Columnist Ron Kantowski: No bumps for top seeds on road to Omaha

Wednesday, June 8, 2005 | 8:59 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

In the long shot the NCAA is interested in saving its members a little money -- yeah, like that could happen -- it should start by reducing its baseball tournament by about 48 teams.

If you think March Madness is getting predictable with the higher seeds advancing most of the time, try finding a glass slipper on the Road to Omaha.

There were 16 four-team regionals played over the weekend and the No. 1 seeds won 13 of them. It should have been 14 of 16 had the tournament committee had the good sense to make Arizona State the top seed on its home field in Tempe instead of upstart Coastal Carolina from the lightly regarded Big South.

The Sun Devils, Rice and Southern Cal, not exactly College World Series party-crashers, were the only non-No. 1 seeds to advance to the super regionals. Each was seeded second. As for all those No. 3 and No. 4 seeds, every one is back on campus making up missed school work.

The only No. 1s that failed to move on to the round of 16 were Long Beach State, LSU and the aforementioned Coastal Carolina, whose only tournament wins came against pitching- and clutch hitting-challenged UNLV. Each of the eight national seeds -- Tulane, Georgia Tech, Nebraska, Baylor, Ole Miss, Cal State Fullerton, Florida and Oregon State -- are still bashing the ball around the diamond.

Discounting the oversight in Tempe, one could make an argument that the seeding committee knows more about baseball than Bob Costas. But if you are one of the few who scores the NCAA baseball tournament at home, it might be a little more interesting one of these years if a Gonzaga or two emerges to throw the committee a curveball.

If Buddy Gouldsmith doesn't watch out, he's going to challenge Fred Dallimore, one of his predecessors in the corner of the Rebels' dugout, for telling it like it is.

This was the way Gouldsmith characterized junior right-hander Matt Luca's chances of being selected in the first 10 rounds of the major league draft which began Tuesday.

"I don't think his hopes are really high," Gouldsmith told a reporter after meeting with Luca. "I think Matt expects to be disappointed, if that's the right word."

That was certainly the right word to describe Luca's pitching line in the Rebels' first-round loss to Coastal Carolina at the Tempe regional: 4 1/3 innings pitched, 10 hits and 7 runs allowed.

Luca, a 6-foot-6, 215-pound junior from Galveston, Texas, who was picked 645th in 2002 by the Cincinnati Reds, has the size that big league scouts look for. But he was still on the board after 18 rounds Tuesday.

Somehow, it just doesn't seem right, given the millions that Andre Agassi has earned playing tennis, that the new gaming machines that will bear his likeness will be penny slots.

They should put guys like Mario Mendoza and Bob Uecker on those machines. Agassi's should be in the high limit salon.

In a related note, there's no truth to the rumor that when you tug the handle on Andre's machine, it grunts and pulls a muscle.

WagerWeb.com, an off-shore betting parlor based in Costa Rica, is taking action on whether Agassi, 35, will retire before the end of the year (no minus-600, yes plus-400) and whether he will win another Grand Slam event before he retires (no minus-1200, yes plus-900).

According to the company's CEO, a lot of early money surprisingly is on the Las Vegas legend making it all the way back for one last hurrah.

"It is tough to see him struggle as he has done lately," said WagerWeb's Dave Johnson, "but Agassi has enough left in him to make one last run at a championship. And our customers agree as they are making a large amount of wagers on Agassi to win another Grand Slam before he retires."

Auto racing legend Mario Andretti, once a vocal critic of the Indy Racing League whose formation in 1996 split Indy-style racing into two leagues and divided fans of the sport, is continuing to work behind the scenes to reunite the Indy Car Series and the rival Champ Car Series (formerly known as CART).

Andretti said dialogue between the two has never been more constructive than it is right now. His hope is that if the two governing bodies can agree to a common set of engine and chassis rules when the current ones expire next year, it could lead to the sides coming together.

"I don't think I'll ever stop," Andretti told me Sunday about his role as an mediator. "I think at the moment it's a more opportune time (to talk about unification) because each side is about to announce some new rules for the next five years and you want to catch it before too many commitments are made.

