Large and In Charge

West Virginia from the Big East Conference traveled across the country and beat UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, 60-56, after leading by as many as 20 on Saturday.

That same day, Big East member Georgetown handed top-ranked Duke its first loss and, as a result, Connecticut -- another Big East team -- became the No. 1-ranked team in the nation.

“If it seems like we’re everywhere, I think it’s because we’ve earned it,” Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese said.

At collegerpi.com, where Jerry Palm has what he thinks is the closest approximation to the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) computer platform used by the NCAA to help choose and seed teams for its postseason basketball tournament, six Big East teams are ranked in the top 20; eight are in the top 50; 11 in the top 70. And that doesn’t count Louisville, a Final Four participant last season, which is 79th, or St. John’s, which at 10-6 is only 109th even after recent wins over Louisville and Pittsburgh.

There’s still nearly six weeks before the NCAA hands out its bids to the 65-team tournament. Thirty-one of them are guaranteed to winners of conferences, either by winning a conference tournament or the regular-season title.

But discussions have taken place on television, especially the ones punctuated by Dick Vitale who has hollered a couple of times that the Big East might get 10 teams invited.

When you consider that the Big Ten has seven teams in the RPI’s top 30, it’s possible that half the at-large bids could go to two conferences. No conference has ever gotten more than seven bids, but it seems likely to happen this year because there has never been a conference like the 16-team Big East.

The Big East already had five teams win NCAA titles as members of the conference -- Connecticut (twice), Syracuse, Villanova and Georgetown. And when the league expanded this year it took in Louisville, Cincinnati and Marquette, which also had won NCAA titles.

“I’ve told our coaches we shouldn’t talk about it much,” Tranghese said, “because we could be viewed as arrogant.”

Said Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim: “This league is by far the best I’ve ever seen it. Can you make a case for 10 of us to go? Sure, why not? Maybe it will be 12. I think we’ve got a very good team and I don’t think we can beat any of the top three [Connecticut, West Virginia, Villanova]. But that doesn’t mean we’re not a tournament team and maybe a pretty good one.”

Tranghese said he’s not worried about backlash against the mega conference with its East Coast media exposure and steamrollering effect that all the media talk has on national consciousness.

“I can’t worry that we’ll be too successful,” he said. “Whatever is out there -- angst, anger, resentment -- I can’t control that.”

One rule tweak the NCAA made last year was in anticipation of the newly gigantic Big East. Under old rules, teams from the same conference couldn’t be drawn to meet until the regional finals. This year, teams from the same conference can meet as early as the second round.

For Pacific 10 purposes, its third- or fourth-place team might be fighting for an NCAA bid against a seventh- or eighth-place Big East team. And the computer may not treat them well. Right now the Pac-10 has no teams in the RPI top 10; two in the top 20 (No. 16 Arizona and No. 17 UCLA) and only three in the top 90 (Washington is No. 34). Despite Pac-10 coaches continuing to say they expect four or five bids, three seems the best they can hope for.

Transparency

A week from today the NCAA will begin releasing its weekly official RPI rankings. The RPI was developed in 1981 to help the NCAA compare one basketball team to another. Because the RPI is used as a tournament selection criteria, dozens of computer experts have invented their own indexes that attempt to match what they think is the NCAA criteria.

“One of the committees’ primary objectives over the last few years has been to increase the transparency and understanding regarding the process of selecting teams for the tournament,” said Craig Littlepage, chairman of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee and athletic director at Virginia.

“While the official RPI is a part of the evaluation process, it is the subjective opinions formed by committee members after countless hours of observation and discussion which are central in the selection, seeding and bracketing process. Still, we think that announcing the results of the RPI ranking on a weekly basis has its benefits.”

College RPI’s Palm said he was looking forward to seeing the official results for the first time. “Now I can independently verify what I’m doing matches what they’re doing,” he said.

Technical-ity

Houston Coach Tom Penders, who has a history of heart trouble and who has a pacemaker, collapsed during Saturday’s game against Alabama Birmingham. But game officials didn’t see Penders put his head down, then kneel, before going to the ground. All they saw was Penders spread on the floor, so they called a technical foul thinking he was being melodramatic about one of their calls.

Instead, he was out cold.

Even as Penders was being carried out on a stretcher, Alabama Birmingham was shooting free throws because of the technicals. The officials were asked if they wanted to change their mind about the technical because the stretcher and paramedics seemed strong proof that Penders was not just acting out about a missed call. But the technical stood.

And so did Penders in a few minutes. He came back and coached in the second half of a game Houston lost by three. Penders became aware of the technical when one of his assistants warned that he should calm down after another foul because if he got another technical the result was automatic ejection.

“I asked what he was talking about,” Penders said Wednesday. “He told me about the technical. I had no idea.”

Penders said the official who assessed the technical called him Monday. “He told me he handled it incorrectly and that he should have gone over and asked me if I was OK and if I gave him some lip, then he’d give me the ‘T.’ But he didn’t say he should have rescinded the technical. I don’t know what he was thinking.”

Chris Woolard, assistant commissioner of Conference USA, released a statement: “First of all, we are very relieved that this was not a serious health issue and we extend our thoughts to Tom Penders. Commissioner [Britton] Banowsky and I have reviewed the tape of the play in question and it appears the crew exercised poor judgment in sustaining the technical foul. We have been in consultation with our coordinator of officials and appropriate action will be taken.”

Penders still has one question: “If I died, would I have gotten a two-game suspension for really overdoing it?”

Degrees of Discipline

Last week, Arizona Coach Lute Olson kicked senior guard Chris Rodgers off the team. Though Rodgers was averaging 10.8 points a game, word had been filtering out of Tucson that Rodgers was too focused on his own game and getting shots. When UCLA beat the Wildcats two weeks ago, Rodgers took at least four jump shots from 20 feet or more early in Wildcat possessions. He missed them all.

But two days after Olson’s announcement about Rodgers, the Wildcats lost another guard. Jawann McClellan, who had missed the first two months of the season because of an academic suspension, injured ligaments in his hand and needed season-ending surgery. A day after that blow, Olson said he might consider allowing Rodgers back if Rodgers fulfilled certain stipulations including “not harming team chemistry.”

Olson also said Rodgers’ chance at rehabilitation had nothing to do with McClellan’s injury. But it’s hard not to think a bad teammate -- Rodgers -- has just benefited from the injury of a good teammate.