College Basketball : Now Everything Is Up-to-the-Second in Host Kansas City

Kansas City, which for the 10th time will be the host city for the Final Four of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament, is in the midst of preparations for April 2-4 at Kemper Arena.

The Kansas City Organizing Committee is expecting an influx of 20,000 visitors and an economic impact of $15 million, and is working hard to promote the city, pointing out such details as that Kansas City has more fountains than any other city but Rome and more boulevard miles than any other but Paris.

Slightly more essential to the business at hand was the replacement of the Kemper Arena scoreboard clock, famous for malfunctions. During a game between Michigan State and Kansas in the 1986 Midwest Regional, the clock simply stopped for 16 seconds, causing an uproar.

There should be no repeat of that. A new four-sided scoreboard, complete with clock and video screens, is being installed, along with auxiliary scoreboards.

NCAA advantages: Two teams may find when tournament pairings are announced Sunday that they will play first-round games in their home arenas.

Notre Dame may play in its own Athletic and Convocation Center, one of the sites for Midwest Regional first- and second-round games, and North Carolina may play in Smith Center, a first- and second-round site for the East Regional.

And Georgia Tech may well play in its home away from home, the Omni in Atlanta. Georgia Tech plays several games there each season, and it’s a first- and second-round site for the Southeast Regional.

Officials of the tournament selection committee have indicated that they won’t go to extremes to avoid giving a team a home-court advantage. One consideration, of course, is ticket sales. Another point the committee cites is that recent history shows there are no guarantees for home teams.

In 1985, Notre Dame lost to North Carolina in a second-round game in the Athletic and Convocation Center. In 1986, Georgia Tech lost to Louisiana State in a Southeast Regional semifinal in the Omni.

“Two years ago, it didn’t help us,” Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins said. “We had a lot of distractions, a lot of ticket requests and stuff. I certainly wouldn’t mind playing in the Omni, but if they want to send us somewhere I’ve never been, I wouldn’t turn it down.”

North Carolina A&T;, with a 26-2 record and a 16-game winning streak, earned its seventh consecutive NCAA tournament berth, getting the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference’s automatic berth by winning the conference tournament Sunday.

Although the Aggies are dominant in the MEAC, however, they have been very different in the NCAA tournament. In six NCAA appearances, North Carolina A&T; has yet to win a game.

It was a good night for Paul Westhead fans Monday. Loyola Marymount’s victory over Santa Clara in the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament final gave the Lions their first NCAA tournament berth since 1980, and gave Westhead his 200th collegiate victory.

Meanwhile, LaSalle, the school Westhead guided to prominence in the 1970s, went undefeated in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and won the MAAC tournament.

Add Loyola: The Lions lost to Arizona State by 28 points in a first-round NCAA tournament game in 1980, in an NCAA appearance that was something of a fluke. The Lions were the second-place team in the WCAC, but won the berth because the University of San Francisco was on probation. The last time the Lions earned an NCAA berth on their own was 1961.

And a time not to cheer: When Fairfield took a 60-59 lead over St. Peter’s on a layup with two seconds remaining in a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament game last week, Fairfield Coach Mitch Buonaguro went onto the court, cheering exuberantly.

But exuberance quickly turned to anguish. The referee called a technical on Buonaguro for leaving the coaching box, and Willie Haynes, a St. Peter’s guard, made two free throws on the technical. Then, Alex Roberts added another pair of free throws for the Peacocks with one second left, giving St. Peter’s a 63-60 win.

Coaches, pro scouts and journalists all laud Bradley’s Hersey Hawkins in a four-page color brochure the school has produced. But the most charming comments on Hawkins, whose 36.3-point average leads the nation, came from fans:

--Troy Wells, 6, of East Peoria, Ill.: “Hersey Hawkins . . . he’s the greatest.”

--Helen DuBois, 83, of Peoria Heights: “Who is number 33? He plays so much better than the other players. Is that fair?”

Stanley Brundy, a 6-foot 7-inch junior at DePaul who played at Crenshaw High School, had quite a time last week.

Going into a game against Miami of Florida, his career high was 20 points. Then he scored 31 and had 16 rebounds against Miami. Three days later, he scored 30 points and had 10 rebounds against Dayton, becoming the first DePaul player since Mark Aguirre in 1980 to score 30 points in consecutive games. He capped his week with a 26-point, 11-rebound performance against Louisville Saturday.

When Brundy was told, after making 15 of 25 shots against Miami, he had scored 31 points, he at first expressed disbelief, and then disappointment.

“Man, I missed five layups,” he said. “I could have had 40.”

Come tournament time, some players who weren’t very prominent during the season will be thrust into the spotlight. Among them may be Byron Larkin of 20th-ranked Xavier, the Cincinnati school with a 24-3 record.

Larkin, a 6-foot 3-inch senior guard, averages 24.9 points a game, as well as 4.9 assists. Larkin, the younger brother of Cincinnati Reds infielder Barry Larkin, has started 112 of 118 games since he began playing at Xavier, not starting only the first six games of his freshman season. He has scored in double figures in 114 of those games, and has a career-scoring mark of 2,610--a number that long ago broke the school record and ranks 19th on the all-time NCAA scoring list.