"You never know, but I think there's reason to be optimistic now more than ever."

Andretti said it's crucial the sides reach some sort of common ground, if for no other reason than to give up-and-coming American drivers a viable alternative to NASCAR.

He said the future of Indy-car racing is so uncertain that his son Michael recently talked about putting his 18-year-old son Marco -- Mario's grandson -- in a Busch Series car next season.

"The hair on the back of my neck stood up," said Andretti, whose response to his son's suggestion was something along the lines of over his dead body.

Mario and Michael Andretti were two of the best and most popular drivers to run at Indianapolis although consistent success in the 500 -- between them, the Andrettis managed just one win in 43 starts -- somehow managed to elude them.

That's why Mario said Dan Wheldon's victory in last week's race in a car owned by Michael was even more special.

"I felt so good for Michael because as a driver he definitely paid his dues there," said the elder Andretti, who won the 500 in his fourth Indy start in 1969 but never again.

"In 14 tries, after leading well over 400 laps, I think he deserved a win somewhere. I felt he was somewhat partly vindicated this time. But it's not just him. He and the Green group (Michael's partners in the four-car team) have put together a hell of a team."

Andretti, whose winery in Napa Valley, Las Vegas-based driving school, three car dealerships, petroleum business and indoor karting center near Atlanta keep him busy in semi-retirement, said he wouldn't rule out joining his son as a car owner, but it would have to be the right situation.

"To be honest with you, I'm not sure I want a job," he said.

And you can add Andretti to the growing legion of Danica Patrick fans.

"Oh yeah," he said with enthusiasm, when I asked him if the darling of this year's Indy 500 was the real deal after finishing fourth. "I think she's got a good boss there (Patrick's car owner is 1986 Indy 500 champ Bobby Rahal) who believes in her and that's what it takes. She's got more energy and more drive than anyone I've ever seen and it's working for her.

"She's not just a flash in the pan. She's serious about her business out there and those guys (her fellow drivers) are taking notice, believe me. I was very curious as to how her race would unfold and she certainly didn't disappoint."

More than one person since the 500 has asked about the possibility of Danica -- she has already become one of those one-named sensations -- and the IRL returning to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where the series held several races in its infancy. With the exception of the track debut in 1996, none were very successful.

For that reason, one might assume the chances for an IRL return are slim. Not necessarily, said LVMS general manager Chris Powell, who added the speedway and IRL were close to signing off on a race this year but could not agree on a date.

Still, local Indy-car fans have something to look forward to, as the rival Champ Car series will return for a September doubleheader with the NASCAR Craftsman Trucks that proved wildly successful last year.

Colorful Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Dhani Jones, accompanied by an ESPN film crew, was one of those who climbed behind the wheel of one of the Mario Andretti Driving School cars at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for a segment that will appear on "Timeless," a 30-part series on ESPN2 that will have Jones traveling the world to participate in sporting activities.

Like many of the amateur racers Sunday, Jones was clamoring to go faster upon unbuckling from his car. Wanna-be Mario Andrettis (first-time drivers at the school) are forced to follow a pace car at around 130 mph to keep the insurance premiums reasonable and smudge marks off the wall.

Jones was still carrying on, talking about setting a new track record at Indy, when he posed for photos with the Andretti Driving School crew.

"I'm gonna put you guys on the Internet," Jones said. "Guys-who-hold-you-back dot-com."

The ratings and interest in this year's Indy 500 were way up, thanks to the presence of female racer Danica Patrick, but winner Dan Wheldon, the first Englishman to cross the yard of bricks first since Graham Hill in 1966, may have been overstating things a tad when he said he had become "bigger than Beckham" -- as in soccer sensation David -- back home.

"In a year or two we'll be putting out numbers as big, if not bigger, than NASCAR," Wheldon added.

While he doesn't have to convince me that Indy-car racing has a lot to offer, they must have spiked that bottle of milk in victory lane with some Jonestown Kool-Aid.

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