For Pacific’s Sake, Get Fax Straight

Anyone who knows recruiting knows the University of the Pacific owns California. You know, Turlock, Vacaville, Colusa, Sonora, Fort Bragg.

Kansas Coach Roy Williams doesn’t even challenge Pacific in these hotbeds (yuk-yuk).

Now, take this breadbasket procurement philosophy and mix it with blind luck, luck being a 7-footer from London randomly picking your school out of a directory and ringing you on the phone--’ello, I ‘ear you might be needin’ a bloomin’ center--and Eureka! (another Pacific recruiting stronghold).

Pacific begins tonight’s game at North Texas with a 15-1 record, third best in Division I behind Kansas and Wake Forest.

So what?

That has pretty much been the sentiment.

It is small consolation that the Tigers almost cracked the latest USA Today/CNN coaches’ poll.

“A couple of coaches didn’t vote for us this week that had been voting for us,” Pacific’s ninth-year coach, Bob Thomason, said from his office in Stockton. “They were on the road and didn’t fax in their coaches’ deal.”

Why don’t people fax nostalgic about Pacific?

Is it because the Tigers play in the Big West, a conference that last year sent a team with a losing record, San Jose State, to the NCAA tournament?

Is it because Pacific isn’t anywhere near the ocean? (Bet the kid from London was surprised.)

Is it because the Tigers haven’t been to an NCAA tournament since 1979, have never been to the National Invitation Tournament, play a suspect schedule--Chico State, case closed--and recently scrapped the football program?

All of the above, actually, but let’s get beyond the obvious.

This year’s team, after cursory examination, passes the stink test.

First, the Tigers play tenacious man-to-man defense. They began the week ranked seventh nationally in scoring defense, giving up 56.1 points per game. No team has shot more than 50% against them and only two--Fresno State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo--have scored more than 60 points.

What’s more, the team could have folded twice. On Jan. 7, the Tigers lost star guard Adam Jacobsen to season-ending knee surgery, only to have Mark Boelter step in and average 14 points in Jacobsen’s place.

On Jan. 11, center Michael Olowokandi, the team’s leader in scoring, rebounds and blocked shots, suffered a sprained left knee against Cal State Fullerton and has sat out the last four games. Pacific has won all four.

Olowokandi, known as “the Kandi Man,” is the Londoner. He set prep records in the long and triple jump for the queen but had never played organized basketball when he went to the library and checked out “Peterson’s Guide to Four-Year Colleges.”

“I just opened the book and it opened to Pacific,” Olowokandi told the San Francisco Chronicle.

He also phoned Georgetown and Duke, but those schools apparently wanted some background.

Pacific needed to know what time to meet Olowokandi at the airport.

Does it get any better? Olowokandi, son of an international diplomat, is paying his own tuition at $23,000 per year until a scholarship becomes available next season.

He should return to the lineup next week.

Last summer, at a golf outing, Santa Clara Coach Dick Davey said to Thomason: “Bob, you do a real good job finding guys that nobody else wants, and they turn out real good.”

“Gee, thanks,” Thomason said.

Pacific has plenty to prove since blowing its NCAA chance last year by losing to San Jose State in the Big West tournament.

The Tigers, seeded third, had won seven of eight games going into the tournament before they inexplicably abandoned their selfless style.

No such lapses so far this season. Seven players have led the team in scoring. Eight players average six or more points.

Strength of schedule will be a concern for the NCAA tournament selection committee should the Tigers not win the Big West’s automatic bid. (We highly recommend the Tigers do that.)

Pacific has 10 conference games remaining.

Could the NCAA possibly snub Pacific at, say, 23-4?

The schedule looked tougher on parchment two years ago, but nonconference victories over lowly Pepperdine and lowlier Brigham Young this season ring hollow.

“We thought we had a real good schedule when the season started,” Thomason said. “Is it my fault Pepperdine isn’t as good as it used to be?”

Fact: The Tigers have won 15 in a row, by a whopping average of 18.5 points, since a season-opening, four-point loss at Fresno State.

