Some Sportswriters Still Snubbing Miners In Rankings

By ABC-7’s Darren Hunt

The UTEP men’s basketball team will play its first game in the Conference USA Tournament Thursday night, and it’s a game that could help or hurt the team’s NCAA hopes.

With 24 wins and just five losses tonight, a win Thursday night means the Miners are likely a shoo-in for the NCAA Tournament, even if they don’t win the conference tournament to claim an automatic bid.

But a loss Thursday night, coupled with the fact the Miners nearly fell out of the Associated Press’s Top 25 Poll last week, could make things sticky on Selection Sunday.

UTEP Coach Tony Barbee was miffed when his Miners, who won 14 consecutive games to claim the Conference USA regular season title, fell this week to No. 25 in the AP poll. Barbee said, “We get two wins…and we drop?”

So we created a map, showing the location of the 23 sportswriters who did not vote for UTEP. It clearly shows the majority of them are on the east coast, proving there may be some serious college basketball bias.

We called a couple of them. First up: Charles Goldberg from the Birmingham News, who is well aware of the Miners. UTEP swept his hometown University of Alabama-Birmingham team this season.

When asked if UTEP beating UAB twice didn’t factor in for him, Goldberg responded, “Well, UAB has kind of struggled down the stretch…but UTEP winning is one reason why.”

So when we asked why the Miners were then not in Goldberg’s poll this week, he responded, “I had about four teams right with UTEP, 20 to 25, and they were pretty interchangeable…”

Not everyone on the East Coast left out the Miners, though. Craig Stouffer of the Washington Examiner has UTEP higher than any other voter in the poll…at No. 12 in the country!

When we asked why he ranked them so high, Stouffer responded, “I think there’s something to be said for winning streaks…UTEP has gotten hot at the right time.”

And when we asked him if he thought perhaps some of the other east coast voters in the AP poll could take some advice from him, Stouffer said, “It’s an imperfect process and everybody has different methods for judging how good certain teams are.”

No. 2 seed Memphis and No. 3 seed UAB were already upset Thursday in the quarterfinals of the Conference USA Tournament.

But the only way to ensure there’s no bias against the Miners when the NCAA teams are picked on Sunday…is for the Miners to win the whole thing.