After Further Review, a Change of Rules

We’re halfway through a season that wouldn’t be half bad if you threw out half the officials, UCLA’s half-court offense, half of everything Bob Knight said and half of ESPN’s lead announcing team.

Now, these half-baked observations:

* There are no great teams, although Cincinnati Inc. is officially on the clock and has a month to prove otherwise. As for the rest of you: Three schools dropped out of the Associated Press top 25 poll and 14 ranked teams lost a total of 17 games in the last week.

The Oliver Stone movie would be called “On Any Given Sunday, Big Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday.”

* The refs stink. Texas A&M; beat Texas Tech on Jan. 15 with a shot after the clock expired. Last week, Miami defeated Villanova with another questionable buzzer beater.

So, get this: The NCAA, which typically needs a month to order lunch, calls an emergency meeting this week and rules that, effective Friday, officials can use instant replay to review last-second shots. To date, replay has been used only to review three-point attempts.

“If we have the technology available to help us, we want to make sure we use it to get the call right,” NCAA rules chairman Reggie Minton said.

Hate to crush the euphoria, Reg, but the technology has been around 30 years. Didn’t we put a man on the moon in 1969?

Give Villanova Coach Steve Lappas credit for sounding the instant-replay siren.

“I thought the whole logic in this thing was to get the game right,” Lappas says.

If Lappas thinks replay is the end-all, however, he obviously missed last week’s NFC title game.

* Strength of schedule doesn’t mean squat. Whom you play is important in college football because a computer ultimately pairs the titlists, but how a basketball coach stacks his deck is his business.

Arizona’s Lute Olson thinks a tough nonconference schedule makes his team better in March. Fine. Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim played patty-cake at home before Christmas against Albany, Hartford, Colgate and Florida Atlantic.

Who cares, as long as both teams are ready for the NCAA tournament?

To wit: No. 5 Arizona has the nation’s No. 1 ranked schedule; No. 4 Syracuse’s schedule is rated 150th. Over the weekend, Arizona lost to USC and Syracuse blew out Connecticut.

Since 1994, the strength-of-schedule average for the national champion has been . . . 34.

* Biggest flop of the half-season is U . . . C . . . ah, you lucky Bruin rascals slip the hook because another legendary basketball program, North Carolina, has turned an even darker shade of code blue.

After losses to Virginia and Wake Forest last week, North Carolina, 11-8 and 2-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, fell out of the AP top 25 poll for the first time since 1990-91, which predates Michael Jordan’s first NBA title.

Lindy’s, one of the more reputable preseason magazines, touted North Carolina as its preseason

No. 1.

“I know a lot of people out there are down on us,” Tar Heel Coach Bill Guthridge says. “I’ve said many times, when there’s interest like we have, there are opinions of what should be done.”

No one, yet, has suggested firing Guthridge, Dean Smith’s longtime sidekick and handpicked successor, but it’s still early.

Word is that Guthridge will be allowed to fulfill the remaining two years on his contract if he wants to.

Question: Will he want to?

“I accept the blame,” he said. “When you’re the head coach, that’s where the blame should go.”

* The Pacific 10 Conference is better than we thought. A few weeks ago, with UCLA listing, it looked like top-heavy Arizona/Stanford and eight table weights, or maybe you missed Oregon’s loss to Cal State Northridge.

Now, there’s a chance to atone for last year’s tournament follies and this year’s football embarrassments.

Washington State, conference runt, made Arizona sweat in Tucson and should have beaten Oregon at Pullman on Sunday.

Middle-of-the-Pac Arizona State squandered two games it could have won in last week’s fruitless sweep through L.A.

USC, of course, upended No. 2 Arizona.

Seven Pac-10 teams rank 57th or better in the RPI power rankings, and the conference ranks No. 2 behind the Big Ten in RPI and is 6-0 against the Big Ten.

“I really believe you’re going to see lot of teams making some statements,” California Coach Ben Braun says. “You’re going to see some teams stepping up and getting some wins.”

With USC charging, there’s a chance five Pac-10 teams might qualify for the NCAA tournament--Stanford, Arizona, USC, UCLA Oregon--and possibly six, if Arizona State can go 2-2 against Arizona, Stanford, UCLA and Oregon and 5-0 against the rest of the league.