The best NCAA tournament card Pacific has to play is a 17-point victory against Georgetown in December at Las Vegas.

Who knows, maybe someday, coaches voting for Pacific might even get their faxes in on time.

“I see people pass us every week,” Thomason said of the polls. “South Carolina. Marquette. So maybe we’re just stuck where we are. Stanford will lose to Oregon State and they’ll move up two spots. If we lost to Oregon State, we’d move off the end of the earth. That just happens.”

LIFE IN THE BIG EASY

And now, a moment of silence for . . . the Big East. How bad is it? At the start of the week, Miami, a football school, was leading the Big East 7 division with a 6-3 record.

The conference boasted one team in the Associated Press top 25, Villanova at No. 14, and the Wildcats responded Monday by losing to unranked Georgetown.

Pittsburgh, for Lou Carnesecca’s sake, has a better conference record than Syracuse.

So it goes when you lose four superstars the quality of John Wallace (Syracuse), Allen Iverson (Georgetown), Kerry Kittles (Villanova) and Ray Allen (Connecticut). Adding to woes this season were the suspensions of Syracuse’s Todd Burgan and Connecticut’s Kirk King and Ricky Moore.

To wit: The Big East is 2-13 against ranked nonconference opponents. Last year, the conference advanced three teams--Georgetown, Connecticut and Syracuse--to the Sweet 16. Only the Southeastern Conference, with four, had more.

Not even Big East winners rejoice. Recently, an arsonist set fire to the Miami basketball offices, causing more than $100,000 in damage and ruining team records, computers and video tapes.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

If they played last year’s Final Four this weekend, well, you could get terrific tickets.

Anyone thinking there are going to be any more dynasties in college basketball should take a look at how the mighty have fallen.

Charting last year’s Fab Four confab at the Meadowlands, only Kentucky remains a top-25 team, and even the Wildcats’ stock is dropping. Syracuse started the week 2-5 in conference play, and Massachusetts and Mississippi State hovered around .500 overall.

What happened?

--Kentucky: Probably the only program that could survive the loss of three first-round NBA picks, Wildcat repeat hopes were fathomable until senior guard Derek Anderson was lost for the season because of a knee injury. Rick Pitino’s stockpile of talent is diminishing to the point he might have to play veteran guard Jeff Sheppard, whom Pitino was hoping to redshirt.

--Syracuse: Wallace and Lazarus Sims moved on, top recruit Winfred Walton couldn’t make the academic cut and enrolled at Fresno State and forward Burgan was suspended for seven games. That pretty much sums it up.

The Orangemen should get well now that Burgan is back; he had 17 points and 12 rebounds in Sunday’s victory over Connecticut, but will need tickets to this year’s title game in Indianapolis.

--Massachusetts: John Calipari took everything with him (Marcus Camby, Dana Dingle, Donta Bright) except the brutal schedule, which he bequeathed to successor Bruiser Flint. After a dismal start, and injuries to stellar guards Edgar Padilla and Carmelo Travieso, the Minutemen moved above .500 last week, going 4-0 after Flint went to a three-guard lineup featuring Padilla, Travieso and Charlton Clarke. The troika made a school-record 15 three-point baskets in a 12-point victory at Temple and scored 65 of the team’s 78 points.

--Mississippi State: No way Richard Williams was going to replace five starters, including the dynamic scoring combination of center Erick Dampier and forward Dontae’ Jones, both of whom departed early to the NBA and first-round money.

Williams was left with the cupboard bare but doesn’t regret his NCAA fling.

“I don’t know of any coach who would pass up a player who is an NBA-like player even though you might have him only a year or two,” Williams said this week.

LOOSE ENDS

At the season’s halfway point, the Pacific 10 was leading all conferences in scoring, averaging 78.6 points a game. The Pac-10 was also shooting a conference-leading 47% from the field. Credit UCLA center Jelani McCoy’s repertoire of slam dunks for some of that.

