LOSING CAUSES

His San Jose State team was 10-16 when Stan Morrison greeted a couple of sportswriters before the 1996 Big West Conference tournament in Reno.

“Only three games from playing Kentucky,” Morrison told them in his jocular way.

“Major league tongue-in-cheek,” he said. “They laughed.”

Three games later, the most unlikely tournament champions in the Big West’s history tipped off in the first round of the NCAA tournament against Kentucky, a No. 1-seeded team, led by Tony Delk and Antoine Walker, that was on its way to the national championship.

The Spartans hung with the Wildcats for a half before losing, 110-72.

San Jose State, though, is only one of the lovable losers of NCAA lore.

At the 1999 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament, the brother of Mickey Clayton, Florida A&M;’s coach, celebrated amid a crowd of Rattler fans in the stands by waving a sign that said, “We Want Duke!”

The 12-18 Rattlers did indeed get the Blue Devils, losing to the nation’s No. 1 team, 99-58.

“You know he didn’t even come to the game?” Clayton said afterward. “He wished for Duke, then he watched on TV. He probably would have had a sign that said, ‘That was not me with the first sign.’ ”

The moral of the story? Yes, UCLA, USC, Cal State Fullerton and all the other sad-sack teams starting conference tournaments with losing records, you can dream.

Fourteen teams in NCAA tournament history have made the field with losing records after winning their conference tournaments, among them

16-18 Siena last season and 14-16 North Carolina Asheville this season. (Three other losing teams have made the NCAA field by earning bids as independent or regular-season champions.)

But be forewarned, Bruins and Trojans.

Among the Fairfields and Florida Internationals and Prairie Views and Lehighs, only one team from a major conference has qualified with a losing record after running the table in a conference tournament: Missouri in 1978, at 14-15.

And take note: Of the 16 teams that have played in the NCAA tournament with losing records, only two have won a game. Bradley, then an independent, won two in 1955, and Siena won the play-in game last season between the final two teams to make the 65-team tournament.

The prospects are bleak, bleaker than Steve Lavin will tell his team as the 9-18 Bruins prepare to play a top-ranked Arizona team that has beaten them twice, by a total of 71 points.

You gotta believe.

Just not if you know the history.

Even Missouri, the one major-conference team to manage the feat, deserves an asterisk.

It was only the second season of what was then the Big Eight tournament, introduced at the urging of Missouri Coach Norm Stewart and others.

“We had said, ‘What if you have an injury to a key player, then he returns and you have one of the best teams but don’t have the record to make the NCAA tournament?’ ” Stewart recalled.

And four games into the 1977-78 season, Missouri center Stan Ray broke his wrist.

“We had [future Lakers] Larry Drew and Clay Johnson, but without that center, we weren’t very effective,” Stewart said. “We got him back the last couple of games.

“Then we beat Iowa State in the first round when Johnson, who was on the Lakers’ championship team in ‘82, made a jump shot from the baseline with time running out. We beat Nebraska in a very close game, and then we beat Kansas State in the final.”

With that, Missouri advanced to the NCAA tournament -- only to lose to Utah in double-overtime in the first round.

“The clock went out and we had to play with some guy reading a wristwatch. It was one of those,” Stewart said.

In 1996, San Jose State had an extenuating circumstance too.

The Spartans’ best player, Olivier Saint-Jean -- who later played in the NBA as Tariq Abdul-Wahad -- was a transfer from Michigan who became eligible at the semester.

After starting the season 0-5 and going 1-7 in nonconference games, the Spartans slowly got it together.

“With Olivier in the lineup, it was just an incredible difference,” said Morrison, now the athletic director at UC Riverside after taking teams from three schools -- Pacific, USC and San Jose State -- to the NCAA tournament.

“We started winning and it was, ‘Here we go.’ ”

They began the Big West tournament as the lowest-seeded team.

“We opened with Pacific. They had [Michael] Olowokandi, and I said it was going to be an absolute brawl,” Morrison said. “We went after him. I had tough guys, not necessarily the best basketball players, and we won by 20 points.”

The next night, San Jose State beat UC Irvine in the semifinals, advancing to the title game against Utah State.

