Philosophical questions

Here's a question that's been bugging me all week: When is a team's fate out of its own hands?

Take the UC Davis men's basketball team. The Aggies are 2-11 in the Big West and sitting in last place by 1 1/2 games. But as things stand at this moment, all they have to do is win at UC Riverside on March 8 and they will grab the eighth seed in the Big West Tournament. Even with the way UCD tends to play on the road, that's not an impossible task. So in that regard, the Aggies control their own destiny in the Big West.

But that's not really true. Because there's a scenario in which the Aggies could win out and still not go to the tournament. Of course, that involves the Highlanders beating Cal Poly, Santa Barbara on Saturday and Pacific a week from tonight. If they pull off any of those victories (and tonight would be the best bet, you would think) then the Aggies would need multiple victories to reach the Big West Tournament. Given the way things have gone, it's difficult to construct a scenario in which that happens.

So anyway, in their own hands or not?

Here are the remaining schedules (with non-conference games noted as not counting:
UCD: at Pacific, Sacramento State, at UC Irvine, at UC Riverside
UCR: at Cal Poly, at UC Santa Barbara, Pacific, UCD

We'll check in from Stockton late this afternoon.