A Clean-Cut Above

You can’t pick up a paper these days without reading about athletes running amok on college campuses.

Except at Stanford.

Agents, academic casualties, NCAA probes: big problems at some schools.

Except at Stanford.

“It’s an unwritten rule here not to do anything stupid,” freshman guard Casey Jacobsen said.

It used to be thought you couldn’t marry an Ivy League education with NBA aspirations, that you couldn’t fly to Los Angeles and beat a legendary basketball program to the local talent punch.

Once, it was thought you had to cut academic corners to compete for national titles, that you had to rush to judgments and take chances on kids.

Someone, please, explain Stanford?

The Cardinal is in town for an important Pacific 10 Conference swing against our locals--versus UCLA tonight at Pauley Pavilion and USC on Saturday at the Sports Arena--with a chance to seize control of the conference basketball race.

Stanford is 17-1, ranked No. 2 and wears the scowl of a national title contender.

“I think Stanford has a chance to win the whole thing,” Washington State Coach Paul Graham said. “I really believe that.”

Quite a transformation when you consider, from 1942 to 1989, Stanford did not once qualify for the NCAA tournament.

This year’s Stanford squad has six players from Southern California.

If history is an indicator, all will earn degrees.

According to spokesman Bob Vazquez, the basketball team’s graduation rate in Mike Montgomery’s 13-plus years as head coach is . . . 100%.

Asked to recount the last off-the-court transgression in Montgomery’s tenure, Vazquez didn’t hesitate.

“None.”

What?

“Never.”

Stanford basketball may be the perfect program.

The closest thing to a “scandal” occurred during the 1998 NCAA regional finals at St. Louis, when guard Arthur Lee made a “choke” gesture on the court after Rhode Island squandered a last-minute lead.

On the plane ride home, Lee was already penning his letter of apology.

Stanford has always been one of the nation’s leading academic institutions, producing 12 Nobel Laureates, six Pulitzer Prizes, 20 National Medal of Science winners and a U.S. president (Herbert Hoover), Supreme Court justice (Sandra Day O’Connor) and cerebral late-night TV news host (Ted Koppel).

Richard Levin, the president of Yale?

He went to Stanford.

The school’s emergence as a premier all-around athletic program in the 1990s has galvanized it as a magnet for highly skilled, intelligent players.

Jacobsen, a prized recruit from Glendora High, is already Stanford’s leading scorer and cheerleader.

He says the local powerhouse recruited him hard and admits there was a time he would have not fled the area for “The Farm.”

“I probably wouldn’t have considered them as highly as I did since they’ve been ranked top 10 the past three years,” he said of Stanford.

What about the school with 11 national title banners?

“I wouldn’t say I didn’t consider them,” Jacobsen said of UCLA, “but I really didn’t consider them very hard at all, the reason being, I don’t think the players they have on their team are the kind of players I want to play with for four years, not to disrespect them in any way. But the people at Stanford are more like me.”

Some have dubbed Stanford the “Duke of the West,” but Montgomery says he modeled his team after another Atlantic Coast Conference school.

“I used to look at North Carolina as a program,” he said. “They always had good players, a good program, good kids, who conducted themselves well.”

When Montgomery arrived in 1986, Stanford wasn’t an easy sell for elite players.

“I think people looked at us as not being the same as other Pac-10 schools athletically,” Montgomery said.

Stanford’s basketball rise has been steady and incremental. Todd Lichti, a key recruit in the mid-1980s, led to Adam Keefe (1988-92), who led to Brevin Knight (1993-97), a fiery, brash, East Coast point guard who changed national perceptions.

“He broke the stereotype of what Stanford might have appeared to other people,” Montgomery said of the Cardinal’s soft reputation.

Knight helped push Stanford into the national fore, making it easier for the Cardinal to make recruiting inroads.

Montgomery has made Southern California his recruiting backyard. Lee, lead guard on Stanford’s 1998 Final Four team, was from L.A. After UCLA fired Jim Harrick in 1996, North Hollywood’s Collins twins, Jarron and Jason, made a beeline for Palo Alto. Both will be in uniform tonight.

Michael McDonald, Stanford’s point guard, is from Long Beach.

Starting forward Mark Madsen is from Danville, in Northern California, but chose Stanford over UCLA.

How solid is the program?

Stanford lost four starters from last year’s Pac-10 championship squad yet looks like a better team this year.

Montgomery’s team won 30 games in 1998, 26 last season, but he says he’s most proud of building a contender while keeping players off the police blotter.

