The Saint Mary's Gaels travel across the Bay on Saturday to face the San Francisco Dons in the 172nd meeting of the Bay Area rivals. USF has lost twelve straight to the Gaels, but will be looking to build off their last second home upset of the Gonzaga Bulldogs last weekend. Saint Mary's is looking to clinch the WCC regular season title and deny Gonzaga a shared title for the first time in over a decade.
Thanks to the tie-breaker edge over Gonzaga, Saint Mary's has already clinched the number one seed in the tournament following their Thursday win over Portland. However, a Saint Mary's win on Saturday or a Gonzaga loss to San Diego would end Gonzaga's reign of conference regular season titles.
Saint Mary's has a bye through to the semifinals where they will face the winner of the 5/8/9/4 quarterfinal matchup. The eight and nine seeds (likely to be Portland and Santa Clara) square off in the Wednesday play-in game. The winner of that game advances to face the five seed in the second round. As it currently stands, USF would be that seed. They are currently a game up on San Diego, who is hosting Gonzaga on Saturday.
The winner of a potential USF/Santa Clara/Portland matchup would advance to face the four seed. Right now, Loyola Marymount is the four, but if LMU beats Santa Clara and Portland beats BYU (not likely), BYU drops into the four seed. The winner of that contest then advances to face Saint Mary's in the semifinals.