This Weekend Is Strictly on Need-to-Know Basis

U.S. basketball fans, meet Frederick Jones. Freddie, show the folks what you can do. Show them how you are a better shooter, better scorer, better passer, better player than Steve Logan, All-American guard at Cincinnati who is seen on television all the time.

U.S. basketball fans, meet Sam Clancy. Sam, show the folks what you can do. Show them how you can go through big chunks of games touching every rebound, taking most. Show the folks that you can then turn around and softly drop a 10-foot jump shot, a feathery thing. Beauty and the beast, all in one play.

Some Pacific 10 coaches--not to name names or anything, Lute and Mike--have been vocal about how terrible it is the Pac-10 has decided to have a conference tournament again.

They are so very wrong.

There is no conference in the country that needs a conference tournament more than the Pac-10.

First of all, fans deserve this. It is a chance to gather all those colors--green and gold and blues of every shade, reds of every hue--in one kaleidoscopic mass. The boasting, the bravura bets, the mingling in the Staples Center lobby of Bruin and Cal boosters, Cardinal and Trojan rooters, is part of a celebration that everybody else has had for years.

But more than that, no one pays much attention to the Pac-10. Not really, not seriously.

All people--and by people we mean Dick Vitale and the folks at ESPN who televise the Big East, the Big 12, the Big Ten, the SEC and the ACC--know about the Pac-10 is that Steve Lavin can’t coach, that Arizona is good again and that the kids at Stanford are smart.

Stereotypes.

It is not fair, but it is true. Pac-10 teams play games when it is late at night on the East Coast and they aren’t on ESPN. When the networks have split-audience weekend games involving the Pac-10, the Pac-10 ends up being seen in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. And we already know how good the Pac-10 is.

This conference needs to play in front of sellout crowds at Staples Center. It needs to get buzz before Selection Sunday. It needs some games with extraordinary highlights that will make all the sports shows the next three days.

It needs to be seen and heard, loud and clear.

As wonderful as the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament is, ACC teams don’t need a tournament. When members of the NCAA selection committee lock themselves up this weekend, there will not be an overlooked or under-seeded ACC team.

Cal needs the Pac-10 tournament. Ben Braun’s team has matured slowly and well this year. The 25th-ranked Bears go 12 deep and beat UCLA, USC, Stanford and Oregon. Some “experts” have suggested Cal is a bubble team, which is ridiculous and wouldn’t happen to a comparable team in the ACC or Big Ten.

UCLA needs the Pac-10 tournament. The Bruins are still waiting for that Big Roll, the one that comes at the end of the season and traditionally saves Lavin’s job. Nothing beats tradition, or Lavin’s Bruins at the end of the season. Except this season the roll hasn’t begun yet. Staples Center would be the Big Stage to start the Big Roll.

USC needs the Pac-10 tournament. Last time anybody noticed the Trojans was when they went to the Elite Eight last year. Say they beat Stanford today for the third time this season; say they get into Saturday’s championship game. Selectors won’t think about all the last-second losses. They’ll think about the Pac-10 tournament wins.

“We’re still trying to build tradition,” USC Coach Henry Bibby says. “Like Oregon, we’re trying to get on the map. Maybe knocking off some of the bigger people will get us more respect.”

And most of all, Oregon needs the Pac-10 tournament.

Ernie Kent, Oregon’s coach, is not boastful enough, not nearly demanding enough.

Having coached the team that won the Pac-10 regular-season championship by two games, having come to Los Angeles last weekend and swept USC and UCLA, having built a smart, solid, well-conceived team, Kent was not willing to campaign even a little bit for a No. 1 seed in the NCAAs.

“It depends on what would happen with Oklahoma and Cincinnati,” Kent says, “but for us, a two or a three seed would be just as exciting for our team, the university and our fans.”

Cincinnati has beaten no team of great national strength, and Conference USA is not nearly as strong as the Pac-10. Kent should be pounding the tables and demanding a No. 1 seeding. Because he won’t, the Ducks can use the Pac-10 event as their table to pound.

“I’ve sat at home the last couple of years,” Kent says, “watching the Big Ten, ACC, Big East tournaments, caught up in all the excitement and saying ‘We’ve got to have that.’”

Exactly.

News flash: Kent, the coach of the league champions, was actually mentioned in a Chicago newspaper as a leading candidate for the DePaul job. DePaul has been a basketball not-much-of-anything for a long time. Yet, there were people in Chicago on Wednesday morning who saw Kent’s name and said, “Who’s he?”

Who’s he? One of the best coaches in the country of one of the best teams with one of the best players. Who knew? Not enough people. Yet.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.