What You See Is Not What You Get

By Diane Pucin

Feb. 28, 2006 12 AM PT

It’s nearly a miracle that Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison is considered a co-favorite with Duke guard J.J. Redick for national player of the year.

After all, we see just about every point Redick scores -- and are treated to close-ups of him shooting, passing, rebounding, sweating, pumping his fists, swearing and even talking to the announcers on ESPN, which seems to be his own personal television territory.

And as bad as that is, it’s not as bad this season as it was last, when Arizona Coach Lute Olson finally exploded over ESPN’s worship of Redick.

After hearing a month’s worth of breathless descriptions of Redick as the nation’s best three-point shooter, Olson did the unthinkable. He brought out a stat sheet and showed how his guard Salim Stoudamire by every measure was shooting threes better than Redick.

But Redick was only a junior and he came back for his senior season. He still has the national platform of ESPN where every Duke game is televised live or dissected while another game is being televised.

All Morrison has done is outplay him.

In November and December, because Gonzaga Coach Mark Few scheduled any national power that would take his call, Morrison scored with a mesmerizing repertoire of jump shots, hook shots, fadeaways, fallaways, driving layups, rainbow jumpers, bank shots, reverse dunks and slam dunks.

He put up 43 points to help his team beat Michigan State in triple overtime and dropped another 43 on Washington when the Huskies won at the end. He scored 34 against Memphis, 25 against Maryland, 27 against Virginia -- and this is pointed out to counter those who argue that if only Morrison played in those big, tough conferences his jig would be up, his aura would be gone.

But since West Coast Conference play began for Gonzaga, television has mostly disappeared. Morrison popped up for the rest of the nation to see him take Stanford’s best shot and then score 34, followed a week later on national television by a 44-point game against Loyola Marymount, the second-place team in the WCC.

By missing out on the regular TV moments, Morrison hasn’t received credit for his improved defensive play and the way he is scoring despite always facing double and triple teams.

Redick has more help. Teams can’t guard only Redick. Although Gonzaga is not without other talent (J.P. Batista is an underrated inside player), Morrison has been Gonzaga’s leading scorer in every game but three.

And Redick seems a bit tired now. He has been eight for 31 from the field in Duke’s last two games. He scored a season-low 11 against Temple on Saturday.

Without Redick, Duke is still a top-25 team. Without Morrison, Gonzaga is just a little better than Loyola Marymount instead of a legitimate contender to earn a No. 1 seeding in the NCAA draw next month.

For that Morrison should get the honor.

Making His Case

The e-mail box fills up quickly these days with missives, pleas and outright begging from various college schools and conferences.

“Please notice our (school or conference) has an RPI of (insert any number lower than No. 65). We have a (guard, forward, center) who (never misses a free throw or leads the nation or the league or the city or the block in rebounding or shooting threes or handing out water cups to the starters). Please write all these things so the NCAA selection committee won’t forget about our existence. Thank you for your consideration.”

Mike May, San Diego State sports information director, sent out one of those e-mails -- and for good reason. The Aztecs (19-8, 12-3) have clinched a share of the Mountain West Conference title and would own it outright with a victory over Wyoming on Wednesday at Cox Arena. San Diego State hasn’t won or shared any conference title since 1978, so this is already a pretty big deal.

The Aztecs are guided by Steve Fisher, the former coach of Michigan’s Fab Five who has been mostly anonymous in his seven years in San Diego. He took the Aztecs to the NCAAs in 2002 and he makes a strong case for why the Aztecs should go again, win or lose the conference tournament.

“First,” Fisher said, “if we win on Wednesday and don’t have to share the title, if we’re regular-season champions of the Mountain West, where you play 16 games in an extremely difficult league where it’s tough to win on the road and we have six conference road victories, any team that has won six times on the road, that’s significant.”

And that’s a run-on sentence, but it’s what you get when you ask a coach to defend his team on the next-to-last day of February.

A more carefully reasoned argument from Fisher is that he has had a full roster to work with for only the last month or so.

