Zags - should they stay or should they go?

Who knows what the Zags will do with their men’s basketball program next season.

They might not even know yet. And even if they do, they’re not telling.

Here’s a few options:

- Join the Mountain West Conference

- Join the Big East Conference

- Join the NBA’s Eastern Conference

- Team up with the Genesis Prep boys on some sort of a barnstorming tour, during the time they would normally be playing conference games.

IF THE Zags join the Mountain West, they would be joining a more competitive conference. The Mountain West Conference RPI is 9; the West Coast Conference RPI is 13. If the Zags leave the WCC, its RPI gets even worse, the Mountain West’s RPI gets even better.

The Mountain West is not as good a league as it was, say, five years ago, but it is still better than the WCC. It’s unlikely the Zags would dominate the bottom-feeders quite like they do in the WCC.

Make a list of the all the WCC teams ranked by RPI, and do the same for the Mountain West. In each case but one, the team from the Mountain West had a better RPI than its counterpart from the WCC. The only exception was at No. 2, where Saint Mary’s (40) had a better RPI than Boise State (50).

Four WCC teams — Loyola Marymount (RPI 258), Santa Clara (265), Portland (286) and Pepperdine (317) are ranked below the Mountain West’s next-to-last-place team, Air Force (253).

The Zags would come into the Mountain West as immediate favorites, but they would at least be tested in many of their conference road games. Any more, teams like LMU, Pepperdine, San Diego, Santa Clara and Portland are pretty much beaten by the Zags before the game even starts.

San Jose State (RPI 314) is sort of the LMU or the Portland of the Mountain West, but at least that’s only one patsy, not as many as five.

Many of Gonzaga’s road trips in the Mountain West wouldn’t be quite so easy. The Zags might be able to beat New Mexico at The Pit in Albuquerque, but good luck getting off the court without a police escort, especially it it’s a tight finish.

Gonzaga (RPI 21) lost this season at San Diego State (62), which tied for fourth in the Mountain West. Nevada (17) won the regular-season title, and reached the Sweet 16 this year, as did the Zags. Nevada and Gonzaga haven’t played in more than a decade, but when they did, Nevada whipped the Zags twice, both times at KeyArena in Seattle.

And imagine the interest in Gonzaga and Boise State squaring off once or twice each season? I’m pretty sure Broncos coach Leon Rice, the former Zags assistant, wouldn’t have to wade across the Boise River to coax his fans into packing the BSU arena when the Zags come to visit.

On Saturday, the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson as saying “it doesn’t look promising” for the Zags to join his conference in 2018-19.

INTERESTING TO see how much the WCC’s policy changes had on the Zags’ decision.

Play fewer conference games so teams can scheduled more (tougher) nonconference games to improve their RPI?

OK, this might help. But the more important point is, the WCC bottom-feeders have done little to make their programs better in recent years. While Gonzaga has improved over the last decade, as has Saint Mary’s, and BYU was instantly better than the rest of the WCC teams when the Cougars joined. But the other conference teams have been average at best, mediocre to poor at worst.

(The fact this decision to try to beef up the conference RPI was made after coaches and other administrators met with self-proclaimed “bracketologist” Joe Lunardi of ESPN, of all people, is rather comical in itself. What next? NFL teams studying Mel Kiper Jr.’s list of best available players as they make their draft selections in April?)

Give the top two seeds byes all the way to the semifinals in the conference tournament? They tried that for a few years, then went away from it. That would give Gonzaga an extra game of rest, and save the Zags the trouble of bludgeoning one of the bottom feeders in the quarterfinals. But it would also be one less Zags game to lure fans to Orleans Arena and bring in more money for the conference.

Not that it might matter, but the Mountain West plays mostly on Tuesdays/Wednesdays and Saturdays, while the WCC is pretty much a Thursday-Saturday league. Many of the Zags games are on one of the ESPN channels, which reaches more homes than the CBS Sports Network, which carries many of the Mountain West games.

And the Zags might be able to bleed a little money out of the Mountain West to make it worth their while, maybe negotiate something similar to Boise State in football, where the Broncos end up with a little bigger chunk of the TV pie because of their popularity.

Because no one else from the WCC made the NCAA Tournament, Gonzaga only played six teams that went on to make the NCAA Tournament (Villanova, Ohio State, Florida, San Diego State, Texas and Creighton).

The yearly cut-and-paste line about the Zags always playing a tough nonconference schedule is not entirely true this season, because they also played five nonconference games against teams with RPIs of 212 or worse (Texas Southern, North Dakota, IUPUI, Howard and Incarnate Word).

Now, sometimes that happens — you bring in a team you think is going to have a good season, but they don’t.

However, even if they have room on their schedules to play teams like that anyway, why not mix in some sort of rotation with Washington State, Idaho and Eastern Washington?

Their RPIs were way better — WSU’s was 179, EWU 122, Idaho 133 — and at least the games would have some local interest, even if they were one-sided.

If Gonzaga stays in the West Coast, I don’t see much changing, despite the conference’s attempts to get stronger. The Zags might be able to bleed a little more money out of the league for its NCAA success, however, but many of the problems will remain.

Nothing like a little news leaking about the conference’s top team thinking of leaving to get the conference to do what it can to keep said team.

AS FOR the actual Zag players, we’re past the point of assuming the team will just peter out at some point during the NCAA tournament, that it’s good enough for the Lovable Locals just to make the big dance every year, and win a game or two. Last year’s appearance in the national title game took care of that theory.

Now, as long as Mark Few is still around as coach, Gonzaga should always at least be in the conversation of potential national title contenders. He seems to be able to recruit enough depth to withstand people leaving early, something which tends to gut some programs these days (see: UCLA). Players who could barely get on the court last year ended up playing key roles this season.

Now assistant Tommy Lloyd’s name is starting to come up whenever head coaching jobs come open. If Lloyd is lured away, maybe things could get interesting, as he’s been pivotal in the Zags’ recruitment of international players.

But until then — and perhaps even if — there’s no reason to believe this run won’t continue for years.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.