Schedule Has Loyola on Run : College Basketball: The Lions will be playing three games in four days between the West Coast and the Gulf Coast.

Is there a law against cruel and unusual scheduling?

The Loyola Marymount basketball team may wish there was by the time it completes one of the most hectic weekends in recent memory--three games in four days, West Coast to Gulf Coast back to West Coast.

The tortured scenario was staged to accommodate a television meeting with powerful Louisiana State on Saturday.

To do that, the weekend’s West Coast Conference games had to be rearranged. St. Mary’s agreed to play the Lions in Gersten Pavilion on Thursday night.

Loyola then boards a plane at 7:10 this morning, arrives in Baton Rouge in the afternoon in time for a quick practice, plays LSU Saturday afternoon, flies out that evening and arrives in Los Angeles around midnight.

Sunday it’s back on the home floor at 5 p.m. for a WCC game against San Francisco.

For college players who would like to feel the National Basketball Assn. atmosphere, here it is--an NBA-style road trip (without the salary). If a team ever wanted to call traveling on itself, it may be Loyola toward the end.

“Coming back to play on Sunday is the tough one,” Lions Coach Paul Westhead said last week. “It’s kind of unfortunate.”

No. 14 LSU had a similar weekend recently, with mixed results. The Tigers beat Notre Dame on television on a Saturday, then traveled the next day to Alabama, where they were upset in an important Southeastern Conference game.

Westhead hopes his team--undefeated in the WCC at the halfway point--won’t follow a similar pattern.

However, the big problem for the Lions, other than sticking to their itinerary, will be overcoming LSU’s monstrous front line, featuring 7-foot freshmen Shaquille O’Neal and Stanley Roberts, who both tip the scales at more than 270 pounds. When asked recently if his team could match up with the Tigers, Westhead shook his head and said, “No team in the country can match up with two 7-footers, except Georgetown. They’re a very powerful team.”

However, Loyola is catching the two big freshmen when they are foul-prone and still learning the game. Loyola’s high scorers, Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble, are fifth-year seniors adept at drawing fouls from larger opponents. And, Westhead points out, the running game is often the great equalizer against big men. Despite the presence of the big men, LSU is usually led by All-American sophomore guard Chris Jackson.

Though this game comes in the midst of conference play for both teams, a good showing will enhance Loyola’s national standing. The Lions are ranked 20th by Associated Press and as high as 13th by the Sporting News, but have largely fallen out of the public spotlight, not seen nationally since opening the West Coast Conference. This game should give the Lions a taste of the upcoming NCAA Tournament, something the WCC has not, to put it mildly.

This season the Lions have used speed to burn a number of highly ranked opponents. Now the question is whether Loyola’s frequent-flier mileage will be the great equalizer.