Vindication Sweet for Campanelli

Lou Campanelli is feeling vindicated.

Campanelli, who oversees Pacific 10 Conference officials, objected to a season-ending survey by The Times revealing that a majority of league coaches thought the conference’s officiating did a poor job of preparing their teams for the NCAA tournament.

Four Pac-10 teams--Stanford, Arizona, UCLA and USC--have advanced to the Sweet 16.

“I think everybody at the conference office is pleased,” Campanelli said Monday. “We have outstanding players, coaches, teams and officials. We don’t have to take a back seat to anybody.”

Seven officials who primarily worked Pac-10 games are among those the NCAA selected to work the tournament. Six others worked Pac-10 games occasionally. Three others will officiate Pepperdine’s game at New Mexico tonight in the National Invitation Tournament.

“I think there might be an overreaction by the fans about our officials, maybe from some incidents in the past,” said Campanelli, a former California coach who took over as coordinator of officials this season. “There’s some paranoia. Our coaches and teams are seeing that our officials called our games closer to the way they’re being called in the tournament than we’ve seen from anybody.”