Decision brings back Pac-10 championship tournament

By Christina Teller

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Pac-10 athletics directors took the first step last week toward
restarting the conference basketball championship tournament,
voting 8-2 in favor of reinstating the tournament.

The Pac-10 is the only Division I league besides the Ivy League
that does not currently feature a conference championship
series.

The vote among Pac-10 athletics directors had been deadlocked at
7-3 for years. The proposal must have 75 percent of the vote to
pass. UCLA, Arizona and Stanford were the three schools
consistently against the proposition.

But this year, due to changes in the proposal that include
cutting the tournament from its traditional four days to three, and
placing it at Staples Center, UCLA athletics director Pete Dalis
switched his vote in favor of the tournament to pass the
proposal.

“It’s my understanding that we are the school that
switched,” associate athletic director Marc Dellins said.
“It wasn’t Arizona or Stanford that changed their
stance.”

The proposal will be submitted to the Pac-10 Council and
chancellors to vote on in October.

The championship tournament first ran from 1987-1990, and
according to Assistant Pac-10 Commissioner Mike Matthews, was
cancelled due to academic effects on the student-athletes and the
lack of financial success.

Most universities in the country are on the semester system and
do not face the same exam schedules as institutions on the quarter
system. Matthews pointed out that half of the Pac-10 schools are on
the quarter system.

“Sometimes the conference tournament would land at a
critical time for some schools,” he said.

With the missed school time due to travel during the NCAA
tournament already falling at the same time as Winter quarter
finals at UCLA, the possibility of even more travel would put a
further strain on the players’ academic commitments.

But the new proposal states that only the top eight men’s
teams will play in it, and so the tournament runs three days
instead of four. The tournament can be played from Thursday to
Saturday and loss of class time will be minimized.

Also, since Staples Center is the proposed site for the
tournament, UCLA players will not have to leave even earlier for
traveling.

“The fact that it’s in Los Angeles and the fact
it’s only three days alleviates the concerns we have about
the players missing additional classes,” Dellins said.
“On a quarter system you want to miss as few days of school
as possible.”

Another factor that kept UCLA from supporting a league
postseason tournament was the fact that it was not financially
rewarding.

In its earlier run, the tournament was hosted at notable
locations such as the Great Western Forum, but did not gross as
much profit as was hoped. The most money the Pac-10 tournament
brought UCLA was $90,000. During a regular non-conference game UCLA
generates from $150,000 to $200,000.

“The tournament didn’t lose money, but it just
didn’t make as much money as people thought to justify
continuing it,” Matthews said.

But now, with Fox Networks and Staples Center involved in the
proposal, the financial aspect of the

Pac-10 championship has also been alleviated, Dellins said.

Another positive to having the tournament is that the Pac-10
will have the exposure that other conferences have as the regular
season comes to a close.

“I know one thing that concerns people in the Pac-10 about
not having a basketball tournament is that the last week of the
season, the Pac-10 tends to fall off the radar a bit in terms of
national exposure,” Dellins said.

“It’s right at the start of what ESPN calls
Championship Week, and nobody’s really watching what goes on
in the Pac-10 while they watch all those other conferences striving
for an NCAA berth.”

A Pac-10 championship would affect the season schedule. As each
team is allowed 27 games during a season, the conference tournament
would count as one of those games and a non-conference game would
be dropped from the schedule. Also, to complete the 18-conference
game schedule, Pac-10 play would have to begin play 1-2 weeks
sooner than usual.

The tournament would, however, give a team that’s on the
bubble a better chance at an NCAA tournament bid.

If a team is at the bottom of the conference toward the end of
the regular season, stellar play in the Pac-10 conference
championship would both boost its national exposure and its winning
record.

“The postseason tournament would’ve been good for us
this year since we had to make a late charge to get to the
tournament,” said UCLA assistant coach Jim Saia. “But
for the most part, schools like Arizona and Stanford and UCLA hope
to be at the top of the conference, and so there would be no need
for us to have a postseason tournament.”

The final decision on the Pac-10 postseason tournament will be
made in October, when the university presidents and chancellors
vote on it.

“I think it’s got a good chance of passing,”
Saia continued. “Just based on the fact we’re the only
conference that doesn’t have a tournament. We’re the
odd person out in the land of conference tournaments.”

. . .

The NCAA recently passed a regulation restricting schools to
awarding only five scholarships to every class, and no more than
eight over two years. This rule will first affect the recruiting
class of 2001.

The rule was created to discourage athletes from transferring
and coaches from running players off their roster to make room for
a whole new roster.

“Sometimes the NCAA makes a rule, and they think
they’re making a rule for the good of the game, but they
don’t realize the consequences it has on other
schools,” Saia said.

It appears the rule has already hurt UCLA’s recruiting.
The school had been recruiting twins Erik and Derrick Craven of
Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, but because of the
scholarship limit UCLA could not offer both Cravens a scholarship.
The twins, who wanted to stay together, committed to USC earlier
this month.

“When we sign kids early, we have to assume that those
kids will be back the following year,” Saia said. “We
can’t sign scholarships that we don’t have.

“But if we sign five kids this November, there’s a
good chance that Jason Kapono and Dan Gadzuric go pro,” he
added. “That will leave us with 11 scholarship athletes (out
of an allowed 13). But since we signed five in November,
we’re not allowed to sign any more kids.”

And that, in Saia’s view, is not right.

“College basketball is high-stakes,” he said.
“They put so many limitations on us already that this is just
one more rule that doesn’t need to take place.”

. . .

The NCAA officially voted on Aug. 3 to expand the NCAA
championship bracket to 65 teams. Thirty-one conferences will
receive automatic bids in the expanded field, two more than
previously offered.

The two additional conferences are the Mountain West Conference
and the Western Athletic Conference. The WAC did not receive an
automatic bid last year after eight of its members left and formed
the year-old Mountain West Conference.

The two teams, one from each conference, will be selected on
March 11 at the same time as the rest of the tournament field, and
an opening-round game will be played between them on March 13. The
winner of that game continues to the round of 64, which starts on
March 15.

With reports from Pauline Vu, Daily Bruin Senior Staff.