PAGE 2   THE CATS' PAUSE, JANUARY 29, 1977
THE CATS'PAUSE
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Brown Pushing For Post Season
Tourney In SEC
By Oscar L. Combs
If LSU Coach Dale brown has his way, the Southeastern Conference would offer fans an eight-team post season tournament to select its second representative to the NCAA tournament.
Brown took the opportunity to push for the plan after his Bengal Tigers suffered an 87-72 loss to the Kentucky Wildcats at Rupp Arena for the Tigers' fourth league loss against two wins.
The firey LSU boss says it's high time for the basketball coaches in the SEC to take a peek at the football bosses in hoop scheduling.
Brown has two items high on his list of priorities.
First, Brown wants to eliminate the complete, round-robin scheduling in basketball.He insists conference teams are just killing each other off while many independent teams can choose their opponents and thus end up with better records.
Secondly, he would like to see the SEC adopt the policy of sending the conference champion to the Mideast Regional, as in the past, but to sponsor an eight-team tournament to select the other representative. With the proposal, the SEC club with the worst conference record would not be premitted to play in the tourney.
"I think we're making a major mistake playing each other twice each season," Brown said following the game, "I think it cuts our records apart. The football people of the SEC have got much more vision."
"We, the basketball coaches, voted 8-2 and the athletic directors approved it 7-3 to forget about the round-robin and have a tournament at the end of the year and I think we've got to do that," added Brown."
"I think it would be good for basketball and I think by letting the first place team go to the NCAA and the tenth place team not getting to play in the tourney and let the other eight teams play, wow, I think we've got a heck of a set-up," argued Brown.
"Right now, we send two teams to the NCAA, but if you'll notice, in the records, we had only two teams in the SEC with less than ten losses, Tennessee and Alabama," Brown continued, "and the same thing is going to happen this year."
Maybe but Kentucky might not hit double digits this time.
Wonder why Brown offered his two long-sought innovations in Lexington?
It just so happens one of the two coaches to vote against the measures was Kentucky Coach Joe B. Hall.
And until you hear Hall's side, the two plans seem to be good ones. The other side of the issue. "The way we have it now, you get the true champion," said the UK mentor, "but if you drop the true round-robin, then there would be some teams with a definite home-court advantage because he would not have to travel to some schools in certain years."
A clear example might be: "LSU has to play every SEC team once, but five of the teams twice. Of the fourteen games, two of the teams would be played on the road only and two of the teams at home only. If the two home only games were say, Kentucky and Tennessee, LSU would be in the driver's seat. Eventually, each school would end up in the same matter, but it would still be a distinct advantage for schools which usually aren't basketball powers."
Thus you can understand why Kentucky and Alabama were against such a plan.
What happened to the proposal? It was  shot  down  by  the SEC presidents, mostly because they figured it would take the students out of the classrooms even more.
"A lot of people may not know this," said Hall, "but we tried this type of plan in the SEC a long time ago and agreed the present round-robin is better."
The idea has tones similar to the NCAA which likes to tax the rich and give to the poor. Only in this situation, they want to take victories from one and give to another.
For a coach and school which have never  won   a   basketball   game   in. Lexington, you can't blame them for trying.
After Saturday night's 87-72 loss, LSU's basketball record stood at 0-19 in Lexington and 3-43 overall.
Look for Brown to continue his ">t selling program for spring.