You Don’t Always Need a Star to Shine

Subtract a star. Sometimes, the team gets better.

Oregon State is a good example. Picked for dead last in the Pacific 10 Conference after saying goodbye to first-round NBA draft pick Corey Benjamin, the Beavers are 10-7, 4-4 in the Pac-10, and have beaten UCLA and Arizona in the same season for the first time since the days of Gary Payton.

St. John’s is another case in point. And unlike Oregon State, the Red Storm figures not only to reach the NCAA tournament but to make a deep run.

Felipe Lopez left St. John’s as the third-leading scorer in school history, behind only Chris Mullin and Malik Sealy, but he and Zendon Hamilton--fifth on the scoring list--played in a grand total of one NCAA tournament game.

With those two gone, however, St. John’s looked like a top-five team Sunday, taking Duke to overtime before losing in a game reminiscent of the days when college basketball at Madison Square Garden was really something.

“We had a chance to play an NCAA championship game in January,” said St. John’s Coach Mike Jarvis, the former George Washington coach in his first year at the school. “Very few people will ever know what that feels like.”

Ron Artest, a sophomore forward who had a triple-double against Seton Hall, is St. John’s star, and freshman point guard Erick Barkley--who outplayed Duke’s Williams Avery--isn’t far behind.

But the biggest star against Duke was Bootsy Thornton, who stepped into Lopez’s spot at shooting guard and became the first player to score 40 points against the Blue Devils since Maryland’s Joe Smith in 1996.

When Stanford beat St. John’s in a close game early this season, it was taken as a mark of Stanford’s weakness. Not so.

“It’s turned out to be a nice win for us,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery said. “And they’ve gotten better.”

St. John’s is in the midst of a brutal week, and it’s a bad time to have rebounder Tyrone Grant out because of a broken wrist.

The Red Storm followed the loss to No. 2 Duke with a 75-70 victory over No. 17 Syracuse Wednesday, and will cap it off against No. 1 Connecticut on Saturday.

No matter how St. John’s completes that stretch, it’s a better team than last season because it isn’t driven by individuals.

It’s much the same at Oregon State, led by sophomore guards Deaundra Tanner and Josh Steinthal but winning with defense and a controlled tempo.

The Beavers’ defensive statistics rank behind only Stanford’s in the Pac-10. They’re holding opponents to 60 points a game and allowing them to make only 36.8% of their shots.

“It’s like facing a Princeton in the middle of the Pac-10 season, with the slower pace,” UCLA Coach Steve Lavin said. “The entire team has bought into Eddie Payne’s philosophy. The players understand what they can be capable of if they deliberately shorten the game and make the other team defend for almost the entire shot clock.”

They won’t go much further unless they turn around one of their current streaks--they’ve won four Pac-10 games at home, and lost all four on the road--and Saturday’s emotional showdown against struggling Oregon at home in Gill Coliseum should point the way for both teams.

UP TO THE GILLS

Some of Oregon State’s newfound home-court advantage at Gill Coliseum is being attributed to students being moved down to floor level in the end zones, as well as a section behind the visiting bench.

But seating rowdy students near visiting players’ family and friends drew sharp criticism from Arizona Coach Lute Olson and Arizona State Coach Rob Evans after they had lost there last weekend.

“I think you’re asking for trouble with what’s been done behind that bench,” Olson said, calling the situation with the fans and postgame security “a time bomb.”

“The language was gross, and I think, ‘Fine, put them in the ends or somewhere where the opposing team doesn’t have adults and other people sitting there.’ You have a lot of parents. Something needs to be done with it, frankly.”

Evans called the fans behind the bench “out of line” but shied away from questions about a reported racial aspect to fans’ remarks.

“It all depends on what you consider to be racial remarks,” he said. “There can be some catch-words I might consider, that you might not. I don’t want to get into that.

“It wasn’t very pretty for my wife, I can tell you that. . . . When it gets personal and vernacular, it gets out of line, and the proper people should step in.”

