Santa Clara Becomes Member of a Not-Too-Exclusive Club : West Regional: Broncos win, 64-61, to join teams that have upset Arizona in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Add unheralded Santa Clara to the growing list of NCAA tournament nightmares experienced by Arizona Coach Lute Olson.

For the second year in a row, the fifth time in the last six years and the sixth time in his 19-year coaching career--Olson watched one of his teams receive a first-round knockout Thursday night.

This time it came in the West Regional at the hands of 15th-seeded Santa Clara, which rallied from a 13-point deficit to upset the second-seeded Wildcats, 64-61, at the Huntsman Center.

Last year Arizona was upset by East Tennessee State in the opening round of the Southeast Regional.

Thursday night Olson ran his fingers through his silver hair, adjusted his tie and encouraged the Wildcats to play hard, but there was little he could do to change the outcome. Santa Clara outrebounded taller Arizona, 50-36.

“It helps being 7 foot, 250 pounds when you are rebounding, but it also has to do with having a lot of heart,” said Santa Clara senior forward Pete Eisenrich, who had team highs of 19 points and eight rebounds. “We were really focused on crashing the boards hard.”

Santa Clara Coach Dick Davey, in his first season on the job, had said that rebounding would be the key.

“We had to do something to stop Arizona from getting second shots,” he said.

It wasn’t the most artistic of games. The Broncos shot only 37.7%, but Arizona was worse at 30.9%

“They flat out, outplayed us,” said Olson, whose NCAA tournament record dropped to 16-15. “I thought we did a good job of coming back from that first-half deficit in the final eight minutes. But anything can happen to you when you have Chris (Mills) out. He’s so valuable to us.”

Mills, the Pac-10 player of the year, picked up his fourth foul with 15:11 to play and Arizona (24-4) leading, 46-33, after a 25-0 run that bracketed halftime.

He spent nearly 10 minutes on the bench, as Santa Clara (19-11) answered with a 21-7 run and took the lead for good, 54-53, on a 15-foot jump shot by Eisenrich with 2:31 to play.

“We had a pretty good lead, but I saw the tempo start to go Santa Clara’s way,” said Mills, who scored 19 points. “Just sitting there for 10 minutes--it’s a feeling like I let my team down.”

A layup by DeWayne Lewis, who with finished with 13 points, with 2:17 to play increased the lead to three points. In the next two minutes, six free throws by guard Steve Nash helped the Broncos take a 64-58 lead and control of the game.

Santa Clara will face Temple on Saturday.

Vanderbilt 92, Boise State 72--In his first NCAA tournament game since playing for Duke’s national champions in 1991, Billy McCaffrey scored 20 of his 26 points in the second half as the third-seeded Commodores (27-5) broke the game open.

McCaffrey scored 10 points during a 27-4 second-half run that turned the game into a rout.

Vanderbilt (27-5) led by as many as 30 points before 14th-seeded Boise State (21-8) closed the gap to the final margin.

Temple 75, Missouri 61--Aaron McKie and Eddie Jones scored 24 points each and the Owls’ scrambling defense stifled the Tigers.

Rick Brunson added 14 points for Temple (18-12).

Mark Atkins led Missouri (19-14) with 17 points, 15 of them on three-pointers. The junior guard hit five of 11 long-distance shots.