COLLEGE NOTES : What Happened to WCC? Nationally-Ranked Loyola Has Only Winning Record : College Basketball: Preseason predictions went sour and conference is now lowest rated in the country.

When the West Coast Conference sent four men’s basketball teams--half of its membership--to postseason tournaments last March, the WCC looked like an up-and-comer.

So what happened?

Going into this weekend, the WCC is one of the lowest rated conferences in the country. Loyola Marymount, which has worked its way into the national ratings, is the only team with a winning record at 11-3. Pepperdine, expected to be a postseason contender, is 7-8 and in turmoil.

Nobody else is even close to .500. Take away Loyola’s 8-2 road record and the other seven teams are 8-44 away from home. They’re not even all that impressive at home at a combined 29-25.

Even in conference play, no team other than Loyola has emerged. After one week, the Lions are the only team without a loss at 2-0.

How bad have things gotten? The highlight of Gonzaga’s week was placing two players on the dean’s list. Pepperdine’s Tom Lewis, who got preseason All-American mention, was suspended for eight days but was to be back on the team Monday. The Waves’ 6-foot-10 transfer Mark Georgeson, expected to be a force at center, has been ineffective trying to come back from two years of inactivity due to injuries.

Santa Clara center Ron Reis scored 30 points last week against Loyola, making him the only player in the conference this season other than Loyola’s Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers to score at least 30. Several WCC teams have had trouble matching Kimble’s 36.6-point average.

And pity Larry Steele, the Portland coach. As a player he knew mostly good times, first as a star at Kentucky and then as an integral member of the Portland Trail Blazers when they were an NBA power in the late 1970s. Not only did Steele suffer through an 8-48 record in his first two seasons with the conference’s worst team, but last week an irregular heartbeat reoccurred at the end of a last-second loss to San Francisco. His accelerated heart rate didn’t calm down after the game, so his cardiologist sidelined Steele for a game pending medical tests. He’ll be back on the bench this weekend in Los Angeles, where games with Loyola and Pepperdine probably won’t do much for his health.

Pepperdine Coach Tom Asbury, trying to iron out his problems and stay in the running, has almost conceded that Loyola may be out of reach in the conference race. Can the Lions be tamed? “Probably not,” he said. “They’re playing very well.”

Wait until next year?

By the Numbers: Loyola Marymount’s senior trio of Hank Gathers, Bo Kimble and Jeff Fryer continues to pile up impressive statistics and move up the school career basketball lists.

Gathers is 20 points away from replacing Forrest McKenzie as the school’s (and West Coast Conference’s) all-time scoring leader at 2,060. Counting his freshman stats from USC, Gathers is also close to joining an elite number of collegiate players in Division I history with more than 2,500 points and 1,000 rebounds. He needs 17 rebounds and 226 points to reach those levels. Gathers has also moved into second place in school rebounding totals with 840 in a Lions uniform. He supplanted former teammate Mark Armstrong to move into the second spot over the weekend.

Kimble, leading the nation in scoring, needs 19 points--a good half for him--to have the 20th best season total in Loyola history--with the season only at the halfway mark. Kimble goes into tonight’s game needing 269 points for 2,000 in his career. With 1,391 points in his three Loyola seasons, Kimble has moved into 10th place in career scoring.

Fryer, with 1,497 points in his four-year career, is eighth on the Loyola career list and needs eight points to move past Ed Bento into seventh.

Loyola has the best shooting team in the West Coast Conference, but the Lions’ foul shooting has been inexplicably spotty lately and they have tumbled to fifth in the WCC with a percentage of .677.

The Lions’ free throw slide started in Philadelphia two weeks ago. Against LaSalle they made only 18 of 31 attempts (58%). Opening WCC play last week on the road, they managed only 22 of 38 (58%) at Santa Clara and 21 of 34 (62%) at San Diego for a three-game total of 61-for-103, a 59% rate.

Only Kimble has been immune to the slump, staying at 90%. No other Lion is hitting 80%. Fryer, an 83% foul shooter last season, is hitting .667.

Half Good: Dave Yanai’s Cal State Dominguez Hills basketball team has led at the half nine times but has won only four of those contests. Overall, the Toros are outscoring opponents, 444-433, before halftime but have been blasted in the second period (and one overtime), 584-484.

The Toros, who play two road games this weekend, are 0-8 away from home.

College Notes

After Oklahoma’s 66-51 upset by Kansas State, Loyola Marymount is now leading the NCAA in scoring, averaging 117.7 points. Oklahoma fell from 122 to 116.7 . . . . An overlooked scorer in Loyola’s arsenal has been sophomore John O’Connell, who is on a 11-for-14 tear in his last six games and is shooting 22-for-33 (.697) on the season. . . . In the first two West Coast Conference games, forward Per Stumer is shooting 10 for 13. . . . Loyola basketball Coach Paul Westhead is one victory away from tying John Arndt for career coaching victories at Loyola with 91. Arndt coached for seven seasons. Westhead is in the middle of his fifth. . . . Due to illness and foul trouble, the Dominguez Hills women’s basketball team played the last 1:29 with only four players last week against Cal Poly Pomona. . . . Former South Torrance basketball star Rochelle Lightner, playing center for the University of San Diego, has missed the last two games after suffering a broken nose against Colorado.