NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Asbury Has Answers for Beating Loyola : West Regional: But Alabama hasn’t called. And if he had the solution, his Waves would still be playing.

As the ranking expert on how to beat Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine basketball Coach Tom Asbury has been in demand this week.

Coaches and sportswriters from around the country have called him in the last three days--virtually everyone, he said, except the Alabama staff that has to contend with the Lions at 5:25 today in the third round of the NCAA tournament at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

“I’m surprised they haven’t called me. But they know I wouldn’t share (information) with them. I want Loyola to win,” Asbury said. Still, he added, “I would love to sit in on the Alabama staff’s meeting trying to figure out how to stop ‘em.”

As the Waves’ coach the last two seasons, Asbury is 2-2 against the Lions. Pepperdine administered Loyola’s last loss, 131-123, on Feb. 17 after losing to the Lions, 131-116, earlier that week.

So how do you beat Loyola? The Lions, playing with emotional fervor since teammate Hank Gathers’ death, upended an athletic New Mexico State team, 111-92, then demolished defending champion Michigan, 149-115.

“If you’ve got your team’s attention and can make them do what you want them to do, you’ve got a chance,” Asbury said, adding that there are times when the game is going to get out of control because of Loyola’s fast break and constant full-court press.

“I call it the control factor. (Former Wave coach Jim) Harrick used to call it ‘the disease.’ There are periods of time you just lose your team. You just lose ‘em. They get away. That happened here in the game we won, for about three minutes. I completely lost our team. Luckily, we kept scoring. Michigan lost ‘em for about 30 of the 40 minutes.”

And New Mexico State?

“I hate to criticize another coach’s strategy, but why they would press them and speed the game up even more, I don’t know,” Asbury said.

Tactically, he said, Loyola likes to play “an east-west game”cross-court passes that lead to open three-pointers--and added: “You want to make them play a north-south game. And if a team can successfully hold the ball and use up the clock, it makes them crazy.”

Most opponents aren’t able to do that against Loyola’s all-out press, or they find themselves with such easy shots that--if they get past the press--are too tempting to pass up.

Loyola Coach Paul Westhead was asked how he would defend against his own team. “You could run with us if you could sustain it for 40 minutes,” he said. “Oklahoma was as conditioned (as Loyola). I would either run with us if I were in good shape, or I would play very slow. The other thing that would cause us to lose would be (for us) to shoot very poorly.”

The Lions are among the nation’s leaders in field-goal percentage this season at 53%. When they lost to North Carolina in the second round of the NCAA tournament two years ago, the entire team shot poorly--a situation influenced by J.R. Reid and other superior Tar Heel talent.

In last year’s West Coast Conference tournament final, Loyola won in overtime, but Santa Clara used stalling tactics to keep the final score at 75-70. In their next game, a 120-101 NCAA tournament loss to Arkansas, Loyola shot only 36%.

This season, the Lions (25-5) have not been held below 91 points and have reached triple figures in 27 of their 30 games, an NCAA record. They go into today’s contest averaging 125.2 points a game.

Teams that have not seen the Lions play are often befuddled by their style. “We’ve seen ‘em a lot,” Asbury said. “When they’re not in your conference and you only have a day or two to prepare for them, it’s tough.”

Loyola and Alabama have never met.

Alabama (26-8) plays some of the toughest defense in the nation, giving up an average of only 61.4 points and holding opponents to 40.4% shooting. The Crimson Tide held Arizona to a season-low 55 points Sunday.

Alabama Coach Wimp Sanderson is in the Sweet 16 for the fifth time in his 10 years as head coach there.

Sanderson and Westhead are longtime friends, going back to the 1970s, when Westhead coached at La Salle and Sanderson was an assistant to C.M. Newton at Alabama. More recently, they have worked together in summer coaching clinics for a shoe company. Their families went to dinner together last weekend. Westhead calls Sanderson “a delightful guy.” Poking fun at Sanderson’s Southern accent, Westhead said they don’t talk much basketball “because I don’t really understand what he says.”

Sanderson calls Loyola “an unusual team.”

Alabama swingman Keith Askins, one of four players on the team averaging in double figures, said the Lions “seem not to get tired. It will be a hard job for our team to run up and down (the court) like that. The key is to be patient. I don’t think you can outscore ‘em. You’ve got to outsmart ‘em. Get the oxygen tank ready.”

Westhead expects Sanderson to “try to play like he did against Arizona--a lot of cross-court passes, then cut you up. They’re a fine team that Wimp has right under his thumb--when he says jump, they jump. They make the extra pass. They’re a very athletic, physical, quick team. I think they will try to match up and play a game of control.”

And that, as Tom Asbury could tell you, is easier said than done. “Hell, if I had all the answers, I’d still be playing,” he said.