Loyola Goes on NCAA Road; Pac-10 Gets 2
Loyola Marymount has known for a week it would play in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball tournament, but had to wait until the announcement of the pairings Sunday to find out who and where it will play.
The news could have been better. The Lions, ranked 16th by the Associated Press, will play 14th-ranked Wyoming in a first-round West Regional game Thursday at Salt Lake City.
Loyola (27-3), the highest-scoring team in the country, had hoped to play at Pauley Pavilion, the other West Regional site, and had certainly hoped to draw a less difficult opponent than seventh-seeded Wyoming (26-5). But the Lions, who won the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament last Monday, were seeded 10th in the West, which theoretically places them only among the top 40 teams in the 64-team field.
“I’m not surprised by anything the NCAA selection committee does,” Loyola Coach Paul Westhead said. “They try their best to make things as even as possible.
“I’m very excited about the NCAA tournament. Now we’ll gear up for an extra-special running game against Wyoming.”
Arizona, as expected, is top-seeded in the West, becoming the first Western team to be seeded first in the West since Oregon State in 1981. The third-ranked Wildcats (31-2), lost only to New Mexico and to Stanford this season, and will meet Cornell (17-9) in a first-round game Friday at Pauley Pavilion.
Temple, Purdue and Oklahoma--the other teams in the top four of the Associated Press poll--each were top-seeded in the other regions.
Unlike Loyola, UC Santa Barbara had to wait until Sunday to find out if it had made the tournament after losing in the semifinals of the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament Friday, finishing with a 22-7 record. The Gauchos made it, earning their first trip to the tournament, and will play Maryland (17-12) Friday at Cincinnati in the Southeast Regional.
“The hardest part was getting into the tournament,” Santa Barbara Coach Jerry Pimm said. “The fun part starts now.”
Top-ranked Temple (29-1), which five years ago was 14-15 in Coach John Chaney’s first year, is seeded No. 1 in the East, and plays Lehigh (21-9) Friday at Hartford, Conn.
Temple’s only loss was to Nevada Las Vegas, in a 59-58 game at the Rebels’ Thomas & Mack center in January.
Second-ranked Purdue (27-3) is seeded first in the Midwest and plays Fairleigh Dickinson (23-6) Thursday at South Bend, Ind.
Fourth-ranked Oklahoma (30-3) plays Tennessee-Chattanooga (20-12) Thursday at Atlanta.
Oregon State, which finished the regular season tied with UCLA for second place in the Pacific 10 and lost to Arizona in the final of the Pac-10 tournament, made the field, preventing the conference from having only one team in the tournament. Stanford (20-11) did not make the field.
Oregon State (20-10), which was placed in the Southeast Regional, will travel across the country to play Louisville (22-10) Thursday in Atlanta.
“Well, that’s protocol,” Oregon State Coach Ralph Miller said, finding humor in the Southeast seeding. “The theory is they don’t want two teams from the same conference to meet before the Final Four. So we’ll try to prove to them that that’s logical in our case.”
Santa Barbara’s selection put three PCAA teams in the tournament for the first time, giving the conference one more berth than the Pac-10.
Nevada Las Vegas (27-5), which was upset by UC Irvine in the PCAA tournament, is seeded fourth in the West Regional and plays Southwest Missouri State (22-6) Friday at Pauley Pavilion.
The Big East Conference had the most entries with six, tying the record it shares with the Big Ten. Syracuse earned the Big East’s automatic berth, and Pittsburgh, Georgetown, Seton Hall, Villanova and St. John’s all received bids.
The Big Ten, Big Eight and Atlantic Coast Conference each had five entries in the field. The Southeastern Conference placed four.
Only two independents--Notre Dame and DePaul--made the field.
Indiana (19-9), the defending NCAA champion, had been thought to be in some danger of being left out of the tournament, as Louisville, the 1986 champion, was last season. Instead, Indiana was seeded fourth in the East Regional, theoretically making the Hoosiers one of the tournament’s top 16 teams. Indiana plays Richmond (24-6) Friday at Hartford, Conn.
Louisiana State (16-13) has the worst record in the field. The poorest record in tournament history belonged to a 1955 Bradley team that was 7-19.
Teams left out included Ohio State (16-12), Georgia Southern (24-6), Marshall (24-7) and, of course, UCLA (16-14), which seemed to be in contention until a loss to Washington State in the quarterfinals of the Pac-10 tournament. Neither Louisiana Tech (21-8) nor New Orleans (21-10) earned a bid. Both are in the American South Conference, in its first year of existence, which does not get an automatic bid but does stage a conference tournament.
“We considered 21 teams with 20 or more victories that did not get in,” Arnie Ferrin, selection committee chairman, told the Associated Press. “This has probably been our most difficult year. But we are certainly happy with the results. We had to leave out some excellent teams.”
The tournament begins Thursday with first-round games in Atlanta; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Salt Lake City, and South Bend, Ind. Other first-round games Friday are at Pauley Pavilion and in Lincoln, Neb., Cincinnati and Hartford, Conn.
Sixteen teams will advance to four regional sites March 24-27, and four will continue on to Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo., where the semifinals will be played April 2. The NCAA championship game will be at 6:12 p.m. PST April 4.
Lute Olson, Arizona coach, doesn’t think his team has an easy path. The Wildcats would face either Texas El Paso or Seton Hall in the second round, and could meet UNLV in a regional semifinal.
“My assistants have indicated that Purdue got far and away the best draw,” Olson said. “I would exchange their (potential second-round opponents) with ours any day. . . . But when you get to the NCAA, you can look at these brackets and those brackets, but you’re going to have to go through everyone anyway.”
Arizona, which was ranked No. 1 earlier this season, is just five seasons removed from a 4-24 mark in 1983.
Chaney, the Temple coach, was fairly pleased with the Owls’ draw.
“I know the bracket is a real tough one, without question. The East is always tough. Lehigh is uppermost in my mind. . . . There are some tough teams in our bracket, but if we do a good job we stand a good chance of coming out of there pretty strong.”
For Loyola Marymount, the week of waiting to hear where the team would play is over. Now the Lions must only wait to play.
“I did anticipate we’d be in Los Angeles; however, our team will go anywhere and do their running,” Westhead said.
Said forward Hank Gathers: “Our new phrase on this team is, ‘Shock the world,’ Loyola Marymount intends to let everyone know just exactly who we are.”