Majerus Doesn’t Need This Kind of Help

Rick Majerus for UCLA?

Cliff Ellis for coach of the year?

Both concepts were seriously considered Friday during the first round of the NCAA tournament, when Majerus saw his candidacy careen all over the place, soaring and plummeting, all within a matter of minutes.

Up: Majerus had no business winning his Midwest Regional opener against Oregon, not with his Utah squad beginning the game without its best player, then shooting a season-low 29.5% from the field, then losing three more regulars to fouls in the second half.

Had these same things happened to UCLA in recent times, the coach would have straightened his necktie, double-checked the locker-room mirror and started polishing his latest post-defeat take on how rough it is to operate under the all-consuming shadow of John Wooden.

Majerus, however, is not a necktie guy. He’s a stretched sweater man, through and through, and when the going got tough, he rolled up his sleeves and ad-libbed some plays and kept running players on and off the court until enough of them had run the Pacific 10 tournament champions out of the regional, 60-58.

Down: Watching this transpire, Dick Vitale decided it was high time he took control of the Majerus for UCLA bandwagon steering wheel.

Uh oh.

Look out below!

“I don’t know why we don’t hear his name for the UCLA job!” Vitale shouted from behind an ESPN studio desk, proving conclusively that Vitale: a) doesn’t read newspapers and b) doesn’t watch ESPN. One day earlier, Vitale’s network conducted an interview with Majerus, during which the Utah coach was asked about the UCLA job.

Vitale shouted some more:

“This guy would be GREAT down in L.A.!

“Are YOU kidding ME?!?

“He’d be super there in Los Angeles!

“Rick MA-JER-US!”

With friends like Vitale, Majerus needs more starters sidelined with mononucleosis. With every screeching syllable, you could see the dark clouds circling over Majerus’ head, along with a 30-point loss to Kentucky in the second round. Vitale is the same sage who claimed Auburn didn’t belong in the NCAA tournament, deriding the Tigers for their soft nonconference schedule.

Final score out the East Regional: Auburn 65, St. Joseph’s 63, in overtime.

Cliff Ellis noticed, Ellis being the man who coaches the Auburn Tigers.

Vitale “is a friend of mine, but he needs to study the facts. Period,” Ellis told reporters in Tampa, Fla. “Tell him I said that.

“The first time I met him was down in Sarasota. His hair was blowing in the breeze.

“He was too proud to chase it.”

Ellis 2, Vitale 0.

Campaigns for national coach of the year have been built on less.

Utah’s short-handed victory qualifies as the biggest surprise of the first round, thanks to the flight of two last-ditch three-point shots Friday.

Tim Smith’s baseline try was long, over the basket, and by that much, No. 15-seeded East Tennessee State fell short against No. 2 Wake Forest in the East, 76-73.

Drew Nicholas’ running, scrambling attempt was true, barely beating the buzzer and No. 11 North Carolina Wilmington, 75-73, and enabling No. 6 Maryland to defend its 2002 NCAA championship one more game.

Bottom line: Higher seeded teams ruled the first round. Although the action was often wild, the results were uncommonly by the book. Of the 16 teams seeded No. 1 through 4 in the four regionals, only one -- Dayton, seeded fourth in the Midwest -- did not reach the second round.

Technically, Utah over Oregon was a No. 9 over a No. 8, which happens more often than not. But the Utes were seeded ninth at full strength. Where would they be without Britton Johnsen, sidelined for the tournament with mononucleosis, and the useful trio of Marc Jackson, Tim Frost and Cameron Koford, all of them fouling out before the end of the Oregon game?

Seeded 17th, most likely.

Oregon countered with momentum, a 3-0 run through the Pac-10 tournament and Luke Ridnour, all considered big positives as of tipoff. But Oregon spent much of the game locked into Utah’s half-court tempo and Ridnour never warmed up, first abandoned by his shot (he was three for 13), then his wits.

With the score tied, 58-58, in the final 20 seconds and the shot clock ticking to the end, Ridnour fouled Utah’s Nick Jacobson on a fling-and-a-prayer three-point try. Jacobson’s shot clanked off the rim, as was the case with most of Utah’s field-goal attempts in the second half.

But Ridnour’s foul gave Jacobson, an 84% free-throw shooter, three chances to break the tie with 14.4 seconds left.

Jacobson missed one, made two -- and that ended up being the winning margin after Ridnour took the ball on Oregon’s last possession, drove the lane and passed back to James Davis, who fired two long jump shots and connected on neither.

Considering what both squads had on the floor at the end -- Utah finished the game with three freshmen -- the better team did not win. But the smarter team did, and consequently, the Utes move on to Sunday’s second round against old friend Kentucky, trying to see if their IQs fare any better than IUPUI did.

IUPUI stands for Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, which sounds like a pretty good first-round match in the Midwest Regional. In actuality, IUPUI is one school, not two, and too bad for IUPUI, which could have used the extra help.

In its first NCAA appearance since the school opened in 1969, IUPUI lost to Kentucky, 95-64. It was the 24th consecutive victory for the Wildcats, who shot 62%.

“They are the best team in the country,” IUPUI Coach Ron Hunter told reporters. “The Clippers couldn’t beat them. The Cavaliers couldn’t beat them.”

Can Utah?

Cursed by the praise of Vitale, Majerus will try his luck anyway.