NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Arizona’s Olson Has Team’s Trip to Seattle Well-Planned, 84-55

There will be a team from the West in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball tournament’s West Regional next weekend at Seattle. The University of Arizona, the top-seeded team in the West and the shining light of the Pac-10, advanced with an 84-55 victory over Seton Hall at Pauley Pavilion Sunday afternoon after a game that had Big East fans counting whistles and shaking their heads.

Seton Hall’s star forward, Mark Bryant, picked up his third foul less than 10 minutes into the game. Seton Hall was whistled for 21 personal fouls to just 7 against Arizona. Arizona scored 21 points from the free-throw line, sinking 21 of 28 shots. Seton Hall made 6 of 7.

So why wasn’t Seton Hall Coach P.J. Carlesimo seething and fuming after the game? He did make a sarcastic reference to preferring three-man officiating crews (which the game had). But he wasn’t surprised at which team was at the line and which was in foul trouble.

Carlesimo said: “(Arizona) plays so intelligently. They play so much under control. They can swarm inside or outside.”

Carlesimo knew that Arizona would adapt to the way the game was being called. “They can play any way you want them to play. They can play inside or outside. They can run or play half-court. They can power you or finesse you. They are a great definition of a balanced basketball team.”

And Arizona Coach Lute Olson wasn’t embarrassed by the disparity in numbers because he had planned it that way. Putting his Wildcats on the line and Seton Hall’s star on the bench was a big part of his game plan.

One goal for the Wildcats was to keep Seton Hall’s big men from scoring off offensive rebounds. Neither Bryant nor center Ramon Ramos had one offensive rebound.

The Wildcats wanted to keep the ball on the perimeter and, as Olson put it, “Not let either of those horses have any room to move inside.” That went according to plan, too. Ramos didn’t score. And Bryant struggled, making just 4 of 11 shots and 3 free throws for 11 points.

The Wildcats also wanted to draw some quick fouls. Limiting Bryant to just 26 minutes on the court because of foul trouble was “critical,” according to Olson.

Olson said: “We didn’t want to just stop and turn to shoot the jump shot. If you do that, you might get it back at you. We wanted to make the quick move first, and then shoot it. That’s to your advantage. We wanted to get them moving rather than letting them post up.”

Moving, they’re likely to foul. Posting up, they’re bigger.

Olson added, “Defensively, we didn’t give them a lot of room to do things. We looked at their free-throw percentage and decided we were going to make them earn it with field goals. We weren’t going to foul them and let them have the free throws.

“We don’t foul that much. Look at our history. We’ve had the fewest fouls in the Pac-10 every year for the last five years.”

Too, getting an early lead forced Seton Hall to be the aggressor.

Both teams seemed tight at first. Carlesimo figured both teams were too fired up rather than too tense. But when Arizona’s Steve Kerr controlled a long rebound and ran to the other end for a quick three-point shot, the Wildcats seemed to come to life. In the next four minutes they went from 2 points down to 10 points up. With 10:35 to play in the first half, Arizona led, 20-10.

Anthony Cook scored 8 of his team-high 20 points in that stretch. Sean Elliott had 19 for the Wildcats. Center Tom Tolbert and Kerr each had 13.

Carlesimo said: “If you don’t help on Sean, you’re in trouble, because no one guy can handle him. But if you help on him, you open up someone else, and they can all score.”

Arizona made it a 20-point game by halftime, also using 6-foot-9 Joe Turner and guard Harvey Mason off the bench.

In the second half, Bryant was back in the Seton Hall lineup, but playing more tentatively than he would like because of the three fouls. He picked up his fourth foul with 8:28 left in the game, and then added a technical when he calmly told the official his opinion of the call.

Bryant claimed that the calls had not taken him out of his game, although his coach seemed to think that he wasn’t able to play “with abandon.” Bryant said, simply, that he might have been a little “over aggressive” early on.

Cook made two free throws for the fourth personal foul on Bryant, and Kerr made the free throw for the technical and it was 65-46, in favor of the Wildcats.

Less than a minute later Kerr added another free throw to make it 66-46, when he was given two shots for an intentional foul by Martin Salley. True, Kerr had swung his right elbow a moment earlier in an apparent attempt to shake off Salley. But Salley then deliberately decked Kerr with a right forearm to the chin.

The overwhelmingly pro-Arizona crowd was outraged. Kerr wasn’t. He later said, “I did throw an elbow to get him off of me, but I didn’t make contact. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Not that the exchange had any real impact on the game.

Friday, at the West Regional in Seattle, Arizona (33-2) will play Iowa (24-9) in a rematch of a game that Arizona won in Iowa City.

Tournament Notes

Arizona center Tom Tolbert, who started despite the back injury he incurred Friday, said that his back bothered him only a couple of times during the game against Seton Hall. . . . Asked if he expected the Pac-10 fans of the Northwest to back his team in Seattle, Arizona Coach Lute Olson said, “I would hope that the (Washington) Huskie fans and the (Washington State) Cougar fans would want to help push a Pac-10 team all the way to Kansas City.” At least, the Cougars owe Arizona a favor in the rooting department. Every Wildcat fan in McKale Center pitched in to back Washington State against UCLA in the Pac-10 tournament. . . . Sunday’s games at Pauley Pavilion were not televised locally by CBS because they were not sold out 24 hours in advance. The blackout tactic worked. Long lines of fans waited to buy tickets and, eventually, the last of the tickets were sold. There were empty seats as some groups of fans came for one game only in a session, but there were 12,591 tickets distributed. . . . Arizona assistant coach Ricky Byrdsong was leaving for Detroit Sunday night for a press conference today at which he will be named head coach at the University of Detroit.