COLLEGE BASKETBALL / CHRIS DUFRESNE : Their Odds Are Higher Than 16-to-1

In a time-honored tradition, four 16th-seeded teams put their heads on the chopping block today and Friday in the closest thing the NCAA tournament has to offer in the way of public basketball executions.

The participants go whistling toward the gallows, actually lining up to qualify for the privilege.

It’s not every day you can get pummeled on national television in front of friends and family.

This year, for the first time since 1955, two schools with losing records made the field. Central Florida (11-18) got in by winning the Trans-America Athletic Conference tournament. San Jose State (13-16) was 4-15 on Feb. 3 and had to win six of its last seven games to qualify for the Big West tournament, which the Spartans won.

The motivation?

“A week before the Big West tournament, majorly tongue in cheek, I said, ‘We’re three wins away from playing Kentucky,’ ” Spartan Coach Stan Morrison said this week.

Soon after San Jose’s Rich Taylor sank a three-point shot in overtime to beat Utah State in the Big West final at Reno, the Spartans gathered in a hotel room to watch the NCAA pairing show on CBS.

The Spartans, indeed, drew Kentucky (28-2).

“The slap in the face came very early,” Morrison said, dryly.

San Jose State players actually hooted wildly when they heard the news. Then again, didn’t the band keep playing even as the Titanic was sinking?

Across the continent, a similar scene was playing out at Central Florida, where the Golden Knights celebrated their first-round pairing against top-ranked Massachusetts (31-1).

Since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, No. 16-seeded schools are 0-48.

Never, though, have there been two bigger mismatches in the same field than Kentucky-San Jose State and UMass-Central Florida.

At least Morrison, whose team plays Kentucky in a Midwest first-round game today in Dallas, has a sense of humor about it.

“They’ve got a tougher problem than us,” he said. “We know their names, because we’ve seen them on television a bunch of times. There’s no big mystery how they’re going to play. But they don’t know our names.”

Sorry to spill the goods, but the names are Taylor, Roy Hammonds, Sam Allen, Olivier Saint-Jean, Tito Addison and Marmet Williams.

As a public service, it seems only fair to provide Kentucky with a thumbnail scouting report:

Taylor, the kid who made the game-winner against Utah State?

“He had the flu five times this season,” Morrison said. “It got so bad he couldn’t take antibiotics because he had built up an immunity.”

OK, so much for guarding him.

What about the Spartans’ chemistry?

“The three leading scorers on my team were not playing basketball a year ago,” Morrison lamented.

Hammonds, the starting center, sat out last year because of a knee injury. Forwards Allen and Saint-Jean had to sit out as transfers.

“Those two guys came here without scholarships,” he said of Allen and Saint-Jean. “They had to work at jobs to pay for their first two years at school.”

Maybe this isn’t a good time to mention that Kentucky players fly on a chartered jet.

San Jose State should also note, or perhaps not, that Kentucky defeated Louisville by 23 points, Vanderbilt by 39 and Morehead State by 64.

“You talk about a Bad News Bears story,” Morrison said of his team. “I could tell you stuff that could just curl your socks.”

He just had.

IS IT WORTH THE SUFFERING?

Kirk Speraw, Central Florida’s third-year coach, says yes. No matter how badly the Knights are humiliated by UMass today in a first-round East Regional game at Providence, Speraw is convinced his players will limp away better for the experience.

Speraw won’t patronize his team with gung-ho pep talks or regale his troops about the slim chances of making history. He won’t, either, prepare his team psychologically for a 50-point loss.

“I don’t think you address those things as much as you talk about details,” he said.

Details, details. What time does the plane leave? Can we ask Marcus Camby for autographs? Do we get free T-shirts?

Speraw doesn’t see the harm in showing up.

“It creates a lot of great stories,” he said. “Not that we would win a game, not that a No. 16 seed has ever beat a one, but there’s been some scares.”

Granted.

In the 1990 Southeast Regional, No. 16 Murray State extended No. 1 Michigan State to overtime before falling, 75-71. In 1985, also in the Southeast, Michigan survived a 59-55 scare from Fairleigh Dickinson. Lou Henson’s 1989 Final Four team at Illinois almost didn’t make it past the first round, struggling in a 77-71 victory over McNeese State.

None of that will stop UMass from crushing Central Florida like a No. 16 grape seed.