Four losses came before Mohamed Abukar, a San Diego native and Florida transfer, was eligible. In 17 games, Abukar is the third-leading scorer and rebounder for the Aztecs. No. 2 scorer Marcus Slaughter sat out three games because of a knee injury. Senior forward Trimaine Davis, who was expected to start this season, sat out four games after needing knee surgery and has started only six times.

“Look at what we’ve done with all our players,” Fisher said. “We’ve gone 14-2 with them and that’s significant.”

They’re Back

Don’t suggest to Arizona’s Olson that the Wildcats are or have ever been on the NCAA tournament bubble this season. Not now, when they’re 17-10 overall and 10-6 in the Pacific 10 Conference, not last month when they were 10-6 and 3-3, and not even when they were 13-9 and on a three-game losing streak to North Carolina, USC and UCLA.

“If the NCAA pays attention to the teams that play tough schedules as opposed to the people that play really weak nonconferences, then I don’t see any way that they can say we are a bubble team,” Olson said.

The truth is, Arizona has not been in danger of having its nation-leading streak of 21 consecutive NCAA appearances broken. The Wildcats’ RPI has stayed in the top 30. Their nonconference schedule is ranked in the top 15 in the country. They should finish at least fourth in the Pac-10.

Olson had to deal with an ugly personnel situation when he suspended guard Chris Rodgers Jan. 18 amid reports that Rodgers had an altercation with Olson during practice. After saying it was unlikely Rodgers would be allowed back, Olson changed his mind. The senior missed eight games, including the three-game losing streak, and returned to practice Feb. 13 in time to join Arizona for its trip to Northern California two weeks ago

Rodgers had done “everything asked of him,” Olson said tersely when the guard returned. Since, Rodgers has offered an enthusiastic defensive presence while cutting back on the ill-timed long-range jump shots that previously stalled Arizona’s offense.

And when Arizona arrives at Staples Center next week for the Pac-10 tournament, the Wildcats might be the smart pick to win it.

Watch Out for These Guys

If you’re looking for a dark horse during the fun-filled first week of the NCAA tournament -- that very special No. 14-seeded team able to leap tall No. 3-seeded teams in a single 40-minute bound -- you might not go wrong with these. (Disclaimer: They’re all probably one conference tournament loss away from not making the NCAAs at all.):

* South Alabama. The coach is former Kentucky star John Pelphrey, who played for Rick Pitino and apprenticed under Eddie Sutton and Billy Donovan. This is Pelphrey’s fourth season. There have been one .500 and two losing seasons, but now the Jaguars are 21-6 overall and 12-3 in the Sun Belt Conference. Pelphrey coaches the way he played. The Jaguars like to shoot threes -- and they make them. They’ve made at least 10 in 10 games this season. A team confident in long-distance shooting can cause early NCAA trouble.

* Murray State. The Racers are 17-3 in the Ohio Valley Conference and have a tradition of NCAA upsets and near-upsets. In 1988 they beat Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State team, then lost by three to the Kansas team that won the national championship. In 1990, with Popeye Jones as the star, the 16th-seeded Racers took Michigan State to overtime. A No. 16-seeded team still has not won an NCAA game. And in 1997 Murray lost to Duke, 71-68. The coach is Mick Cronin, a former assistant to Bob Huggins and Pitino. But the Racers open their conference tournament tonight. Top-seeded or not, if they lose to Tennessee Martin there won’t be an NCAA game.

* George Mason/North Carolina Wilmington. It’s the Colonial Athletic Assn. daily double. The conference has five teams in the top 75 of the RPI, the computer ranking the NCAA selection committee uses to help pick at-large teams. These two are regular-season co-champs. George Mason has won 15 of its last 17 games and has an RPI of 23. Wilmington has an RPI of 36 and has won 10 of its last 11.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

ADAM MORRISON

Averages Per Game

* Minutes...36.3

* Points...28.8

* Rebounds...5.6

* FG Pct....50.9

* FT Pct....78.2

* 3-pt. Pct....43.8

Top 4 Scoring Games

*--* Date Opponent Pts. 2-18 at Loyola 44 11-22 vs. Michigan St. 43 12-4 at Washington 43 1-28 Portland 42

*--*