Pac-10 plea: Don’t short us

By John Sleeper

Herald Writer

SEATTLE – Now past the halfway mark of the Pacific-10 Conference season, the league’s coaches are making their annual public pitch to squeeze as many teams as possible into the NCAA Tournament.

“We need to toot our own horn so that the information doesn’t remain in the west,” Arizona coach Lute Olson said.

It’s a near-lock that each season, the league champion sustains two, three or even four Pac-10 losses, leading some observers, including some on the tournament selection committee, to believe the conference to be sub-par.

League coaches beg to differ and they might have a point.

Just twice since the 1984-85 season, when the NCAA expanded the tournament field to 64 teams, has the Pac-10 had five teams in the tourney. And league coaches love to point out that one of those times, in 1997, fifth-place Arizona – which finished the year with seven league defeats, nine overall – won the NCAA title.

Last season when five crashed the tournament, four Pac-10 teams reached the Sweet 16, three reached the Elite Eight and one, Arizona, played for the national title.

Balance is the reason, coaches say. High quality but underrated teams are beating up on each other, leaving deceptive records that hurt them come selection time.

This season seems no different. Co-leaders USC and Oregon each have two Pac-10 defeats and overall have lost four and five games, respectively. The argument that seventh-place Arizona State, at 4-5 in the conference, 11-7 overall, could make noise in the tournament because it was the last team to beat powerful Utah, Dec. 4.

How, coaches wonder, can Stanford (tied with Cal for fifth at 5-3, 12-5 overall) be left out, considering quality wins against UCLA and Michigan State?

“I don’t think we’re any different this year than the Big Ten, when they sent seven or eight one year, the ACC and the Big East,” Oregon coach Ernie Kent said. “Why should the Pac-10 get slighted this year, when in the past, those teams that were good teams, that were bunched up, that were beating each other up, did very well in the tournament?

“Last year should have proven that.”

The added obstacle this year is the eight-team Pac-10 Tournament. The fear is that one second-division team would catch fire, win the tournament (and a tournament bid) and knock out a team that had a superior regular season.

“There’s not room for everybody,” Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said. “The tournament could take a toll on somebody.”

Washington still wondering: To many, Washington’s 97-92 victory Thursday night against then-No. 19 Oregon was a sign that the Huskies turned the corner. Then two nights later the Huskies were lifeless in a 68-53 loss to Oregon State, a team that could keep the UW out of the Pac-10 Tournament.

So distraught was forward Doug Wrenn afterward that he wondered whether Washington would be able to shake off the defeat and look ahead.

“We talked about – in practice on Friday, the meeting Friday night, the shoot-around on Saturday to lead up to the game – was there any way it didn’t have the right message?” UW coach Bob Bender said. “The consensus was that we understood.”

The Huskies have watched film of the OSU game more than any game this year. From that, in preparation for Thursday’s game at Washington State, the team has gone back to the drawing board in scheming the offensive and defensive sets.

“We got beat by a team that executed with five people,” Bender said. “When we play well offensively, we do the same thing. But in this situation, we became very lethargic. We stood, we had no movement, we had no ball movement.

“We went back to the basics. We said to our team that no matter what offense we were to run, unless we execute it at a higher level and with greater energy, it doesn’t matter.”

Dribbles: Cal is 12-0 in home games, with six of the next eight coming at Haas Pavilion. The Golden Bears have the next four games at home, against the Arizona and Oregon schools … Stanford center Curtis Borchardt, who attended Eastlake High School in Redmond, suffered a hip pointer on the opening tip against UCLA. Although he played 34 minutes against the Bruins, he didn’t play against USC and sat out practice Monday. Montgomery said he should be ready against the Arizona schools this week.