“To me, it means it can still be done,” he said.

Jacobsen says players embrace the Stanford reputation. No one wants to be the guy who screws up.

“We have pride in who we are,” he said, “that we’re not on ‘SportsCenter’ with someone saying some guy got arrested, or one of our stars is not eligible. I think we’re proud of that fact. Each one of us has to hold up our own end to make sure we don’t have any blunders.”

TOURNAMENT TALK

The Pac-10 will consider next spring whether to revive a postseason tournament beginning in 2002.

Why?

That’s what Arizona Coach Lute Olson wants to know. The Pac-10 is one of two conferences that does not have a postseason tournament.

“That shows you how smart we are,” Olson said. “The other one is the Ivy League.”

Right on, Lute.

The Pac-10 had a postseason tournament for four years, from 1987 to 1990, before pulling the plug. With member schools stretched from Seattle to Tucson, logistics made it difficult for fans to travel.

Frankly, we’ve lauded the Pac-10 for not selling out for the money.

In the last Pac-10 tournament championship game, March 11, 1990, Arizona defeated UCLA, 94-78, before a less-than-capacity crowd of 8,037 in Tempe, Ariz.

Do we need that again?

Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen, however, disputes notions that the Pac-10 tournament was a bust. He said each school netted $90,000 in 1990, and thinks the public would now embrace a conference championship.

“At that time, quite frankly, our basketball was not too scintillating,” Hansen said. “Today, our basketball is so good, so much better, a tournament would be quite exciting.”

Hansen said he is also tired of the Pac-10 being ignored by the media during conference tournament week.

“We just fall into a dark hole, no matter how good our race is,” Hansen said. “It doesn’t get any mention or notice.”

You could argue additional victories in a conference tournament help a school’s NCAA tournament chances, but an early-round loss can just as easily knock a team off the NCAA bubble.

“I think it’s definitely a good idea, and we’re one of schools that would vote for it,” Oregon Coach Ernie Kent said. “Look around the country, everybody else is doing it.”

Any tournament measure must be approved by at least eight of the Pac-10 presidents, and right now there might not be enough votes.

A similar proposal failed a few years ago by a 7-3 vote, with Arizona, Stanford and UCLA dissenting.

“I do not have a sense anyone’s moved,” Hansen said, “but there’s such a strong feeling by a number of our institutions that think this would be good for the conference, they want to keep bringing this up.”

LOOSE ENDS

After its weekend sweep of USC and UCLA, Pac-10 co-leader Oregon begins a critical four-game road conference stretch tonight at Arizona, followed by Arizona State on Saturday and then a Bay Area trip next week against Stanford and Cal. “We’ve just got to weather it,” Kent said. Isn’t it always about weather in Oregon? . . .

No wonder NCAA tournament teams dread an assignment against Temple and its matchup zone defense. In five consecutive victories before this week’s play, the Owls allowed opponents an average of 42.6 points a game. . . .

Maybe Iowa Coach Steve Alford is more like Bob Knight than we thought. After a 69-58 loss to Illinois last week, Alford called a 6:30 practice the next morning and arrived wearing the suit he’d worn to the game. Sleep much, Steve? . . .

Saint Louis (12-7) needs help to earn an NCAA berth, but Lorenzo Romar’s Billikens scored key wins last week against DePaul and Louisville. Not a bad parlay for Romar, the former Pepperdine coach and UCLA assistant. . . .

Uh oh. Cincinnati Coach Bob Huggins’ long overdue decision to start freshman Kenny Satterfield over Steve Logan in Saturday’s win over Louisville may be the chess move that puts the Bearcats over the top in the NCAAs. . . .

Amazing: Jerry Tarkanian has been at Fresno State since 1995 and still hasn’t led his team to the NCAA tournament, but last week’s win over Tulsa was an important step for the 14-7 Bulldogs. Fresno State has a legitimate superstar in Courtney Alexander, a No. 61 RPI ranking, and a chance to end Tark’s NCAA jinx. Note: the Western Athletic Conference does not have an automatic NCAA tournament bid this year because of the breakup that spawned the Mountain West Conference, so Fresno State would have to get in as an at-large pick.

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UCLA vs. STANFORD

Tonight, 7:30 At Pauley Pavilion

TV: Fox Sports Net 2

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USC vs. CALIFORNIA

Tonight, 7 At Sports Arena

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USC vs. STANFORD

Saturday, 5 At Sports Arena

TV: Fox Sports Net 2