Season Is Too Short For USD : Toreros: Players disappointed with 17-12 record, no NCAA bid.

Six University of San Diego seniors became students rather than student-athletes this month, but a bit sooner than they had hoped when their basketball season began.

“A lot sooner than I expected,” one of the seniors, Pat Holbert, said.

Disappointment?

“It’s sort of painful to think about it,” Holbert said. “It was an up-and-down season. Everything didn’t go as we planned. It’s sort of a letdown in some ways. We accomplished some things, but I thought we could have accomplished a lot more.”

USD’s 17-12 record was one game better than 1989-90 mark and certainly nothing of which to be ashamed. Still, it left the Toreros shy of their goal--the NCAA tournament--and slightly downtrodden.

“It’s painful (watching the NCAA tournament on TV),” junior guard Michael Brown said. “We were there. We were close.”

Losing five of their last six games, including a 75-72 loss to St. Mary’s in the West Coast Conference tournament semifinal, caused most of that pain.

“We just had some things that didn’t fall into place,” Brown said. “We came as close as you can to having a really good season. It was painful coming up short.

“We were in every ballgame, except for Indiana, and competed hard every night. Everybody that did play played hard this year and contributed. We lost a lot of close games.”

And this club was favored by many to win the WCC title.

The media pegged the Toreros as favorites to win the WCC. At least four national publications and the league’s sports information directors did as well.

In reality, nobody ever made any guarantees--just all those predictions.

But USD Coach Hank Egan wouldn’t bite. He promised only that he and his team would give it their all.

“I’m not going to mess with the preseason predictions,” Egan said in November. “They don’t mean diddly.

”. . . Four years ago, I stood in front of a group of people and said I thought we should win the league, and I really did. I thought pound-for-pound we had the best basketball team in the league. And we did. We won the league. I think this year, we have a chance, and that’s the best way I can put it.”

That chance--for the regular-season title--ended with a 90-88 double-overtime loss at St. Mary’s. It proved to be USD’s second of four consecutive losses before the WCC tournament.

In the tournament, the table was set for a second chance.

After the Toreros defeated Gonzaga, 72-62, in the opening game, St. Mary’s upset Santa Clara to set up the second-round game. Had USD defeated St. Mary’s, the Toreros would have played Pepperdine in the final. And Pepperdine was without Doug Christie, the WCC’s most valuable player, because of a knee injury.

USD never got its chance at Pepperdine.

“We had a chance,” Holbert said. “Nobody took it away from us except the opponents we played.”

Streaky USD started the year with five consecutive victories and some votes for the Associated Press top 25. Four consecutive losses--including ones to Cal State Northridge and Eastern Washington--dimmed the national spotlight.

The Toreros won their next two, then lost in double overtime to Colorado. They lost again at Santa Clara to begin WCC play, but then won nine of 10. In another reversal, they lost five of their last six. Next to Indiana, USD’s biggest margin of defeat was the 83-73 loss to Cal State Northridge.

Losing its first WCC game, USD went from last place, to fourth, to third, to first for two weeks, to second for two more before finishing third at 8-6.

Trying to figure it out, Egan said, was next to impossible.

“I’ll probably take this one to my grave,” he said.

Next season, Egan will have lost the six seniors--Holbert, Dondi Bell, Keith Colvin, Shawn Hamilton, Anthony Thomas and Randy Thompson--and sprinkled the lineup with some familiar faces.

Waiting to assume some of the responsibility are redshirts Brooks Barnhard, Gylan Dottin and Joe Temple. Barnhard, a 6-8 center, missed the entire season after back surgery. Dottin and Temple sat out trying to better themselves at the guard position. All three played last year, Dottin the previous two.

Nine other returnees, including juniors Brown, Wayman Strickland, Reed Watson and Kelvin Woods, will try to build upon their experiences, learning from their triumphs and failures.

A few notable achievements:

--Woods, a steady performer throughout his career, was named to both the All-WCC team and the All-WCC tournament team. He was USD’s second-leading scorer with a 13.6 average. Woods also moved up to 18th on the all-time Torero scoring list with 831 career points.

--Thomas set a school record by making 10 of 10 field goals in one game, and he led the Toreros in scoring with a 14.7 average.

--Bell set a school record for career field goal percentage by making 273 of 458 shots for 59.6%.

--Strickland set a WCC record for three-point accuracy during conference games by making 57% (30 of 52).

--Brown finished strong with an 11.6 scoring average in WCC games, fourth-highest on the team.

--Sophomore Geoff Probst established himself as a gutsy and heady point guard after sitting out last year as a walk-on transfer from Division II UC Davis.

--As a team, USD averaged more points than ever, 82.3.

--The Toreros also made exactly half of their 1,738 shots to lead the WCC and nearly surpassed their WCC record for three-point percentage--.450, compared to .453 in 1986-87.

--During the year, Egan won No. 100 at USD and No. 250 in his 20-year career. At 111-87, his .561 winning percentage is the highest of any Torero coach.

Memories all, particularly for the Toreros’ supportive fans who overflowed the 2,500-seat Sports Center on a regular basis.

Still, the most recent memory is of USD missing its final three throws and its final three-point attempt in a three-point loss that might have given six USD seniors at least another day to be student/athletes.