COLLEGE NOTES : WCC Will Get a New Look in Basketball and Baseball

The West Coast Conference will have a different basketball format this season, and baseball will have a new look in 1992.

The WCC has traditionally played its men’s and women’s basketball games at alternating sites, with the women on the road when the men are at home and vice versa.

Starting next fall, the teams will play conference games in doubleheaders in an attempt to get more interest in the women’s programs. Men’s games will start at the usual 7:30 p.m., with the women’s games starting before or afterward.

“The women’s coaches just wanted the exposure,” Loyola Athletic Director Brian Quinn said. “Hopefully it will increase attendance.”

In baseball, the conference announced this week that Nevada Reno, only aligned with the WCC in baseball, will not be in the conference schedule after 1991, reducing the league to six teams who will play a round-robin schedule.

The WCC’s executive committee cited travel costs as the primary factor. Teams have also had weather problems in early season trips to Reno. Loyola Marymount was snowed out of a series in Reno in February.

Reno is a member of the Big Sky Conference, which doesn’t play baseball. WCC teams will continue to schedule games with the Wolf Pack, but the new alignment will allow teams to play all their conference games in California--at Loyola, Pepperdine and San Diego in the Southland and St. Mary’s, San Francisco and Santa Clara in the Bay Area.

Quinn said upcoming NCAA meetings might also have an impact on the WCC’s baseball future. In January, the NCAA will consider limiting schedules to 56 games. The current limit is 60 games and some teams that advance through the playoffs play more than 70 games.

The WCC season involves 36 conference games and Quinn said a 56-game limit might make it difficult to schedule enough quality nonconference opponents. This year the Lions played 62 games and lost a few to bad weather.

Quinn said the limit “could really affect our conference. You’ve got to play good people from the Pac-10 and Big West to impress the NCAA. You have to beat those people to really have a shot at the playoffs.”

Dropping Reno will limit WCC teams to 30 conference games.

Junior outfielder Rick Mediavilla of Loyola Marymount was named to the All-District 8 baseball first team. The District 8 region covers the Southwest. The second team included Loyola catcher Miah Bradbury, outfielder Tony Kounas and relief pitcher Darryl Scott. Chris Martin of Pepperdine was named first team shortstop and Wave pitcher Britt Craven made the second team.

Martin was selected in the second round of the amateur draft this week by Montreal and Bradbury was taken in the fifth round by the Miami Miracle, a Class A team from the Florida State League. Kounas was selected in the 21st round by Seattle.

San Francisco basketball player Joel DeBortoli and San Diego basketball player Paula Mascari were named the West Coast Conference’s scholar-athletes of the year.

DeBortoli, an all-conference forward who finished 13th on USF’s all-time scoring list, graduated with a 3.71 grade-point average in business. Mascari, who set a USD career record for assists with 245, graduated with a 3.67 grade-point average in communications and also did volunteer work with AIDS patients through a school program and helped build low-cost senior housing in Tijuana.