NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Arizona Ready for NCAA, Isn’t Looking Back

Don’t bother the University of Arizona’s basketball team with negative vibes. Negativity bounces off the happy Wildcats like bullets off Superman’s chest.

Arizona has been eliminated from the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament in the first round the last four tries? Including the last three seasons under Coach Lute Olson? So what?

These Wildcats are seeded No. 1 in the West and are sure that they will be one of two from among the eight teams playing at Pauley Pavilion today that will advance to the West Regional final in Seattle.

Arizona wasn’t pushed by top competition through the Pacific 10 season and the Pac-10 tournament? Well, then, if that’s true, that just shows how disciplined and focused and competitive the Wildcats are.

As Olson points out, “This team was favored to win the league, and they did. They were favored to win the tournament, and they did. They’ve been favored all year. They’ve come out ready to play in 33 games.”

So don’t be thinking that the Wildcats might be looking past 16th-seeded Cornell, the 17-9 Ivy League champion they will play in the first of this weekend’s games this morning at 11:37.

Silver linings aplenty. Remember when Steve Kerr wrecked his left knee while playing with the U.S. national team during the summer of 1986? A blessing in disguise, he says.

“Without a doubt, that was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

How’s that?

And he explains that if he hadn’t suffered such a severe injury, he never would have redshirted last season. And he doesn’t figure he would have made enough of a difference last season to take the team far in the tournament.

But the five guys who started last season--including guard Kenny Lofton, who got bumped back to the bench--have had a year to improve.

Center Tom Tolbert is dramatically better, he says. So is forward Anthony Cook. Forward Sean Elliott was phenomenal last season, as a sophomore, but he’s even better as a junior. Same goes for guard Craig McMillan, who is now a senior.

Then, too, Kerr spent the year in something of a coach’s role, a year that made him even more valuable as the floor leader now that he’s a fifth-year senior.

“When I first went down, it seemed like the worst thing in the world,” Kerr said. “But it was the best thing because now I have the chance to play with this team. That’s why we say everything is peaking just right.”

Without Kerr, Arizona would not be 31-2 and sitting so pretty.

Olson said: “We’re healthy. We’re ready to go. We feel right at the top of our game. . . . Each individual is playing the best he has ever played.”

That would suggest that Arizona will be playing Sunday afternoon against the winner of the second game at Pauley Pavilion today between eighth-seeded Seton Hall and ninth-seeded Texas El Paso at 2:07 p.m.

Seton Hall (21-12) is in the tournament for the first time, thanks to an at-large bid based largely on the strength of its Big East Conference. UTEP (23-9) is also here with an at-large bid after finishing fourth in the Western Athletic Conference standings and second in the tournament.

If UTEP gets past Seton Hall, Sunday’s game could be very interesting. It was UTEP that knocked Arizona out of the tournament last season in the first round, beating the Wildcats, 98-91 in overtime.

Seton Hall will be relying on its big, strong front line to offset UTEP’s experience. The biggest and strongest of that line is forward Mark Bryant, 6 feet 9 inches and 225 pounds. Asked his team’s strength, Bryant said, in such a matter-of-fact way that he drew laughter, “Our big men inside.”

But with a UTEP victory, this speculation could be taken a step further, just for fun. If Iowa could advance through the other bracket of games at Pauley Pavilion to advance, with Arizona, to a West Regional semifinal, that would set up a rematch of a game earlier this season that Arizona won at Iowa. And it would present all sorts of comparisons of his Arizona team to the Iowa team that gave Olson his only trip to the Final Four.

To advance, fifth-seeded Iowa, 22-9 and the third-place finisher in the Big Ten, will have to beat 12th-seeded Florida State, 19-10 and the second-place finisher in the Metro Conference standings, in the 6:07 game tonight, and then win Sunday against the winner of tonight’s 8:41 p.m. game between fourth-seeded Nevada Las Vegas (27-5) and 13th-seeded Southwest Missouri State (22-6).

UNLV dropped to fourth in the West seedings when it was knocked out of the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament last week in the semifinals. Coach Jerry Tarkanian, in summing up his season, said: “We were very fortunate that many of the games that went down to the wire, the ball bounced our way.”

Southwest Missouri State qualified by winning the title in the Association of Mid-Continent Universities.

SMSU Coach Charlie Spoonhour said: “I think it’s interesting that our program could have progressed to this point as rapidly as it has. We’ve been very fortunate in that the kids we were able to recruit worked out well for us. We were fortunate in not having injuries . . . as much as we run and fall on the floor, we’ve been very fortunate not to get hurt.”

If Iowa advances to meet UNLV, it will be a rematch of last year’s West Regional final game--which UNLV won.

UNLV is the only team that defeated No. 1 Temple this season.

The teams that defeated Arizona this season, New Mexico and Stanford, aren’t even in the NCAA tournament.

Asked if he thought Arizona was the team to beat all the way, Kerr said, “A lot of teams could call themselves the team to beat--Purdue, Oklahoma, Temple. A number of teams have just as good a chance to win it as we do.”

But not one to let go of a thought that smacked of negativity, Kerr added: “Our position is such that we have as good a chance to win it as anyone.”

Tournament Notes

The game between Arizona and Cornell will be televised nationally by CBS (Channel 2). . . . Cornell is making its first tournament appearance in 34 years. . . . UNLV’s Keith James came down earlier this week with mononucleosis. . . . UTEP guard Tim Hardaway, led the WAC in assists with 5.8 a game. . . . UTEP’s Chris Sandle, who transferred there from Arizona State, played at Long Beach Poly High School, as did UTEP’s Terry Stallworth.