COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA TOURNAMENT : Tune In Again Next Year

Opening day of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is always great entertainment, although don’t you just hate it when “The Price Is Right” gets preempted? Between the war and this basketball thing, CBS is lucky to squeeze in any of its regular daytime programming, including Bob Barker asking three women to guess the price of some popular floor wax.

Anyhow, the best young players in basketball, the young and the restless, the bold and the beautiful, were out in full force Thursday on the people’s courts. We got to see Brigham Young’s 8-foot-8, 88-pound center, Shawn Bradley, and we got to see Louisiana State’s object of NBA lust, My Shaquille Amour O’Neal, and we got to see Coastal Carolina in its all-important game against Inland Indiana.

In Southern California, the game du jour involved. . . . Southern California.

USC, making its first tournament appearance of the George Raveling Administration, made the least of it. With all-time scoring leader Ronnie Coleman and crunch-time floor leader Robert Pack fouling out, and with Harold Miner having a game that belongs on a blooper video, the Trojans were put to sleep by Florida State, a solid but hardly exceptional team.

Pepperdine also played Thursday, but, it, too, lasted about as long as Jim Palmer. Given that they did without leading scorer Doug Christie and ate Seton Hall’s dust, 15-2, at the beginning of the game, the Waves got an honorable discharge, making it close just after halftime before waving the white flag. Nice try.

With Nevada Las Vegas out there lurking like Godzilla behind a Tokyo railway, I don’t suppose anyone expected any of the other 63 schools to win this tournament anyway. Maybe a first-round loss can be seen as some sort of euthanasia, sparing players from a painful fate ahead.

I just wish more people would be reminded of Villanova’s NCAA victory over Georgetown, or North Carolina State’s over Houston, or any of the other upsets of allegedly invincible opposition in this tournament’s past. Nobody can persuade me that all the Runnin’ Rebels have to do is huff and puff to blow the house down. Ball State could have beaten them last year.

But, if Jerry Tarkanian wants to coach UNLV to another title, then quit to coach the L.A. Clippers and elude the NCAA posse, then draw the No. 1 pick in the lottery and draft Shaquille O’Neal, then by golly, it’s OK by me. Tark the Shark might as well go out a champion, before the NCAA digs up some other violation like illegally laundering towels with boxes of Tide provided by an alumnus.

One of the tournament subjects under discussion in recent days was whether UNLV, the nation’s defending champion and only undefeated team, was given a more booby-trapped course to the Final Four than even UCLA, a team that considered beating Washington State a good day.

Well, I don’t know. I can’t tell you offhand if Montana is worse than Penn State. I can’t tell you offhand why Villanova or Northern Illinois got into this tournament while Providence or Fordham did not. I can’t even tell you offhand if UCLA is the most overrated or most underrated team in the country, although I reckon we will find out directly.

I do know that USC should consider this to have been a very good season, a jumping-off point to better days ahead, although it sure would help if somebody taller than 6 foot 6 would happen along.

I also know that the Trojans should consider themselves very lucky to have been invited to the NCAA regionals at all, considering that bow-wow schedule of theirs. If ever the need to pile up victories to build a team’s confidence or reputation has been reflected in a school’s nonconference schedule, this is it. Chicago State, Augusta, Harvard, Brooklyn, Cal State Northridge. . . . come on. Was Bryn Mawr booked up?

Nevertheless, I found myself pulling for Raveling and his Trojan horses, who had to start somewhere.

Bill Walton, a breath of candid fresh air in broadcasting, saw the same things I did, and had enough gumption to say them.

“Florida State is just beating USC up and down the floor,” Walton said. “The Trojans don’t look ready to play.”

The score was 4-0.

“Ronnie Coleman was not ready on that play and the rest of the Trojans don’t seem to be ready, either,” Walton went on.

The score was 8-0.

Yes, it was early, but he could see how flat they were. Or how scared. I don’t know specifically what sort of stage fright Miner, for example, was feeling, but during the pregame introductions Harold resembled the living dead. He looked like a man being asked to put on some rubber gloves and go handle nuclear waste.

Before the game was over, Raveling showed the sort of poise and understanding the game’s best teachers possess, benching Miner after an unnecessary shot and spending some quality time with him on the sideline before giving him another chance. The kid is young and extremely gifted. Next year he should be looser and eager to make somebody pay for this year. As should USC.