It’s Last Chance for the Pack : Arizona May Be Best; Tournament Will Decide Rest

TUCSON — In the ongoing debate over whether the Pacific 10 basketball tournament should find itself a neutral site and stay put--especially with the tournament that starts today being played on the court of the overwhelming favorite--Arizona Coach Lute Olson gets credit for the ultimate understatement.

Said the coach of the team that has an overall record of 28-2 and a mark of 17-1 against its weekend guests: “I don’t think our players will count on the facility to be the deciding factor.”

Arizona is undefeated at McKale Center. Nobody has beaten the Wildcats here this season. But the other Pac-10 coaches, while most favor a neutral site, have joined Olson in not making an issue of the home-court advantage this week. They may not be able to beat Arizona here, but they haven’t been able to beat Arizona there, either.

The home-court issue is a neither-here-nor-there view of the larger issue, which is whether the Pac-10 can get more than one team into the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament if Arizona sweeps through this tournament with too much ease.

Only Stanford, in the Pac-10, has managed a victory over Arizona this season. Barring upsets, Stanford will play Arizona in a semifinal game Saturday afternoon.

UCLA has come close to beating Arizona twice, in a tough game at McKale Center and in an overtime game at Pauley Pavilion. And Oregon State might have a chance. Again barring upsets, Oregon State will play UCLA in a semifinal round for the right to try again against the Wildcats.

But that would involve beating the Bruins three times, and the coaches are a little iffy about how easy it is to beat a team three times in one season.

Arizona is left out of that debate. Arizona will be beating almost everyone for a third time.

UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard would like to think it will be very tough for anyone to beat his team three times in a row. And he has mentioned both Oregon State and Arizona in that context.

But Cal Coach Lou Campanelli, speaking in general terms, said that if one team is better than another, it can time after time beat up on the other. One other point of discussion is whether any team can advance from the earliest round, today’s, and win four games in four days for the title.

Not at all likely. Consider the records of the four teams that have to play today: USC (7-20 overall) vs. Cal (8-19) and Arizona State (13-15) vs. Washington (9-18).

USC, which finished in a three-way tie for last place with Cal and Washington, might have a slight advantage over Cal, according to the musings of USC Coach George Raveling, because Cal played last Sunday, giving the Trojans one more day of rest. Besides, said Raveling, USC has better depth than Cal.

Cal expects still to be without its leading scorer and rebounder, Matt Beeuwsaert. Raveling will start Rich Grande at guard, but is expecting senior guard Dave Wiltz to play more than he has been recently as he recovers from a thigh injury.

If USC could get by Cal, the Trojans would have the honor of being first to play Arizona--a team that beat them by a school-record margin 44 points, 92-48.

Raveling said the thought of his team beating the odds and going all the way in this tournament scared him. “If we did it, I’d have to answer a lot of questions about what happened the rest of the season.”

In the other game today, 7th-seeded Arizona State will play 10th-seeded Washington. The Sun Devils dropped from second to seventh in the latter part of the season as ASU Coach Steve Patterson went to a lineup of the future. But Patterson thinks the team is ready to start upward again, and Olson picks Arizona State as a team ripe to pull off some upsets.

If Arizona State advances to the second round, it will be looking to upset second-seeded Oregon State, nemesis of the Bruins, on Friday. Oregon State, a small team to begin with, lost 6-foot 6-inch starting center Bill Sherwood to a sprained ankle last week.

Later Friday, UCLA will be battling the slow-down tactics of Washington State, a team the Bruins have beaten twice but a team capable of taking the Bruins out of what they do best.

Washington State Coach Kelvin Sampson said: “I would imagine UCLA would rather have played Arizona State because they play up tempo. . . . They say you play the way you practice, and I don’t think most teams practice the way we want to play.”

Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery is concerned about getting past Oregon in order to get at Arizona. Oregon is right behind Stanford in the standings and, as Montgomery pointed out, Oregon is hoping for a bid to the National Invitation Tournament. Stanford will be playing for its 20th victory, an important milestone in Montgomery’s opinion.

“I think you’ll see a very emotional game,” Montgomery said.

For Arizona to have a rematch with the only Pac-10 team it has lost to this season would be interesting. According to Olson, Stanford’s victory over the Wildcats in Palo Alto was no fluke.

“The night Stanford beat us, I didn’t think we could play much better,” said Olson. “On that night, Stanford was as good as Syracuse or Michigan or anyone else we’ve played.”

Pac-10 Notes

UCLA’s game against Washington State Friday night at 9 will be televised by ESPN. . . . CBS will be on the air with its “Selection Show” while the Pac-10 tournament final is being played here Sunday afternoon. As in the past, the NCAA selection committee expects to have to do its picking and seeding with a contingency plan in case of an upset. . . . Next season, the Pac-10 tournament will be held at the Forum. Other future sites have not yet been determined. . . . In making a case for Ronnie Coleman as freshman of the year, USC Coach George Raveling said: “People have been trying to build a case for Mike Hayward (Washington’s redshirt freshman forward), but he has been AWOL the last four or five games if you look at his stats. In the meantime, we’ve gone to Coleman as the focal point of our offense. Look at how many times he came home with the big basket down the stretch of the Stanford game. He has gotten better as the season has gone along.” Coleman averaged 10 points and 5 rebounds this season. In the last 10 games, he has averaged 14.5 points, and in the last eight, he has averaged 6.6 rebounds. . . . Arizona State Coach Steve Patterson believes that if UCLA makes it to the final round, the Bruins should get an NCAA bid despite their 13 losses. Patterson, a former Bruin, said: “UCLA is one of the hottest teams since early in the season, and they had a stronger schedule.” . . . While most of the conference coaches have argued, defensively, for a second team in the NCAA tournament, Oregon State Coach Ralph Miller says he thinks having two or three teams in is an excellent possibility. “I’m not one who has been crying that song all year,” he said. “I’ve never been concerned about not having more than one team invited.”