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It's Here64 Teams, Start Your Engines!
Arizona And Purdue Are Your Best Bets
It will be interesting to follow the next moves at Drake University now that coach Gary Garner has been broomed. Since dropping football a couple seasons ago, this small school in Des Moines has made no secret of its desire to have a major league basketball team. The president, Michael Ferrari, is a very ambitious man who has improved enrollment
Larry Donald
Cats' Pause Columnist
figures thanks to an innovative advertising campaign on MTV.
My suspicion is they'll try to lure an established coach with a big contract plus the promise of an on-campus arena down the road. For Garner, the end came because his teams collapsed down the stretch two years running. It appeared last year and this this that the Bulldogs were headed for NCAA play before a late-season swoon knocked them out of the box. . .
It appears now as though Arizona assistant Ricky Byrdsong has the inside track for the vacant job at Detroit. Notre Dame's John Shumate had been the early leader, but he withdrew his name from consideration.
I have no idea whether or not the University of Kentucky was guilty of any or all violations as alleged by the Lexington Herald-Leader two years ago. But I do know this: I've got a lot more faith in the credibility of the Pulitzer Prize committee and the Herald-Leader than I do in the NCAA or its chief enforcement officer, David Berst. How that man stays on the payroll is one of those enduring mysteries. . .
Although we haven't even settled the issue this year, it will be difficult for preseason lookers to go beyond Michigan, Syracuse or Kentucky as the No. 1 pick next falll say that based on Derrick Coleman's return to Syracuse and Glen Rice coming back to Michigan. Coleman needs, and I predict will have, one monster season before going pro. . .
Curry Kirpatrick, long time college basketball writer for Sports Illustrated, debuts for CBS during the NCAA tournament as a color analyst. Let's see, Frank Deford, Will McDonnough and now Kirkpatrick. Is this a trend? Is television at last confessing to the obvious? Should more of us in the business invest in a new suit and a haircut? As they say, stay tuned. . .
Mentioning the other medium, I don't know about you, but it seems to me that Bob Ley is certainly a model host for all the basketball games being beamed into our living rooms. He has that comfortable to be with personality. . .
I will remain strong and show no degree of sympathy to those outstanding teams from less powerful conferences not invited to the NCAA because, despite winning the regular season, they were beaten in the postseason tournament sponsored by their own league. It's what their schools get for being greedy. And yet, I ask, is it fair to those coaches or their players to be excluded just because their administrators want to milk a few more dollars out of the program? Those are the people who ought to be made to sit in a corner wearing the traditional dunce cap for three straight weeks while the NCAA tournament is being played. . .
Watching teams like Loyola Marymount and Bradley with their uptempo, free-for-all style convinces me this is a smart way for smaller programs to go. First the team's entertaining which sells more tickets. Second, it is attractive to more talented schoolboy athletes than a program which plays conservatively. And, third, neither program is likely to win more than a game or two in NCAA tournament play regardless of their approach to the game. . .
If Mark Macon declared for hardship today he would have to be taken in the first five choices and perhaps even the first three. . .Mentioning the hardship rule, I still think there will be a record number of undergraduate applicants this spring. . .
My suspicion is that Gary Williams won't last five years at Ohio State. This is a football school with an administration which operates in strange ways (ask Earle Bruce, Eldon Miller, et al.). So while I don't think Williams will be fired, I think he'll quietly move to another school, probably back East. . .
There's apparently a lot of inter-office arguing about Walt Hazzard's future at UCLA. A number of ranking administrators want to release him now, but the school's president is reportedly a close personal friend of Hazzard and wants the coaching contract to be honored. . .
Another guy who may be headed toward trouble is Cincinnati's Tony Yates. I'm told he'll survive this year, but if there's no major upswing in the Bearcat fortunes next year he'll be gone. . .
With four starters and a talented redshirt center returning next year Stanford will be among the preseason favorites in the Pac-10. Coach Mike Montgomery's done an outstanding job in Palo Alto, but history strongly suggests that he'd be wise to move on after next year. There'll be a sharp dropoff the following season. . .Arizona has a couple of redshirt big men to go with Sean Elliott and Anthony Cook which means the Wildcats will also be a solid team. But they'll desperately miss Steve Kerr's leadership in the backcourt. . .
When Ed Murphy took over at Mississippi and watched now star guard Rod Barnes play, he said: "Hey, we gotta get better players than this." Said Barnes, "I took that as
a challenge." Well, who wouldn't?. . .
I feel good about predicting that Arizona and Purdue will make it to the Final Four. Both clubs are sound and have quality depth. They've proven, over the course of a season, able to handle everything tossed in their direction. When it gets to sweaty palm time, both will respond.
After those two, however, it gets into a, "I like them, but they scare me" situation. Here we have Temple, North Carolina, Kentucky. Pitt, and Syracuse. Much more is left to chance with this group.
And the longshots? I've been in North Carolina State's camp for some time, but others would be: Illinois (on a roll lately despite poor shooting), Louisville (capable, but still inconsistent), LSU (enough talent and motivation to be fearsome), and Georgia Tech (the Noodles Neal phenomenon rolls on).
Now when Duke. Florida, BYU and Oklahoma show up in Kansas City remember this: If I really had the sort of special insight to know who was going to make the Final Four there are far more lucrative things I could be doing other than sports writing. . .
It seems evident the tournament needs a minor expansion to solve the squeeze of automatic tournament qualifiers. What needs to be done, in my view, is to create a preliminary round in which eight teams from the less powerful conferences play for four spots. This is the same thing when 52 teams were being invited and would certainly lessen some of the pressure on the tournament committee which is always forced to leave some worthy teams at home. . .
And, again, no team should be allowed to play on its home floor. All of America says it, but the tournament committee chooses not to listen. . .
The last time the NCAA was played in Kansas City (1964), UCLA defeated Duke in the championship to begin the dynasty years. Bucky Waters was an assistat coach at Duke in those days and recalls when the team's plane landed it skidded off the runway and into a grassy area. "The propellers kept spinning, throwing mud all over the plane which scared he said. ____
Lute OlsonBasketball Times' Selection For Coach Of The Vfear
The locker rooms were being painted so the Duke team dressed in the hotel and walked to the Municipal Auditorium where the games were played. Media crush? Jeff Mullins went to the arena on the morning of the championship and shot for a half hour without ever being disturbed. And for its efforts Duke University received a check in the amount of $50,000.
Times certainly have changed. . .
Never in the 32-year history of the United States Basketball Writer's Association has a man been honored as Coach of the Year in two consecutive seasons. Until now. John Chaney was tapped to receive the award again this season. . .
Basketball Times honored Bradley's Hersey Hawkins as its Player of the Year and tapped Arizona's Lute Olson as Coach of the Year. The All-Americans were Hawkins, Danny Manning, J.R. Reid, Danny Ferry and Mark Macon. It was the first time a freshman has been selected to the first team since Ralph Sampson was at Virginia. . .
Jim Haney, commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference for the past three years, is on the move again. This time he'll handle a similar job for the PCAA, a conference which hopes to make itself more recognizable with a name change. The finalists are "Big West" and "Wild West." Personally, I think they should go with Big West because most years Las Vegas wins this league by seven or eight games and, television notwithstanding, there's nothing very "wild" about that.