Toreros’ Road to Final Four Down to One Lane

It has come to this. The University of San Diego must win the West Coast Conference basketball tournament to reach the NCAA Tournament.

Four season-ending losses closed the other door, that being a “consolation” trip to the National Invitation Tournament.

“Losing the last four? No way,” Coach Hank Egan said.

So it is the NCAA or bust.

On a neutral court, Santa Clara’s Toso Pavilion, USD (16-11) must win three games in three days.

It starts against Gonzaga (14-13) today at 11:30 a.m.

Should USD, the No. 3 seed, defeat the Bulldogs, the Toreros likely would face No. 2 Loyola Marymount (16-13) in a Sunday semifinal. Win that, and No. 1 Pepperdine (19-8) figures to be the opponent in the championship game Monday.

During the regular season, USD beat all three on the road, then lost to them at home. The lesson is that anything seems possible this year.

Egan summed up the situation best: “I think we’re a team, strange as it may sound, that can lose to anybody . . . and have proven it. And we can beat anybody . . . and have proven it.”

Fifteen days ago, USD had won nine of 10 and 11 of 14 since enduring a four-game losing streak. The Toreros were 16-7 with at least five, possibly seven, games left. A 22-8 or 21-9 mark might have been good enough for either an at-large NCAA berth or NIT invitation.

Then came the four consecutive losses: to San Francisco (89-81) and St. Mary’s (90-88 in double overtime) in the Bay Area and Loyola (104-102) and Pepperdine (75-69) at home.

Given the close scores, it wasn’t a hard fall, just hard to figure.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Egan said, “but I haven’t been able to figure this one out yet. I’m probably going to take this one to the grave with me.

“Being able to say I’m not too sure exactly why we were good when we were good or why we were bad when we were bad has been tough. We’ve been through a struggle. It will be a roll of the dice to see which team is going to show up. If we get on a roll, maybe we can pull this thing off.”

While momentum has been scarce lately, getting up for the tournament won’t be an issue, guard Wayman Strickland said.

“It shouldn’t be that hard,” Strickland said. “With the NCAA Tournament at stake, we shouldn’t even go if we can’t get hyped up for this tournament.”

Last year, USD was ready to take on Pepperdine in a WCC semifinal game when Hank Gathers’ death prompted the tournament’s cancellation. The previous day, the Toreros had won their first tournament game since 1987, when the tournament was created.

Gonzaga has yet to win a game in the four previous tournaments, and only twice has the lower-seeded team won in the first round. The Bulldogs enter the tournament with a two-game winning streak. The lone victory in an earlier string of six losses in seven games came at USD, 70-64. Five days earlier, USD had defeated Gonzaga in Spokane, 89-80.

Gonzaga’s Jarrod Davis, a 6-6 guard, is second in the WCC in scoring with a 19.6 average. He leads the conference in free-throw percentage at .857. Point guard Jamie Dudley is fifth in assists with 4.9 per game.

In the victory at USD, the Bulldogs wore new road uniforms for the first time. Gonzaga will be the designated visiting team today.

“We have problems with one another,” Egan said of the matchups. “They have a little problem matching up with our quickness and we have a little problem matching up with some of their people as far as their offense. They try to get hold of the tempo one way and we try to get hold of the tempo another way. So it’s going to be interesting to play that way.”

Torero Notes

Kelvin Woods was the lone Torero among 10 players named to the all All-WCC first team. Four others--Anthony Thomas, Wayman Strickland, Pat Holbert and Michael Brown received honorable mention. Woods, a junior forward, averaged 13.1 points and 5.5 rebounds during WCC play. It was Woods’ first selection. Holbert received honorable mention last year. Keith Colvin made the WCC’s all-academic team, which requires a minimum grade-point average of 3.2 . . . Pepperdine swept the top three WCC awards; Tom Asbury (coach of the year), Doug Christie (player of the year) and Dana Jones (freshman of the year). There were nine juniors and one sophomore on the All-WCC first team. Pepperdine’s Geoff Lear was the only returning member this season . . . Despite shooting 39% in its loss to Gonzaga and 45% in its last four games, USD, at 50.1%, is the only WCC team making better than 50% from the field . . . Today’s game will be broadcast live on XTRA (AM-690). Brad Cesmat will call the action . . . Brian Frederickson, Gonzaga’s senior center, missed the victory over USD and all but 16 minutes of the Bulldogs’ remaining seven games with mononucleosis. In his place, 6-9 senior Martin Dioli started the final eight games and is expected to start today. Dioli did not play last year and wasn’t intending to this season. But when a prized recruit reneged on a national letter of intent, and the desperate Bulldogs were left without a backup center, two assistant coaches knew what to order. They tracked down Dioli, who was bartending at a Spokane pub days before the 1990 fall semester. Near closing time, they convinced him to rejoin. Now that’s last-call service.