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There are 18 of them, Division I colleges proudly represented in both the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments.

Big schools, small schools. North, East, South and West schools. Football schools, non-football schools. State schools, private schools.

There are schools where national football titles are expected (Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia) and schools that celebrate any football win at all (Indiana, Kent State).

There are schools with only men’s basketball titles (Cincinnati, Duke, Indiana, Wisconsin) and those that have never sniffed a men’s Final Four (Kent State, Creighton, Pepperdine, UC Santa Barbara), others that have won only women’s titles (Texas Tech, Texas, Notre Dame) and some that have won both (Connecticut, Stanford).

There are three Catholic schools (Notre Dame, Boston College and Creighton). There are schools most known for baseball teams (Mississippi State).

Schools with big, new arenas (Wisconsin, Texas Tech) and schools with high school gyms (Pepperdine, UC Santa Barbara).

There are schools where the men’s and women’s coaches are good buddies.

“When Paul Westphal took our men’s job,” Pepperdine women’s Coach Mark Trakh said, “the first thing he did was take the women’s staff out to lunch. We’ve been friends since.”

Yet at Connecticut, the animosity between men’s Coach Jim Calhoun and women’s Coach Geno Auriemma is legendary. The two barely speak. Calhoun’s dismay at the publicity and popularity of the women’s team during the 1995 season was widely reported as was Calhoun’s feeling that his efforts in building a strong men’s program were not appreciated enough. Auriemma, no wallflower, was not silent in his bemusement at Calhoun’s gripes.

Yet in the last five years, each has won a national title which goes to show that everybody doesn’t have to get along.

Twelve years ago, the administration at Oklahoma was ready to drop women’s basketball. Now the Sooner women have a No. 1 seeding and the men a No. 2. Duke has produced two No. 1-seeded teams, men and women. Three years ago, Duke’s president was chartering a plane to fly between the men’s and women’s Final Fours because his school was represented in both places.

“What a great thing,” Duke men’s Coach Mike Krzyzewski said.

“Isn’t it neat?” Duke women’s Coach Gail Goestenkors agreed.

Trakh says it warms the heart of all women’s coaches to hear what happened at Notre Dame, the 2001 NCAA women’s champions.

“Their athletic director said that things would be exactly the same at women’s games and men’s games,” Trakh says. “The band would play, there would be cheerleaders, all the concession stands would be open, and it wouldn’t matter how many people are in the stands. What happens? The boyfriends of the cheerleaders come to the games. The families of the band members. And they bring friends and pretty soon the arena fills up.”

Sometimes it’s not so easy.

The women at Syracuse, tired of seeing the men win 20 or more games year after year and always making the NCAA tournament, marched into the athletic director’s office and said, basically, “We’re not taking this anymore.”

That was two years ago. The Orangewomen are in the NCAA tournament this year for only their third time in history. Unfortunately, the men didn’t make it.

Trakh has been a successful coach at both a high school--Brea Olinda--and a college where, he says, there have been commitments by school administrators to having winning programs for both sexes.

“I don’t understand why you have some schools with a rich men’s basketball tradition, then why you wouldn’t have a strong women’s program,” Trakh says.

Trakh noted, for example, that Kentucky, which has a rich men’s basketball tradition, a great high school basketball tradition in a state filled with smart fans and lots of players, playing in the Southeastern Conference, which has dominated women’s college basketball, has not come close to offering a consistently strong women’s team.

“What I don’t understand about that,” Trakh says, “is that when you have a quality men’s team and a quality women’s team, it makes the university look good. It shows a commitment on a lot of levels that should be a positive for a university at any level.”

Auriemma at Connecticut and Pat Summitt at Tennessee have been credited with having the strong wills, as well as the talent, to build dominating programs at universities more traditionally accustomed to strong men’s sports (men’s basketball at Connecticut and football at Tennessee).

Trakh thinks that when Summitt and Auriemma eventually leave their jobs, those schools will have built such strong traditions, they will not be so politically unwise as to let them slip.

But at places like Oklahoma, Duke and Notre Dame, where excellence in women’s basketball is new, clear decisions have been made to accept no less than the kind of success the men have earned.

That’s the beauty of basketball, isn’t it? If the commitment is in place, the goal can be achieved almost anywhere. The players are out there. So are the fans. Connecticut and Tennessee found that out. So have Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Duke.

The basketball, the players, the coaches, the fans, the commitment--that’s what they all have in common.

Different schools with different missions and different teams in different places, but everybody wanting their men, and their women, to be winners.

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

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PEPPERDINE IN NCAA

MEN IN MIDWEST

No. 10 Pepperdine (22-8) vs. No. 7 Wake Forest (20-12)

Thursday, 11:30 a.m. PST

Arco Arena, Sacramento

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WOMEN IN WEST

No. 8 Pepperdine (23-7) vs. No. 9 Villanova (19-10)

Saturday, 4 p.m. PST

Lloyd Noble Center, Norman, Okla.

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Win-Win Situation

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