By Greg Schain
Daily Bruin Reporter
In a controversial move, the Pac-10 CEO Group/Council elected in 2000 to reinstate the conference tournament for the 2001-02 season to determine which team receives the conference’s automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.
The tournament, which will take place Thursday, March 7, through Saturday, March 9, at the Staples Center, will be the Pac-10’s first conference tournament since 1990. Until this season, the Pac-10 has been the only major conference in the country not to have a conference tournament to decide who gets the conference’s automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.
Arizona head coach Lute Olson and Stanford head coach Mike Montgomery have both spoken out against the tournament. They say the Pac-10’s past success in the NCAA Tournament is attributable to the lack of a conference tournament, because its teams are refreshed while other conferences’ representatives are still recovering from the grueling competition of intraconference play. They also hate the idea of the extra traveling and the fact that students are missing extra classes in March.
“I hate the idea of a conference tournament,” Olson said. “The kids are already missing several weeks of classes because of the NCAA Tournament. They shouldn’t have to miss an extra week of because of the conference one.”
However, others argue a tournament is healthy for the conference because it will create more excitement in the regular season. The Pac-10 will only take the top eight regular season finishers into the draw, so teams having bad seasons will still have a reason to practice and play hard despite being out of the race for the conference championship.
“There’ll certainly be some action towards the end of the season in the bottom half of the conference,” said Jim Muldoon, assistant commissioner of the Pac-10. “Teams are gonna be fighting to get in the tournament.”
It is unclear whether having a conference tournament will help or hurt the number of Pac-10 teams that get selected for the NCAA tournament. If teams that are on the cusp of getting selected get knocked out in the first round of the conference tourney, the selection committee would certainly take notice.
However, if a seventh or eighth seed makes a surprising run in the conference tournament, it might propel them to a NCAA berth even if they lose in the finals to a top seed.
“If anything, the conference tournament will help the number of teams selected to the NCAA Tournament from the Pac-10,” Muldoon said. “It might help them get a couple of extra wins.”
UCLA won’t be affected greatly by the reintroduction of the tournament. The Bruins normally have a schedule of Pac-10 games the week before the NCAA Tournament anyway, and since it will be at the Staples Center, they won’t have to travel.
In fact, UCLA head coach Steve Lavin is looking forward to the tournament.
“The tournament will give us national media exposure that will help our visibility and with recruiting,” he said. “It’ll be three days of great basketball.”
Lavin speculates that UCLA might have a slight edge in the tournament, because of the home crowd.
“We’d like to believe that playing close to our campus and in front of Southern California sports fans will be a positive,” he said.
Tickets for the tournament have already sold out, although more might become available in the future.
The Pac-10 previously had a conference tournament from 1987-1990. UCLA captured the first tournament title, and Arizona captured the final three.
The Staples Center has signed on to host the tournament through 2007. The quarterfinal and semifinal rounds will be on Fox Sports Net, with the finals airing on CBS.