Tournament Has the Best, PCAA’s Rest

The Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. is holding a casual little get together in the Forum beginning Thursday. Nothing fancy. Strictly come as you are. Even if you’re 12-18.

Yes, underdog fans, in the land of opportunity known as the PCAA, 12-18 gets you a spot in a postseason tournament and an opportunity--however slight--to represent your conference in the NCAA Tournament. Cal State Long Beach’s 49ers, losers of seven straight, not-so-proud possessors of a 7-11 conference record and, as of Monday, followers of a lame-duck coach, are tournament-bound. Is this a great conference, or what?

Well, that’s open for debate, particularly after the regular season the PCAA just completed. Throw out top-ranked Nevada Las Vegas (and some have suggested that this wouldn’t be such a bad idea), and the PCAA had a combined record of 120-114 for 1986-87.

The final conference standings showed two teams tied for second at 10-8, and a three-way tie at 9-9. Some would suggest this is simply the product of intense competition between a group of evenly matched teams. Others might argue that those teams are evenly matched only in inconsistency; that they are locked in a nine-way tie for mediocrity.

Lewis A. Cryer, PCAA commissioner, prefers to accept the former as fact, but knows that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee cares more about 20 victories than a bunch of “Gee-it’s-tough-to-win-on-the-road-in-this-conference” losses.

“We’re blessed here with a circumstance where it’s highly competitive between the conference schools,” Cryer said Tuesday from his hotel suite at Inglewood. “But, in essence, they cut each others’ throats and they don’t project a second or third team with a good enough overall record. That really affects your opportunities for postseason play.”

This situation is just one of the items on Cryer’s agenda of the mind as the PCAA prepares for its showcase event. Among the others:

- The fact that Fresno State failed to make the cut for the eight-team tournament. The Bulldogs finished last in the conference with a 4-14 record and were 9-20 overall. Even in the PCAA, that leaves them with no place to go. And that means waving goodby to the Red Wave, the large group of red-clad Fresno State fans who traditionally buy a great percentage of the tournament tickets.

This is the first time since 1980 that the Bulldogs haven’t participated in the tournament, and the box-office impact could be considerable. But Cryer is nothing if not shrewd. He says plans are in the works to make certain there will be no absence of Red Wavers in the future. After this season, he said, the conference tournament might very well become a come-one, come-all affair.

“If you’re trying to do the things that we’re trying to do relative to visibility and the whole idea of getting the conference together, it doesn’t make sense to leave two teams at home,” he said. “It’s not good business sense. If you want to do the best you can from a standpoint of participation and economics, we need to examine a format that allows all 10 teams to come.”

Cryer admitted that the eight-team format promotes competition among the teams that have to fight for the right to keep playing, but said he believes it’s worth the trade-off. The PCAA Council will consider such a format at its May meeting.

- Competition from the Pacific 10, which has decided to jump on the conference postseason tournament bandwagon. The first Pac-10 Tournament runs Thursday through Sunday in Pauley Pavilion, going head-to-head against the PCAA for the walk-up ticket buyer.

Said Cryer: “Well, we’re not really competing with the Pac-10 Tournament. Our constituency is different than theirs. They have put it at a site that is a home site, so they’re going to draw a home crowd. That’s obviously going to give them an opportunity to sell the place out.”

- And last, but hardly least, the bigger-than-ever discrepancy between UNLV, which won its fifth regular-season conference title in five tries this season, and the rest of the PCAA. The Rebels pretty much had their way with the rest of the conference. They held off a few mild upset threats and made enough second-half comebacks to go 18-0. Since joining the conference in 1982-83, the Rebels have won 82 regular-season PCAA games and lost six.

Cal State Fullerton Coach George McQuarn, a former UNLV assistant, has been one of the conference’s most outspoken coaches on the subject.

“The commissioner, administrators, presidents and those people . . . they’ve decided that it’s good for our conference to have Vegas in there,” he said. “I don’t know that the other nine coaches feel that way. I know I don’t feel that way. It’s been a real struggle with Vegas in the conference.”

Cryer contends that UNLV raised the level of the competition.

“It makes it tougher on everybody, but that challenge needs to be out there,” he said. “If you can compete with them, you’ll be able to compete well with teams outside the conference and within the conference.”

Outside of UNLV, the teams within the PCAA spent most of this season dragging each other down. The end result is a postseason tournament that includes one team at 30-1 and seven others in a now-familiar chase, trying not to look as if they’re running in place.