The biggest gunners? Southwestern Athletic Conference teams were leading in most three-point shots per game, at 19.8. . . .

Pacific’s Thomason was hoping football’s demise at his school would mean increased revenues for the basketball program. “We haven’t had a penny more,” Thomason said. “Our budget is less than it was two years ago.” . . .

In 1996, with Stephon Marbury and Drew Barry in the backcourt, Georgia Tech won the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title and Bobby Cremins won ACC coach-of-the-year honors. With Barry and Marbury gone, Georgia Tech is in last place. “We got caught short in the backcourt,” Cremins says. “I thought the loss of Barry and Marbury we could overcome.” . . .

Oregon is 1-5 after a red-hot start. Coach Jerry Green explains: “After being 10-0, ranked 17th, we soon found out we didn’t have enough basketballs on the court.” . . .

California guard Ed Gray has scored 178 points in his last six games, most in a six-game Pac-10 stretch since USC’s Harold Miner scored 180 in 1982. . . .

Kentucky’s Pitino, on Florida Coach Billy Donovan, who played for Pitino at Providence: “I never thought Billy would go into coaching, nor did I think he should go into coaching. I thought he was way too nice of a person to go into coaching. But then he became just like the rest of us.”

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THE TIMES’ RANKINGS: Top 25

CAPSULES AND RANKINGS

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Team (Record) 1. Kansas (20-1) 2. Kentucky (19-2) 3. Wake Forest (17-1) 4. Utah (14-2) 5. Louisville (17-2) 6. Maryland (17-3) 7. Clemson (16-3) 8. Cincinnati (14-3) 9. Minnesota (18-2) 10. Arizona (12-4) 11. Iowa State (14-3) 12. New Mexico (15-3) 13. Duke (16-5) 14. Stanford (13-4) 15. Indiana (17-4) 16. Michigan (15-5) 17. Colorado (16-4) 18. Villanova (15-5) 19. North Carolina (12-6) 20. Pacific (15-1) 21. Xavier (14-3) 22. Marquette (13-3) 23. UCLA (11-5) 24. Texas Tech (13-5) 25. South Carolina (14-5)

Team (Record) Comment 1. Kansas (20-1) Can team get off Scot free without Pollard? 2. Kentucky (19-2) Imagine that, Pitino running out of ammo. 3. Wake Forest (17-1) Apparently not just Duncan and four guys. 4. Utah (14-2) Check back after Saturday showdown at Pit. 5. Louisville (17-2) Crum still making UCLA pay for Bartow hiring. 6. Maryland (17-3) Terps have a Superman in that Booth. 7. Clemson (16-3) See what happens when Dean gets mad? 8. Cincinnati (14-3) Who would dump soda on this fine group? 9. Minnesota (18-2) Once, in 1972-73, the Gophers started 20-2. 10. Arizona (12-4) Dickerson back after two-game L.A. vacation. 11. Iowa State (14-3) Pratt pleads innocent to charges (and blocks). 12. New Mexico (15-3) 21 straight home wins, gulp, here’s Utah. 13. Duke (16-5) Would trade $$, draft picks for Tractor Traylor. 14. Stanford (13-4) Don’t dwell on those UCLA press clippings. 15. Indiana (17-4) Hadn’t gone 4-3 in league since . . . last year. 16. Michigan (15-5) Should never lose a game with that lineup. 17. Colorado (16-4) Ricardo Patton’s style like Gen. George’s. 18. Villanova (15-5) Carrying Big East banner. Oops, dropped it. 19. North Carolina (12-6) Reports of demise somewhat exaggerated. 20. Pacific (15-1) Winning with heart and mail-order players. 21. Xavier (14-3) I knew they had no shot vs. Duquesne. 22. Marquette (13-3) Would rather play defense than video games. 23. UCLA (11-5) Wonder if J.R. feels like playing tonight? 24. Texas Tech (13-5) Center Tony Battie is driving defenders nuts. 25. South Carolina (14-5) Three months later, team lives up to billing.

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