Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | 10:28 a.m.
As he's done for five years, Nevada-Reno coach Trent Johnson arrived in his office Monday morning at 6 and shut the door. Then Stanford coach Mike Montgomery phoned with congratulations, followed by Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.
The Wolf Pack might never be the same, which will be Johnson's challenge.
"The more congratulations I get," he said, "tends to make me want to work harder."
Johnson said Montgomery, a former boss of his, and Izzo rang with common themes.
"They said some special things about the (players)," Johnson said. "about their attention to detail and about the decisions they made. Those are the most important things I take to the guys.
"It's important that they hear that, as opposed to everyone telling us how great we played. We still have a game to play."
Watch out, Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets (25-9) get the Wolf Pack (25-8), who have become the underdog of the NCAA tournament, in a regional semifinal in St. Louis on Friday night.
Johnson met Tech coach Paul Hewitt at a camp last summer.
"I think he's one of the best," Johnson said. "They have a lot that worries me. Their post players are good, they go eight deep and they're battle-tested. We're looking forward to the challenge."
The winner meets the victor of the other semifinal, between Alabama-Birmingham and Kansas.
The best team in the Silver State has quickly become the best in the West, after victories against Michigan State and Gonzaga shot 10th-seeded Nevada, as its known by the rest of the country, into the vaunted Sweet 16 field.
"Make no mistake, now people will know the difference between Reno and Las Vegas, UNR and UNLV," Reno resident Hugh Sharkey told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "There is no longer any confusion about who we are and what we can do. We are on the map."
No. 1-seeded Stanford and 12th-seeded Pacific, the only other western teams in the tournament, did not survive the first weekend. So Nevada might draw fans from more than a dozen states, throughout the Pacific and Mountain time zones, this weekend.
At Thursday's Board of Regents meeting in Las Vegas, the approval of new UNLV coach Lon Kruger's five-year, $3.8-million contract was delayed a bit when Douglas Hill could not be found.
A Regent from Reno, Hill was in a nearby room, cheering with others as he watched the Wolf Pack take the lead on Michigan State in the first round. After a few minutes, he hustled into the room to vote for Kruger's pact.
Sunday night, Bob Cashell, the mayor of Reno, and more than 400 of his constituents gathered at Reno/Tahoe International Airport to celebrate the arrival of the Wolf Pack from Seattle.
Cashell applauded the team's professionalism and businesslike manner. The Vanderbilt Commodores, for example, erupted after beating North Carolina State in Orlando. The Pack players barely even broke into grins.
"We didn't come into the game to give them a good game," Okeson said after the 91-72 victory against Gonzaga. "We came to win."
The school has been allotted 1,250 game tickets, which cost $120 and are good for both of Friday's sessions and Sunday's region final. Those not bought by season-ticket holders, advertisers or donors will be available to the public today.
The Pack had left its two previous NCAA appearances with defeats, to Washington in 1984 and to North Carolina State in '85.
Since the seeding system was established, in 1979, the lowest seed to have won a national championship was eighth-seeded Villanova in 1985.
"Everyone had been reminding us that it had been 19 years since we played in the NCAAs," said senior point guard Todd Okeson. "Now, we want to make history for ourselves."
Junior forward Kirk Snyder leads Nevada with 18.7 points a game, while junior guard B.J. Elder is Georgia Tech's scoring leader, at 16.3 points.
"I think we've responded pretty well," Snyder said. "We beat big, physical Michigan State, which had a chance to win in the end. And Gonzaga likes to get up and down the court. We've been thrown two totally different teams with different challenges, and we've overcome them.
"Georgia Tech brings more challenges to the table, and we'll just have to overcome those, too."
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