“It was after midnight when we got back, and the next game was at noon the next day,” Morrison said. “I told the coaches, ‘We’re not getting any sleep,’ and I told the guys to go to their rooms, I’d have room service sent in the morning and they were to get maximum rest, no shoot-around.

“I remember at one point this one kid stood up and said, ‘Fatigue is not a factor.’ ”

The game went to overtime.

“We had the ball, down two, and I’m going to run a play to try to get it to Olivier,” Morrison said. “They triple-teamed him, guarded him with everybody but the manager.

“Then the clock’s running down and my center, Rich Taylor, he shoots it from way out there, and the buzzer from the shot clock goes off while the ball’s in the air.”

The three-point basket -- Taylor’s first of the game and only the third of his career -- came with five seconds left, and the 217th-ranked team in the country, according to the RPI, was on its way to the NCAA tournament.

“They came down and heaved it at the end, but they missed and we won and we all piled up at half court,” Morrison said.

Those are some of the stories of inspiration.

Even before UCLA had clinched the final spot in the Pacific 10 Conference tournament beginning today at Staples Center, Lavin’s motivational mind was searching its files for help.

“If you have a chance to be in the conference tournament, you have a chance to be part of the NCAA tournament,” Lavin said.

More realistically ...

“Obviously, it’s extremely challenging,” he said. “You know, Iowa, I think, a couple of years back, may not have had a losing record but had a losing record in conference and they made it. And last year they made it to the final game.”

The Hawkeyes had losing records records in the Big Ten the last two seasons but finished with winning records overall. They won the conference tournament as the sixth-seeded team in 2001 and lost to Ohio State in the final last season as the ninth-seeded team.

The teams that face the most difficult road play in conferences such as the Big Ten, Big 12, Big East or Southeastern, in which some teams must play four games to win the title.

“Obviously, fatigue becomes a factor,” Lavin said. “Sometimes even if you play well enough to get to the final, you kind of run out of steam and hit the wall because of the tremendous emotional and physical fatigue.”

Here’s how far the Bruins have to go: If they were to somehow pull off the improbable and win three games and the Pac-10 tournament, they would start the NCAA tournament at 12-18. Then they would have to win the NCAA title just to make it to .500.

USC, at 11-16, would start the NCAA tournament at 14-16 if it won the Pac-10 tournament, and could get back to .500 -- at least briefly -- if it reached the Sweet 16.

The better prospects for a Cinderella story actually are in the Big West, in which there isn’t great separation between the top and bottom teams.

Fullerton, despite its 10-18 record, has beaten top-seeded UC Santa Barbara and second-seeded UC Irvine in overtime this season and played third-seeded Utah State to a one-point loss.

Could some Southland team be three games from playing Arizona or Kentucky in the first round?

Not so fast, Fullerton Coach Donny Daniels said.

“It’s four wins now. They’ve got the play-in game in Dayton,” he said. “Any team that’s under .500 and makes it is going to Dayton.”

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Winning Losers

Teams that qualified for the NCAA tournament with losing records. Only two have won in the tournament: Bradley in 1955 with two victories and Siena in 2002 with one.

*--* Year Team Record Conference 2003 N. C. Asheville 14-16 Big South 2002 Siena 16-18 Metro Atlantic 1999 Florida A&M; 12-18 Mid-Eastern Athletic 1998 Prairie View 13-16 Southwestern Ath 1997 Fairfield 11-18 Metro Atlantic 1997 Jackson State 14-15 Southwestern Ath 1996 Central Florida 11-18 Trans America 1996 San Jose State 13-16 Big West 1995 Fla. International 11-18 Trans America 1993 East Carolina 13-16 Colonial 1986 Montana St 14-16 Big Sky 1985 Lehigh 12-18 East Coast 1978 Missouri 14-15 Big Eight 1974 Texas 12-14 Southwest 1961 George Wash 9-16 Southern 1955 Oklahoma City 9-17 Independent 1955 Bradley 7-19 Independent

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Note: 1974 Texas team was a regular-season conference (Southwest) champion; 1955 Bradley and Oklahoma City teams filled NCAA tournament slots restricted to District 5 independents. (Those teams were the only independents in that district.) All other teams qualified for NCAA tournament by winning a conference tournament.