College Division / Mitch Polin : UC Riverside Unlikely to Become Regional Site

Over the last 18 years, UC Riverside has had one of the most successful NCAA Division II men’s basketball teams on the West Coast, making 11 appearances in the regional playoffs with five regional titles.

But the Highlanders have never been selected to play host to a Division II regional tournament.

And, under the present NCAA site selection process, they probably never will.

That’s because the Division II uses monetary considerations as its top criterion for selecting regional hosts. Factors such as team record and strength of schedule have little to do with the site selection.

Unfortunately for Riverside, the Highlanders play on a home court that seats only 955 and the closest off-campus gym at Riverside Community College seats just 2,100--both far below what the NCAA expects for a regional site.

So, even though it has the best record entering this week’s West Regional and is ranked No. 3 in Division II, top-seeded Riverside (25-4) will travel to second-seeded Cal State Bakersfield (20-9) for the four-team regional, which starts Friday.

That doesn’t sit well with some at Riverside, especially considering that the Highlanders have defeated Bakersfield two of three times this season. The loss was Feb. 18 in Bakersfield.

“Obviously from a standpoint of competitiveness, it just diminishes what you’ve done during the season to try and get seeded at the Division II level,” Coach John Masi said. “We’re the No. 3 team and we’d like to capitalize on it, but we can’t. You think you’d be rewarded for have a better record but obviously we’re not.

“It completely diminishes the importance of having a good record. The only thing that’s important is the size of your gym.”

In Bakersfield’s case, the Roadrunners have a new 4,000-seat gym--considerably larger than anything Riverside can offer. Al Matthews, Cal State Hayward athletic director and a member of the regional selection committee, said that made it easy to opt for awarding the regional tournament to Bakersfield.

“As far as the committee was concerned, there was no comparison,” Matthews said. “Bakersfield was clearly the best site.”

Matthews said that while monetary considerations are not necessarily the prime factor in selecting sites for Division I, it is the biggest criterion in Division II.

“I think it’s about as fair as we can make it in considering the conditions that we deal with,” Matthews said. “For us to do this (Division II tournament), we have to make money. Quite frankly, money is the most important criterion we look at.”

For that reason, top-ranked Ferris State of Michigan and second-ranked Virginia Union are also playing away from home in the regionals. In fact, Masi said all eight of the four-team regionals are at the school with the largest gym.

Dennis Poppe, who oversees the NCAA’s site selection for Division II, said that because of monetary factors the future does not bode well for Riverside as a regional host.

“I don’t want to say that they’d never host a regional, but I think I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say they have an uphill battle because of the size of their facility and other factors that we measure,” he said.

Masi is a little more optimistic about changing the site selection process.

“We’re going to try as Division II coaches when we meet in our next committee to look at this a little closer,” he said. “There are two or three teams, like Ferris State and Virginia Union, that see this happening all the time.”

In the meantime, Masi says his team will try to make the most of the situation.

“If you do wind up having to play Bakersfield, then you lose your advantage,” he said. “But we told our team that we can’t use that as an excuse. We just have to go out and play.”

Riverside will face fourth-seeded Sonoma State (17-12) in its tournament opener, and Bakersfield faces Cal State Dominguez Hills (19-9) in the other first-round game. Sonoma State is the only team from outside of the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. in the regional. First-round winners play for the title Saturday.

In the NAIA District III, Biola and Westmont have alternated making appearances in the NAIA men’s basketball national tournament over the last six years.

Westmont reached the national tournament last season, so it’s Biola’s turn.

In fact, it has been a pretty good decade for the Eagles, who are making their sixth appearance in the national tournament.

In their last appearance in 1987, the Eagles were eliminated in the first round. For that matter, the District III champion has lost in the first round of the national tournament the last four years.

Biola will be trying to avoid a similar fate when it opens play in the 32-team tournament against 16th-seeded College of Idaho (22-8) Wednesday night at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo. Idaho is District II champion.

Biola (29-7) is seeded No. 17 in the tournament after defeating Southern California College in the District final last week. The Eagles are led by 6-7 forward Paul Horn and 6-3 guard Brandle Studevan.

If the Eagles win, they will probably earn a rematch with top-ranked and defending national champion Grand Canyon in the second round Thursday. The teams split in two nonconference games earlier in the season.

The Cal Poly Pomona women’s basketball team will be in a familiar position when it plays host to St. Joseph’s of Indiana in the NCAA Division II quarterfinals at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

It will mark the fourth straight season that the Broncos have played in the quarterfinals.