Big West Moves Basketball Final From NCAA Conflict

Cal State Long Beach was left out of the NCAA basketball tournament two months ago because it couldn’t beat Nevada Las Vegas, which won the national championship by 30 points over Duke in the NCAA final.

Determined to prevent its teams from being caught again in a time conflict between the televised NCAA tournament program and the conference’s televised title game, the 10-team Big West Conference decided Thursday at Santa Barbara to cut its men’s and women’s tournaments to eight teams and restructure the tournament so that the men’s championship game will be over before the televised selection program begins.

Long Beach learned at halftime of the Sunday afternoon tournament final in March that the NCAA selection committee had announced it would be invited only if it beat UNLV to win the automatic Big West berth. The 49ers lost, 92-74.

Jim Haney, Big West Conference commissioner, said the NCAA has not given the Big West assurances that it would not be penalized again for the lateness of its title game.

The Big West title game began at 3 p.m. on a Sunday last season, conflicting with the 3:30 p.m. selection show. Haney said the final is tentatively set for 1 p.m. next season.

But Seth Greenberg, then an assistant and now head coach of the Long Beach team that was left out, said he is not convinced the change will make a difference.

“I really don’t think when that final game is played has an effect of the selection process,” said Greenberg, who replaced Joe Harrington, now coach at Colorado. “By that time, they pretty much know who’s in and who isn’t. But it’s nice they moved it. It takes one less cop-out away from the NCAA committee. The bottom line is the people on the committee have to decide whether the Big West merits four teams.”