He Seeks Ways to Beat the Press

Arizona Coach Lute Olson’s diatribe against Pacific 10 Conference Commissioner Tom Hansen in an e-mail last week -- he was “appalled” that Channing Frye was not the league’s player of the week -- is already the stuff of legend.

Imagine the Hall of Famer’s missive to the masses if fewer than four Pac-10 schools are invited to the NCAA tournament.

“I’d be shocked if we don’t; if we don’t, it’s because of a lack of national publicity,” Olson said this week in a conference call with reporters.

“Something is haywire with our publicity.... We are a second-rate conference in terms of national exposure.”

That figures to change somewhat today, though, with the onset of the eight-team Pac-10 tournament at Staples Center.

No. 8 Arizona and No. 14 Washington have nothing to worry about except their seedings for the NCAA tournament. Both are angling for a No. 2 spot in regionals.

It’s also presumed that UCLA will earn a berth to the field of 65 when it’s announced Sunday.

Then there is Stanford, which twice beat the Bruins and also has victories over Arizona and Washington.

The other teams involved in today’s games -- Oregon State, Washington State, Arizona State and California -- are hoping to win the tournament to earn the conference’s automatic berth into the field NCAA of 65.

Arizona State, which plays Washington tonight at 6:15, is playing not only for a spot in the NCAAs -- but also perhaps for Coach Rob Evans’ job.

A creampuff nonconference schedule helped get the Sun Devils off to a fast start, but they faltered in conference action and have an RPI of only 67 despite 18 victories.

“This basketball team is on the bubble,” Evans said. “It’s very important to play well.”

Also still hopeful is Oregon State, which has 16 wins and finished fifth during the conference season despite not winning a game on the road.

Beaver Coach Jay John said winning the tournament would be “astronomical” for his program, and it will take an out-of-this-world performance to pull it off -- starting with an upset of UCLA in a game scheduled to start at 2:50 this afternoon.

Washington State Coach Dick Bennett, whose team faces Stanford tonight at 8:45, would like to see the possibility of even more upsets in the future.

He is in favor of all 10 schools playing in the conference tournament -- USC and Oregon were left out this season -- meaning the top two finishers in the regular season would earn first-round byes.

Bennett also suggested the Pac-10 schedule be reduced to 16 games, allowing schools to take part in a series against another conference, much like the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

If he wants action on his proposals, maybe Bennett should play like Olson and send out an e-mail. The Arizona coach’s complaints seemed to get results:

In Arizona’s only game last week, the Wildcats earned the conference’s regular-season title by defeating Arizona State on a last-second shot by Salim Stoudamire after it appeared game officials missed a traveling violation by Stoudamire just before his winning shot.

The result? You guessed it -- Stoudamire was chosen conference player of the week.