MORAGA — Bay Area college basketball fans should not take for granted Saint Mary’s earning its fourth consecutive NCAA tournament berth on Sunday.
The Gaels (28-5) landed a No. 7 seed and will open on Friday against No. 10 seed Vanderbilt (20-12) at Cleveland in a time to be announced. It’s their 11th trek into the NCAAs under coach Randy Bennett, and their 14th in program history. A victory would send them into a second-round matchup against either No. 2 Alabama 25-8) No. 15 Robert Morris (26-8) on Sunday.
Not only is the Gaels’ four-year run unprecedented in program history, but no local team has matched it since Stanford went 11 years in a row through 2005.
Cal made it to the NCAAs four years in a row under legendary coach Pete Newell, but that stretch ended 65 years ago. San Francisco hasn’t done it since the days of Bill Russell in the 1950s. Santa Clara and San Jose State haven’t made it even once since 1996.
“Three years in a row was the first time in school history,” Bennett said. “Four years is incredible. This is hard to do.”
Senior point guard Augustas Marciulionis, the two-time West Coast Conference Player of the Year, said this means a lot.
“The first couple years you don’t know really what’s going on. You make the tournament . . . and I thought it might be normal,” said Marciulionis, whose father Sarunas played for the Warriors and is a Naismith Hall of Famer. “Once you learn more about college basketball, you realize how difficult it is, how small the room for error is.
“Four out of four is amazing. Hope we end it with a blast.”
For the third straight year, the Moraga squad is the only Bay Area men’s team to secure a place in March Madness.
Saint Mary’s comes off a season in which it set a program record with 17 West Coast Conference victories, two of them over perennial WCC heavyweight Gonzaga, on the way to a second straight regular-season title. The Zags avenged those defeats with a 58-51 win in the conference tournament championship game, just the Gaels’ second loss since before Christmas.
The Gaels’ spot in the 68-team field was never in question. Their sturdy No. 21 national ranking in the NET computer is the result of a 10-5 record in the more challenging Quad 1 and 2 games and no bad losses.
Saint Mary’s landed a lower seed Sunday than the previous three seasons, where it was a No. 5 each time. That didn’t do the Gaels any favors last year when they lost 75-66 in their first-round game against 12th-seeded Grand Canyon.
They won their opening NCAA games in 2022 and ’23, but haven’t advanced past the first weekend of the tournament since getting to the Sweet 16 in 2010.
Vandy, which secured its first NCAA bid since 2017, was 8-10 and in ninth place in the Southeastern Conference, which earned 14 NCAA bids.
“I don’t know much about Vanderbilt,” Bennett said, “but I know they’re good.”
The Commodores opened the season 6-0 then beat five Top-25 opponents in SEC play, including Tennessee and Kentucky. The Commodores lost their three most recent games, including 77-72 to Texas in the first round of the SEC tournament.
Junior guard Jason Edwards is Vandy’s top scorer at 17.0 points per game, with 10 games of at least 20 points. He scored 30 points in a win over TCU.
The Gaels don’t want a repeat of last year against Grand Canyon. And the bad taste left in their mouths after the Gonzaga loss should provide additional fuel.
“It’s always easier, I think, having better practices coming off a loss,” said senior center Mitchell Saxen, the two-time WCC Defensive Player of the Year. “I think the Gonzaga game exposed some things offensively that we need to work on, in terms of taking care of the ball and our spacing.
“It’s one thing to go to the tournament but you want to win games in the tournament,” he added. “We’ve really got our goal set on breaking through to the Sweet 16.”