Why the Shockers Should Be #1

They did it! 

The Wichita State Shockers this evening went to 30-0 during the regular season. 

That has never been done before in the history of 
Division 1 college basketball!!

Coach Gregg Marshall and his outstanding team deserve the #1 ranking. Period.

ORIGINAL POSTING:

At 29-0, and coming off a Final Four appearance, the Wichita State Shockers should be ranked #1 in the nation, period. But, they are ranked #2 behind two-loss Florida. Why? We don't have the population of the east and west coasts and it is bias, plain and simple.

The good thing is, unlike football, there is a great tournament coming up and the team can prove itself on the court. But, there are now people talking about how WSU should not be a tournament #1 seed. The Sporting News puts that in perspective:

Wichita State’s schedule was easy? The Shockers have played the No. 104 schedule according to Jerry Palm’s RPI rankings for CBS Sports. Last year, the team that played the No. 104 schedule, Charlotte, finished 21-11. Year before that, it was UCLA, and the Bruins went 18-14. In 2004, Southern Illinois of the Missouri Valley went 25-4. But no one—no one—took the supposedly easy schedule that exists for a team with a 104 schedule ranking and won every game. And, more to the point, no one with a schedule ranked 204 or 304 did, either.

Since the NCAA expanded March Madness to 64 teams in 1985, it has staged 29 tournaments. That means there have been 116 teams seeded No. 1. There have been 29 No. 1 seeds that entered with three losses, 27 with four losses and even three with seven losses, but only one—only one—with zero losses. That was Jerry Tarkanian’s Vegas bunch in 1991.

I'm confident the seeding committee will do the right thing and, if the Shox win out, rank them a #1 seed in the Tournament.