“You have to approach it as a great opportunity,” Speraw said. “Hey, let’s line up, take our cuts at the plate, go out there and play to the best of our abilities.”

Morrison said he wouldn’t miss this imminent drubbing for the world.

When his Spartans arrived back on campus Monday morning, the athletic offices and surrounding shrubs were covered with toilet paper.

“At other places, they’re more sophisticated,” he said, laughing. “They’ll have bonfires and rallies and a band. This place we got TP’d and it was great. I mean, they did one of the great TP jobs in America.

“I asked the guy that was cleaning up outside, I said, ‘Leave it for a day,’ and he said OK. Just so people ask ‘What’s it there for?’ ”

When Morrison was coaching at USC in the 1980s, he agreed once to jump off a restaurant roof into a pool if his team made the NCAA tournament. The Trojans made it, and Morrison jumped.

Morrison has struck another deal with his San Jose State players should they beat Kentucky.

“They shave my head,” Morrison said. “They asked and I said sure.”

Morrison didn’t sound too worried.

HOLD THOSE FAREWELL TOASTS

Those of us who were eager to hit the switch on the Southwest Conference, which just concluded its 82nd and final regular season, were forgetting one minor detail.

Texas Tech is still playing! Texas too, for that matter.

This year, last rites were pronounced and touching SWC eulogies flowed, all while Texas Tech was giving the conference credibility it could never build on.

“When people talk about the Southwest Conference, they talk about the history, they don’t talk about the games we’re winning,” senior forward Darvin Ham said from Lubbock.

For the record, Texas Tech sneaked up to finish 28-1 and rides a 21-game winning streak into Friday’s first-round East Regional game against Northern Illinois.

Not that anyone has noticed, but no SWC team has ever had a better record beginning the NCAA tournament, while the Red Raiders became only the fourth SWC team since 1948 to go through the conference unbeaten.

Pollsters took their sweet time in catching on, but the Red Raiders are ranked No. 7 in the latest Associated Press poll.

Yet, when Ham sat down to watch the pairing announcements Sunday, it was the same old thing.

“People are just like counting us out,” he said. “It’s unbelievable. I mean, I looked at the selection show, and watched ESPN later that evening. We’re a No. 3 seed and they’re talking about six and seven seeds battling UMass, and us not getting past Georgetown.”

Texas Tech remains the last hope for the SWC, which has never produced an NCAA champion. Arkansas, remember, had already fled for the Southeastern Conference when it won its title two years ago.

Former Houston Coach Guy Lewis had Elvin Hayes and Akeem (he became Hakeem later) Olajuwon to lean on, but never won a championship.

Lewis’ 1983 team, with Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, came painfully close, falling victim to North Carolina State’s buzzer-beater in the final.

Texas did win a National Invitation Tournament in 1978, but we’re talking basketball here.

Texas Tech, which will join the Big 12 Conference next season, would love to leave the SWC with one last parting gift.

“It can happen,” Ham said. “We’re capable of going to the Final Four, we’re capable of winning it all. We have that type of team.”

In fact, it will probably take a third-round victory over Georgetown to turn doubters into believers.

“That’s OK, we like being anonymous,” Ham said. “When the spotlight’s on you, that’s when people tend to try to dissect you, and bring you down. It will come soon enough. We’re going to play our way into the spotlight.”

LOOSE ENDS

Don’t tell North Carolina basketball fans polls don’t mean anything. The Tar Heels (20-10) held onto the 25th and last position in the final regular season AP poll this week and were able to extend the longest current run of consecutive poll appearances to 107 weeks. Waiting to pounce if the Tar Heels fell out was Kentucky, which appeared in its 105th consecutive poll.

--Blame Monday’s firing of St. John’s Coach Brian Mahoney on the dreaded Sports Illustrated jinx. It was that magazine, remember, that hailed St. John’s recruit Felipe Lopez as the program’s savior in a cover story two years ago. Lopez, who just completed his sophomore season, has not lived up to expectations. But, of course, schools don’t fire players.

--The only disagreement here with the first-team All-America team was the selection of Villanova’s Kerry Kittles over Utah’s Keith Van Horn. Kittles is a splendid player but cost his team a high tournament seeding because of his three-game suspension for using an unauthorized calling card. That should have been enough to give the nod to Van Horn.