2017 NCAA Tournament: SMU is going to be under-seeded, and very dangerous

Tim Jankovich is a legit candidate for national Coach of the Year

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SMU was banned from the postseason last March because of an NCAA investigation that uncovered Level I violations. Then the Mustangs lost three of their top four scorers. And then their coach, Hall of Famer Larry Brown, abruptly resigned in July.

None of that was ideal.

It’s why SMU didn’t get a single vote in the preseason AP poll.

And yet the Mustangs still, on Saturday afternoon, managed to complete the best regular season in school history with a beatdown of Memphis that highlighted the different directions these two programs have gone over the past three years. Final score: SMU 103, Memphis 62. It was the worst loss Memphis has suffered since 1947 -- a loss made even worse by the fact that the son (Jonathan Wilfong) of a Memphis great (John Wilfong) scored more points for SMU than two of the scholarship players first-year Memphis coach Tubby Smith enrolled prior to this season scored for Memphis.

But I digress.

This isn’t a column about how far Memphis has fallen. This is a column about how first-year SMU coach Tim Jankovich extended the Mustangs’ winning streak to 13 games and finished the regular season with a 27-4 record that includes a 17-1 mark in the American Athletic Conference. That’s good enough for SMU’s second outright AAC title in the past three years. Consequently, Jankovich will be the AAC Coach of the Year. He should also be considered for National Coach of the Year.

And keep an eye on SMU in the NCAA Tournament.

George W. Bush certainly will.

The 43rd President of the United States was, once again, courtside Saturday inside Moody Coliseum and earning his label as the most famous college basketball fan in the world. He watched the Mustangs beat an AAC opponent by double-digits for the 12th time in 18 opportunities and enhance a resume that’ll be in front of the selection committee next week.

The Mustangs only have one top-50 RPI win.

That’s a problem.

But it’ll end up being more of a problem for the schools placed in SMU’s pod than it will for SMU because SMU wlll likely, as a result of little more than the AAC only having a total of two top-50 RPI schools, be under-seeded relative to its quality and ability. So the Mustangs might end up as, say, a No. 5 seed ... and favored in Las Vegas over the No. 4 seed they’d presumably face in the Round of 32.

Bottom line, SMU is good enough to make the Sweet 16 regardless of its seed.

The Mustangs didn’t project that way in November.

But they look that way in March.