn’t happen often. We have to just get our mojo back, get feeling confident and get feeling like we deserve it.
“The tough part is: We don’t have control. At this point, we don’t know. I feel good about it, but all we can do is control what we can control. Let’s get healthy and improve with two or three practices. Then, we’ll be ready to play next Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whenever we get our next chance.”
ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi still believes St. Mary’s next chance to play will be in the NCAA Tournament, having dropped the Gaels only from a No. 9 seed to a No. 10 after the BYU loss. Gonzaga and Michigan State are the only teams in the country with more victories than St. Mary’s.
St. Mary’s has one of the nation’s best players in senior center Jock Landale, who scores 21.4 points per game on 64 percent shooting to go with 10.3 rebounds. Through Monday, the Gaels were seventh in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.6-to-1), and their ball rotation and player movement resulted in the country’s 12th-most efficient offense (119.9 points per 100 possessions).
Bennett knows the Gaels are shooting for “a moving target” that are the NCAA Tournament criteria, and St. Mary’s is no stranger to this wait-and-worry situation.
Sitting at 27-5 and No. 37 in RPI in 2016, they were jettisoned to the NIT.
“I have no vote in this, unfortunately,” Bennett said. “I mean, we won 28 games. I think we’re the second-winningest team in the country. Come on.
“Do we need to discuss that? It’s silly. A team that played in the national championship game last year is in our league, and we’re one game behind them.”
Rusty Simmons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @Rusty_SFChron
Gaels’ resume
Record: 28-5
RPI: 43 (as of Tuesday morning)
Good wins: at Gonzaga
(RPI: 29), at BYU (67)
Bad losses: at USF (136),
vs. Washington State (173), neutral site
— Steve Kroner