College Basketball : St. Mary’s Gaels Blowing By Opponents With a Tough Defense

While Loyola Marymount has been running and pressing its way to fame, St. Mary’s has been playing the best basketball in the West Coast Athletic Conference with an altogether different game.

Let Loyola try to lead the nation in scoring offense. St. Mary’s would rather lead in scoring defense.

So far, Loyola is averaging 112 points a game--and allowing 112 points a game. The Lions are 3-4, but, in fairness, have been slowed by Bo Kimble’s knee injury.

St. Mary’s is averaging 83 points, but giving up only 57--55 fewer than Loyola. The Gaels are 9-1, their only loss a 65-64 defeat to Stanford at home Tuesday when a last-second shot missed.

Coach Lynn Nance guided the Gaels to a 19-9 record last season, one victory short of their first 20-win season since 1942. Loyola, meanwhile, went 28-4, winning the WCAC with an undefeated record.

This season, Nance has all his starters back. He brings his team to the Southland for the first time this season tonight, when the Gaels go against Cal State Fullerton at Titan Gym.

As much as a fast-paced offense is the name of the game to Loyola, deliberate offense and tough defense are St. Mary’s goal. The Gaels have held their opponents to 40% shooting this season.

At the same time, St. Mary’s is shooting 55% from the field.

Loyola’s Kimble, Hank Gathers and Jeff Fryer may have the better-known names, but Al Lewis, Robert Haugen and Erick Newman may well have the better record when this season ends.

As good as St. Mary’s may be, the Gaels’ style just doesn’t inspire the same enthusiasm Loyola Marymount’s does.

Xavier Coach Pete Gillen will bring his Musketeers to the West Coast to play the Lions Wednesday. Last season, these teams were both in the top 4 in the nation in scoring. Loyola Marymount led the nation with a 110.3 average, and Xavier was fourth at 94.7.

Is Gillen excited? You make the call. “We’re playing in Los Angeles, in the fast lane, in a whole new wave,” Gillen was quoted as saying in a school news release. “All the latest things from Europe. . . . We’re going against the silk-suiters now. We’re going against the high cotton.”

A game at Moraga, Calif.--St. Mary’s home--would inspire less colorful metaphors, more defense, and fewer points.

Without Byron Larkin, who led last season’s Xavier team, the Musketeer scoring average is down considerably, to 79.1 points a game.

But there is another player to watch this season, Stan Kimbrough, a 5-foot 11-inch senior guard who is averaging 20.9 points a game. He is shooting 52% and 41% from 3-point range (21 of 43).

Nice, but not spectacular. What makes him special?

That one inch he is lacking puts him in line for the Frances Pomeroy Naismith basketball hall of fame award, given to the best college senior under 6 feet.

Alaska Anchorage, the Division II team that pulled a stunning 70-66 upset of second-ranked Michigan Wednesday, had given warning of its abilities.

The Seawolves’ only 2 losses in 13 games are to Kansas by 13 and to Florida by 11.

In a statistical coincidence that is believed to be unprecedented, the Indiana State men’s and women’s teams were each leading the nation in free-throw percentage in mid-December.

The men’s team--led by Eddie Bird, Larry’s younger brother--had made 137 of 163 free throws, for 84%. The women’s team had made 144 of 183, for 78.7%.

Is Indiana State using smaller balls and larger baskets, as a school news release jokingly suggested?

It’s nothing more than extra practice, coaches say.

After the Sycamore men shot 65% from the line last season, Coach Ron Greene had his players put in extra time this preseason, some of it at 6:15 a.m.

The Sycamore women are required to make 25 free throws a day, outside of practice. During practice, there are free-throw drills after each practice segment. And then there is the time-honored method for teaching pressure free throws--the double-or-nothing drill. A player has to shoot 2 free throws. If she makes them, no running. If she misses, it’s double-suicides (wind-sprints) for everyone.

Kent State’s 75-66 victory Thursday night over Alabama Birmingham in the first round of the UT Chattanooga tournament prevented Alabama Birmingham Coach Gene Bartow from recording his 500th victory.

UCLA contributed 52 victories in Bartow’s 2 seasons at the school immediately after John Wooden’s retirement. Bartow, 58, also has coached at Central Missouri State, Valparaiso, Memphis State at Illinois.

“Some of my biggest wins over the years have come here (Alabama Birmingham), strange as that may seem,” Bartow told the Associated Press. “But probably my biggest win in coaching was at Memphis State over Providence to let our 1972-73 team play for the national championship.”

Bill Walton scored 44 points to lead UCLA to the title in that game.

At Birmingham, Bartow said, victories that stand out include NCAA tournament victories over Kentucky in 1981 and Indiana and Virginia the next season, before the Blazers lost to eventual champion Louisville.

Bartow and Hugh Durham of Georgia are the only active coaches who have taken two schools to the NCAA Final Four--Memphis State and UCLA under Bartow and Florida State and Georgia under Durham.

The loss to Louisville in 1981-82 kept his Alabama Birmingham team out of the Final Four.

“We still hope to make it to the Final Four some day,” Bartow said.