TURNING THE (CRIMSON) TIDE

Imagine a former UCLA player taking over as coach of the Bruins at age 34, just about the time USC sprints to an unbeaten start and a top-25 ranking.

That’s about where Mark Gottfried finds himself. The former UCLA assistant, who went on to coach Murray State to NCAA tournaments, is in his first season as head coach at Alabama.

Rival Auburn’s climb to No. 7 with an 18-1 record hasn’t made it easy.

“Yeah, that’s an understatement,” Gottfried said with a laugh.

He finished his playing career on an Alabama team that reached the Sweet 16 in 1987 and took over a team that hasn’t made the tournament since 1995.

“I knew it was going to be hard,” he said. “I talked to a lot of coaches who had coached at their alma mater about what it would be like. Coach [John] Wooden never went back to Purdue, even though they offered it to him two times. His words of wisdom were that at your alma mater, the expectations are sometimes higher, and the fans look at you differently.”

But Gottfried felt confident that his having been away and been successful as part of the UCLA staff and on his own at Murray State would make a difference.

And the pressure for Alabama (12-9) broke a little with an upset of No. 21 Arkansas,

“Very big for us,” Gottfried said. “We’re kind of rebuilding.”

Gottfried already has signed an early recruiting class ranked in the top 10 by one publication.

And Auburn?

“They’re good,” he said. “They’re a legitimate top-10 team. With [suspended guard Chris Porter] they could make noise and go a long way in the NCAA tournament. Without him, I still think they’re an NCAA team.”

9UTE BE AMAZED

Take another look at Utah.

Even with three starters back from a Final Four team, the Utes were justifiably dismissed from the top 25 after a 5-4 start that included a loss to Utah State and an unimpressive showing against Long Beach State.

But since a loss to Texas on Dec. 12, Utah has won 10 in a row, and Tuesday’s 87-74 domination of Fresno State put the Utes back on the map at 15-4.

What happened?

Forwards Hanno Mottola and Alex Jensen have found their new roles, as Jensen showed with a triple-double punctuated by 10 assists against Fresno State.

And Tony Harvey, a junior forward from Carson High and Cerritos College who was suspended the first semester, has given the Utes a quick defender, and against Fresno State, another outside shooter, offsetting Andre Miller’s only weakness. Harvey’s 19 points included five three-point baskets in seven attempts.

Utah might even be a Sweet 16 team again. And as usual, keep an eye on Miller. He recently came within three assists and four steals of a quadruple double against Hawaii.

QUICK SHOTS

Here’s a team that doesn’t have to worry about being a first-round victim in the NCAA tournament for the third consecutive year: South Carolina. The Gamecocks--who were seeded second in the East when they were felled by Coppin State two years ago and lost to Richmond as a third-seeded team last season--don’t figure to make the NCAA tournament. They’re 6-13 and lost to Syracuse by 37 points, even with a solid NBA prospect in guard BJ McKie, who is on the verge of passing Alex English as the school’s all-time scoring leader.

Notre Dame’s board of trustees will discuss next week an internal recommendation on whether to join the Big Ten, but the Chicago Sun-Times quoted an unnamed trustee who doubted there was enough support to give up Notre Dame’s independent status in football, making it seem likely basketball and most other sports will continue in the Big East. John MacLeod’s team didn’t make much of a dent in the Big East even when it had first-round NBA draft pick Pat Garrity, and the Big Ten would be even tougher. But the Big East is on its way up again too, and with freshman Troy Murphy injured, the Irish are taking their licks from the likes of Villanova and Rutgers.

Maryland’s Steve Francis, denying an ESPN report that he has decided to turn pro, hedged a little on whether he will definitely return for his senior season: “I would never close that door. But right now, if I had to choose, I would come back to Maryland.” . . . An improvement on UCLA play-by-play announcer Chris Roberts’ old “Uh-oh, Ed O,” call for Ed O’Bannon is the one Duke students came up with for freshman Corey Maggette, “Uh-oh, Maggette-O.”