How it shakes out: USC is playing truly inspired ball, led by Coach Henry Bibby and Brian Scalabrine.

UCLA needs to walk a mile in USC’s shoes, not a mile to its arena.

So who wins the Pac?

U of A . . . Attrition.

No way USC goes unscathed with injuries to Sam Clancy and Jarvis Turner. Arizona is already withering from the loss of forward Richard Jefferson; opponents are leaving replacement Luke Walton unguarded and collapsing the middle.

That leaves the title for Stanford, deeper than ever with Mark Madsen back, and a window of opportunity for, yes, UCLA.

* The ACC is overrated. Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, whose Blue Devils have not lost a regular-season conference game since Feb. 5, 1998, is trying to put a happy face on reality.

“I wish we would take a look at our league for what it is now, not what it was when Johnny Dawkins played in ‘86, when we had four teams that could probably win the national championship,” he said.

Mike, ease up, your team is top drawer. But your conference ranks fifth in this week’s RPI, two spots below Conference USA.

Dare we say only three NCAA spots for the ACC again this year?

* Indiana’s Knight still doesn’t get it, and that has been OK because 1994’s Sweet 16 run was the last time anyone cared about the Hoosiers. We actually thought Knight lost it for good in 1997, when he walked from the arena to the hotel in a downpour after a first-round NCAA loss to Colorado in Winston-Salem, N.C.

The problem: Indiana is relevant again, a contender, meaning we have to keep closer tabs on the tirades.

Knight, surprise, botched last week’s Indiana-Iowa docudrama, which pitted him against Coach Steve Alford, star of Indiana’s last NCAA title run in 1987.

Instead of diffusing a prickly situation after a tough-fought win, Knight exploded in the postgame media conference and called out Alford, who had the gall, apparently, to accept a coaching position in Knight’s conference.

Asked why he didn’t even speak with Alford at the Big Ten media day, Knight said, “Why doesn’t he come speak to me too, if it’s such a . . . offense?”

Knight wears a crown in a state where basketball is king, which has long provided him a free buffoonery license. The sad part: Knight is a great coach and mass of contradictions. He reportedly writes Christmas cards to the parents of every player who played for him, yet doesn’t bother to call Luke Recker, a player who transferred out, after he suffered near-fatal injuries in an auto wreck last summer?

You’d lose the house betting on Knight’s downfall. Tuesday, after a 35-point win over Michigan, he mockingly introduced himself to all the sportswriters in a postgame interview session.

Yet, you keep thinking he’s headed toward a Woody Hayes finish.

Let’s hope it’s not a hometown meltdown at this year’s Final Four . . . at Indianapolis.

* The half-year Wooden Award winner is . . . Kenyon Martin. The Cincinnati center is the most dominant player on the most dominant team. Others in the mix include Indiana guard A.J. Guyton, Notre Dame forward Troy Murphy and Connecticut guard Khalid El-Amin.

* Coach of the half-year is . . . Henry Bibby. A provincial pick, for sure, but did you know USC was picked to finish seventh in the Pac-10?

LOOSE ENDS

* Arizona State freshman Tanner Shell, after last Saturday’s close loss to UCLA: “I hate losing. Losing is worse than death pretty much. You have to live with it.”

* Get this: The Pac-10’s first-place coach is now offering words of encouragement to UCLA’s Steve Lavin.

“He’s going to silence a lot of people eventually,” Bibby recently said. “Billy Cunningham came to the 76ers and had never coached. I tell you, he didn’t know a guard from a forward. By the time he left, Billy Cunningham was considered one of the best coaches in the NBA.

“Steve Lavin will do that at UCLA if he stays there, if they give him the chance to.”

* More on Knight: Hard to knock Indiana’s win over Michigan, but in the last three years, the Hoosiers have been a .500 team after Feb. 1.

* Three important Pac-10 dates to mark down: Stanford at UCLA on Feb. 3, Stanford at USC on Feb. 5, and USC at UCLA on Feb. 9.

* This week’s RPI surprises: Kentucky at No. 2 and Kent at No. 11.

* George Washington freshman SirValiant Brown is leading the nation in scoring, yes, but he’s taking 35% of his team’s shots.