COLLEGE BASKETBALL / SOUTHLAND TEAMS IN NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : Actually, Pressure Is Off for the Waves : College basketball: With conference streak not a factor, Pepperdine plays Memphis State in Midwest Regional.

Pepperdine Coach Tom Asbury is looking forward to a new role for his team this week: underdog.

After dominating the West Coast Conference, the Waves (24-6) have been seeded 11th in the Midwest Regional of the NCAA tournament and will face sixth-seeded Memphis State (20-10) in a first-round game Thursday at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

“This is a far easier scenario to deal with than where we were,” said Asbury, whose team was 17-0 against conference opponents and extended its conference winning streak to a record 33 games. “It was tough to keep that darn conference streak going against teams that we were not much better than. It was mean and ugly.”

Pepperdine brings a 12-game winning streak into the NCAA tournament after winning the WCC regular-season and tournament titles.

But Asbury did not expect Pepperdine to receive an easier draw in the NCAA tournament. The Waves were 7-6 against nonconference competition, including a loss to Division II Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a 40-point loss to UCLA.

“When you’re Pepperdine, you’re not going to get to play a Campbell or a Robert Morris,” he said. “We knew we were going to play a tough team. Hopefully we’re going to play smart and hard. I know we’re going to play hard. If we play smart, we’re going to be right there.

“We’ve played some tough folks on the road. We’ve been in Pauley Pavilion and Lawrence, Kan. I don’t know how much that will help us, but I hope it helps us from being intimidated.”

Asbury said he knows little about Memphis State, which lost Saturday night to 12th-ranked Cincinnati, 75-63, in the final of the Great Midwest Conference tournament.

“We’re going to play a very talented and a very quick team, but not a particularly experienced team,” he said. “They’ve been up and down.”

Memphis State is making its third NCAA tournament appearance in six seasons under Coach Larry Finch, a former standout guard for the Tigers. In his senior year in 1972-73, Finch averaged 22.3 points for a 24-6 Memphis State team that was coached by Gene Bartow and lost to UCLA in the NCAA final.

The Tigers are improved over last season, when they finished 17-15, mainly because of the addition of two talented first-year players--6-foot-7 sophomore guard Anfernee Hardaway and 6-10 freshman center David Vaughn, who is Finch’s nephew. Hardaway sat out his freshman year because of Prop. 48 restrictions.

Considered the most talented player to come out of Memphis, Hardaway, who averaged 36.7 points as a high school senior, will match up against Doug Christie, Pepperdine’s 6-6 shooting guard and its leader in scoring, assists and steals.

Pepperdine is making its ninth NCAA tournament appearance. The Waves lost in the first round last season to Seton Hall, 72-51, and have not won in the tournament since beating Pittsburgh, 99-88, in 1982.

Asbury is hopeful Pepperdine can make a better showing than last season, when the team was without Christie after he suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first round of the conference tournament.

“Physically and emotionally, he’s our leader,” Asbury said of Christie. “To have him leading us with a pair of crutches and a cast was not an ideal scenario.”

Having nine days off before the start of the NCAA Tournament is not ideal either, Asbury said, but he pointed out that it has allowed several of his players to recover from minor injuries. Senior forward Geoff Lear played in the conference tournament with a sprained thumb, and Christie and reserve forward Steve Guild were slowed by knee and ankle injuries.