Conference 'Pacs' a Powerful Punch

By CHRIS DUFRESNE

March 19, 2001 12 AM PT

Quips, quotes, observations, musings and absurdities about the first weekend of the NCAA tournament while wondering how St. Joseph’s guard Marvin O’Connor can score 29 points in a half yet Wake Forest can manage only 10.

Was it a good weekend for the Pacific 10 Conference?

Is Casey Jacobsen happy to see O’Connor headed East on a jumbo jet?

The leader was the Pac. The conference went 8-1, with Stanford, Arizona, UCLA and USC making the Sweet 16.

The Pac-10’s lonesome loser? Go see Cal.

There are some good signs brewing for the late-night conference some East Coast journalists are seeing for the first time.

This is the third time the Pac-10 placed five schools in the NCAA tournament.

The two previous times, a Pac-10 team won the national title--UCLA in 1995 and Arizona in 1997.

There’s a decent chance form will hold, given the four conference schools this weekend won eight games by an average of 17.25 points.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery said of the Pac-10’s performance. “I know how good I thought USC was when we played them.”

Tom Hansen is the conference’s commissioner and head cheerleader. He watched USC’s upset victory over Boston College on Saturday in the press room at Cox Arena.

Hansen yelped so loud in the closing minutes of USC’s victory he disrupted the Cincinnati-Kent State postgame news conference that was being held behind an adjoining curtain.

Word is UCLA Coach Steve Lavin will issue a warning to Hansen, but not suspend the Commish for his press room behavior.

It’s what Hansen kept saying that got us though.

“That’s another unit!” he said. “That’s another unit.”

“Beam me up Scotty” would have made as much sense.

Unit?

Proud as he was of USC’s victory and first Sweet 16 ticket since 1954, when coach Forrest Twogood led the Trojans past Idaho State and Santa Clara before losing in the national semifinals to Bradley, Hansen also is a numbers cruncher.

USC’s victory earned the Pac-10 an additional $863,397 of tournament revenue.

Hansen explained each game played represented a “unit.” Four schools reaching the Sweet 16 will reap a huge windfall for the Pac-10. The exact amount is not yet known, because money is distributed on a rolling, six-year average to protect conferences from years they don’t place many teams in the tournament.

But this year’s romp could earn roughly $10 million for the Pac-10, divided among its members.

Hansen to Trojans: Fight on!

WHAT WE KNOW

Sixteen teams advanced to this week’s regional semifinal games in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Anaheim.

The East is definitely the beast of regions. Consider that UCLA, Duke, USC and Kentucky have combined to win 20 national championships. Consider how impressive that looks when you toss out USC, which has not won a title.

If Trojan basketball didn’t already have an inferiority complex, wait until the alums from the other three schools descend on Philadelphia and start talking about tournament triumphs.

And USC fans trying to chime in about how the Trojans should have made the tournament in 1971, when they went 24-2, the only two losses coming against UCLA.

Where were at-large bids when we needed them!

MID-MAJORS GOT THE SHAFT

Here’s our beef about bracketing: It isn’t so much that the six major conferences hogged 29 of the 34 at-large bids, it’s that mid-major conference schools did not get the seedings they deserved because of inherent injustices in the selection process.

Gonzaga is in the Sweet 16 for the third consecutive season, yet the Bulldogs entered the tournament as a No. 12 in the South. Few who watched Gonzaga’s first-round victory over No. 5 Virginia really considered it an upset.

St. Joseph’s made the tournament as an at-large team after a terrific season in which it won the Atlantic 10 Conference regular-season title, yet the Hawks were handed a No. 9 seeding in the West, meaning a second-round matchup against No. 1 Stanford.

How is it that A-10 tournament champion Temple, which crushed Southeastern Conference power Florida on Sunday, was a No. 11 in the South, and Georgia, one of the last teams in the field, was a No. 8 in the East?

Why does Wake Forest, which finished 8-8 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, get a No. 7 seed in the Midwest, but Utah State, an upset winner of Ohio State, gets a No. 12 as champion of the Big West.

How is Indiana a No. 4, but Indiana State a No. 13?

Why? Because seedings are based in large measure on power ratings and conference strength.

Wake Forest was rewarded for playing in a tough conference. So was Indiana. And Wisconsin.

Yet, all three schools were sent home by lesser-regarded conference champions: Wake Forest by Butler, Wisconsin by Georgia State, Indiana by Kent State.

The problem: the Gonzagas and Butlers have limited control over their power ratings. The schools play in weaker-rated conferences yet are so well respected nationally that schools from “major” conferences won’t travel to play them in nonconference.

AWARDS, KUDOS, SETTING THE SCENE

Best weekend performance: O’Connor, St Joseph’s. His 37-performance against Stanford was stunningly brilliant, drawing a standing ovation of more than a minute when he fouled out in the waning seconds of his team’s 90-83 loss to Stanford.

“College basketball was served by that game,” St. Joe’s Coach Phil Martelli said. “That was a shining example of what the tournament is supposed to be about.”

Best upset: Hampton over Iowa State. It was only the fourth time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams that a No. 15 has defeated a No. 2. The lasting snapshot will be Hampton forward David Johnson lifting Coach Steve Merfeld from behind. Looked like a guy loading a bale of hay into a pickup truck.

Most courageous performance/hope he has a good dental plan: Indiana State sophomore Kelyn Block leading the Sycamores to an upset over Oklahoma after having three teeth knocked out in regulation.

Best sub-regional: West (Boise). Four first-round games decided by a total of seven points.

Worst sub-regional: South (New Orleans). The closest game was Penn State’s eight-point victory over North Carolina.

Most anticipated upcoming game: Stanford vs. Cincinnati. Let the one-liners begin: Good thing this isn’t a face-off in the Jeopardy Collegiate Tournament. OK, enough. It’s true Stanford has a 100% graduation rate under Montgomery and that a national survey once revealed Cincinnati had 0% during one stretch under Coach Bob Huggins, but that was then. Cincinnati boasts five players on its roster who made the “Bearcat Scholars” roll for the fall quarter, meaning all maintained grade-point averages of 3.0 or better. The five: Immanuel McElroy, Kenny Satterfield, Leonard Stokes, Rod Flowers and Field Williams.

Best use of a private jet/father of the year: Montgomery. Friday, between first- and second-round games, the Stanford coach flew to Sacramento to watch his son, John, play for Mountain View St. Francis High against Compton Dominguez in the state Division II basketball championship.

Montgomery tried to keep the trip a secret but, as usual, the news hounds caught wind of it.

A “very generous friend of the program” provided Montgomery use of a private jet. Montgomery was back in San Diego by midnight.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “my son finished second.”

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SUNDAY’S RESULTS

SOUTH REGIONAL

At Memphis, Tenn.

* Gonzaga 85, Indiana State 68

* Michigan State 81, Fresno State 65

At New Orleans

* Temple 75, Florida 54

* Penn State 82, North Carolina 74