Columnist Steve Carp: Mountain West looks like winner for 2000 tourney

Steve Carp

Friday, Jan. 15, 1999 | 10:43 a.m.

Steve Carp's college basketball notebook appears on Friday. Reach him at carp @ lasvegassun.com or 259-4087.

Maybe protocol wasn't followed to the letter. But when the smoke clears, one thing will be certain come May -- the Mountain West Conference will have an automatic bid to the 2000 NCAA Tournament and the Western Athletic Conference won't.

And the Mountain West will get in because of one simple fact -- its membership meets the criteria of six institutions having competed together for five years while the future WAC doesn't.

Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said despite some consternation from other commissioners over the issue during the recently concluded NCAA Convention in San Antonio, the MWC had received a favorable interpretation of its appeal to bypass the five-year wait for an automatic berth.

"I'm not as optimistic as I was before San Antonio," he said. "But the one issue of this is merit. Who can play? Who deserves the automatic bid?

"This is all politicized. Everyone's worried about how it affects them. It's no longer a matter of issues, but of intrepretation."

The NCAA's management council already had determined that the new league does indeed meet the criteria and is eligible for a waiver that would exempt it from the normal five-year wait. But with the hue and cry emanating from the halls of the convention, the issue will be revisited in April.

Eventually, the NCAA basketball committee will rule on it. Assuming it goes through there, it gets a final OK from the presidents in July after making a stop back with the management council and the championships committee.

Sound convoluted? It is.

"At some point, someone is going to have to determine if seven schools competing together for 18 years is a new league," Thompson said.

So while the Mountain West ponders its future, so does the WAC. Commissioner Karl Benson already has resigned himself to the fact that his remaining eight members will have to go the at-large route to earn an invite to the Big Dance in Atlanta, though it figures to get its automatic bid back for 2001.

But Benson is confident the WAC will not be snubbed in 2000. And his confidence is justified.

TCU, Tulsa and Fresno State will be worthy of consideration barring a total collapse by any of those programs. But in what may be another strange twist of irony, what if New Mexico, Utah and UNLV put together strong campaigns next season and that trio gets to go? It possibly could be at the expense of one of the aforementioned WAC teams.

However, that's getting way ahead of things. Right now, Benson should be concerned about the 1999 Tournament. Because if the season ended today, the WAC would be hard pressed to get more than two teams in.

TCU would be a lock to go whether it won the WAC tourney or not. And assuming Billy Tubbs' team were to win it all, where would the other invitation go?

New Mexico? Maybe, despite the Lobos' ridiculously low strength of schedule and their triple-digit RPI.

Utah? Rick Majerus' team may have built up enough equity over the years that the committee might be sympathetic toward the Utes, who got to the national championship game last year.

Tulsa? Doubtful, although the Golden Hurricane's RPI is in the top 40. If Tulsa were to maintain it all the way through, perhaps it could sneak in.

UNLV? No quality wins equals no bid.

Fresno State? Jerry Tarkanian's team has some good wins (Georgia, Temple, New Mexico) but the Bulldogs have some bad losses (San Jose State). Plus, there's the NCAA factor. The committee probably isn't about to cut Tark any slack after he took it for nearly $3 million last summer in his long court battle.

The WAC won't have many more chances to give its power rating a boost. New Mexico plays Arizona Saturday at The Pit and that's about it. The WAC is 11th in the conference RPI and it's unlikely to climb much higher.

The dream of duplicating last-year's breakthrough season where four WAC teams got to dance is just that -- a dream. At least for the moment.

* PAC-10 FAB FINISHES: Prior to the start of the season, everyone thought the Pacific 10 Conference would be competitive. But they probably weren't counting on all the fantastic finishes.

Last week alone, five games were decided by three points or fewer with Southern California's unbelievable ESPY award-winning comeback against Oregon leading the way.

In case you missed it, the Trojans were down five points with 2.8 seconds remaining when Adam Spanich hit a 3-pointer from the right side with .8 of a second to play.

Oregon lobbed the ball to midcourt, only to have Spanich intercept and simultaneously heave the ball into the basket as time expired, giving USC an improbable 66-65 victory.

Then there was Arizona's last-second heroics against Washington as Richard Jefferson took Jason Terry's short-of-the-mark jumper and laid the ball in, a la Lorenzo Charles at the buzzer, to give the Wildcats an 88-86 win.

Throw in Oregon State's upset of UCLA and the Bruins' holding off Oregon in the final seconds last weekend and you have a league where there are going to be few easy touches, and a lot of stress on coaches' hearts.

* BEST OF BIG WEST?: Boise State is making a strong push for supremacy in the Big West Conference. The Broncos are 9-3 overall and got off to a fast start by sweeping a tough road trip at Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara. Now, the Broncos are home for five of their next six and Rod Jensen's team has a chance to solidify its spot atop the Eastern Division.

Senior swingman Roberto Bergersen is arguably the best player in the league. He's the top scorer at 25.1 points a game (second in the nation to Texas-Pan American's Brian Merriweather's 26.3 average), and he has been honored as the conference's player of the week six times. That equals Larry Johnson's mark when UNLV was in the league, and former Utah State standout Greg Grant.

The biggest threat may come from New Mexico State, which also is 2-0 and 9-5 overall. The teams meet twice in February -- in Las Cruces on the 6th and in Boise on the 13th. That will likely decide who wins the division.

* THE FRAUD FIVE: That Jerry Green, he just kills us. His underachieving Tennessee goes into Kentucky and beats the nation's fourth-ranked team. Which means adios to this week's list of frauds. But don't count the Vols out. They'll likely be back, and sooner than you think.

In the meantime, here's this week's less-than-stellar quintet:

1. Syracuse (11-4) -- Losing to Providence in the Carrier Dome two years in a row? What is that?

2. New Mexico (15-2) -- Check out the strength of schedule: 307 out of 310.

3. South Carolina (5-10) -- Basement Berthas of the SEC. BJ McKie stayed in school for this?

4. Massachusetts (6-8) -- Still trying to get to .500

5. Cal Poly (5-8) -- The treys have stopped dropping.

* HOOP DU JOUR: There's a good chance Saturday's Tulsa-UNLV game at the Thomas & Mack Center will outdraw the Mike Tyson-Frans Botha fight down the street at the MGM Grand Garden. The Rebels can expect 14,000-15,000 for the WAC game with the Golden Hurricane while a scaled-down MGM is hoping for 11,000-12,000 for Tyson's return to the ring. ... Must-see TV -- Indiana at Purdue, 1 p.m. Saturday (KLAS Channel 8). The struggling Hoosiers, who have dropped three of their last five, can get back on track with a win over their in-state rival in a huge Big Ten contest.