COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : It’s Where They Might Be Headed That Matters Most to This Group : West Regional: Missouri, Arizona, Louisville and Syracuse gather at Sports Arena with hopes of moving on to Final Four.

The best team in the West? Well, it’s either the team from New York, the one from Missouri, the one from Kentucky or the one that is actually from the West, Arizona.

Syracuse, Missouri, Louisville and Arizona not only know where they’re from, but they are also quite aware of where one of them is headed after the West Regional, which continues with the semifinals tonight at the Sports Arena.

That would be Charlotte, N.C., for the Final Four.

Missouri (27-3) and Syracuse (23-6) will match smoldering firepower in the first game before Arizona (27-5) and Louisville (28-5) fill the air with three-pointers.

The winners meet Saturday.

Denny Crum, who has won two NCAA championships in 23 years at Louisville, knows what it takes to win it all and he likes it. Sort of.

“It’s good for basketball,” he said of the practice of sending teams out of their regions. “It’s hard on coaches.”

For the many critics who have said the West isn’t exactly the toughest neighborhood to come from, Crum said they haven’t been paying attention.

“I totally disagree,” he said. “Missouri went through the Big Eight undefeated, that tells you something. Virginia was the No. 7 seed and they beat North Carolina and they beat Duke.

“This has got to be as tough as nails. How can you say it’s not?”

Lute Olson couldn’t. There should be no regional prejudice, he said. In fact, the Arizona coach accurately pointed out that the West teams may have grown in stature because of some teams that are no longer playing in any region at all.

“If you want name recognition, probably (the region) where North Carolina was,” he said. “But they’re not in it. Or probably where Kentucky was. But they’re not in it.”

This is a good point. Missouri, seeded No. 1 in the West, reached the semifinals by decking Navy and Wisconsin, both by 13 points.

Coach Norm Stewart said the Tigers are going to continue to rely on defense and follow a simple path toward what would be their first Final Four appearance.

“The procedure has always been the same to win it all,” he said. “You have to win the next game.”

The next game is against fourth-seeded Syracuse. Coach Jim Boeheim’s Orangemen rely on a sizable backcourt of 6-foot-5 Lawrence Moten and 6-4 Adrian Autry, who average about 37 points a game between them.

Moten wore a protective wrap on his left hand after falling on it Monday at practice. The good news is that it isn’t the hand Moten uses to shoot the ball.

At a news conference Wednesday, he gave sort of conflicting statements about the condition of his hand.

“I’m all right,” he said. “You’ve got to play hurt.”

When Arizona and Louisville play, someone’s feelings are going to be hurt, the one that couldn’t keep up. Both teams would rather run than walk and play at a tempo only a notch or two below frantic.

Take Arizona. Olson’s No. 2-seeded Wildcats average 89.6 points and 22 three-pointers a game, but that’s not all.

In the past two years, Arizona also has averaged one first-round loss in the tournament, but now the Wildcats are two victories away from their first Final Four appearance in six years.

The two big reasons why are Arizona’s backcourt of Damon Stoudamire and Khalid Reeves. Stoudamire scored 36 points in victories over Loyola of Maryland and Virginia, but Reeves was even better, scoring 32 against Loyola and 30 against Virginia, 27 in the last 23 minutes.

“I played decent,” said Reeves, who claimed he wasn’t playing in some kind of mental zone, although he has been there before.

“It’s the greatest feeling in the world,” he said. “You throw up everything and it’s going in.”

Louisville threw up everything and very little went in against Minnesota in the second round. But the third-seeded Cardinals held the Gophers to 21 points in the second half and lived to play again, which is the key to the tournament.

Dwayne Morton, who scored 26 points, made all seven of his shots and the rest of the Cardinals made exactly nine.

Usually, there is a lot to Louisville’s offense. With 6-9, 235-pound Clifford Rozier, the Cardinals have an offensive edge over Arizona’s 6-9 1/2, 250-pound Joseph Blair, but certainly not in size.

Olson is considering defending against Rozier double-team help from another big man, from the weakside, from the top and basically from wherever he can find somebody in a uniform.

“(Rozier) can create a lot of problems,” Olson said.

Crum said the Cardinals are playing as well as anyone else and that their chance of winning a third title to go along with the ones he won in 1980 and 1986 are not any better or worse than any other team.