Thursday, January 28, 1999
Basketball Notebook
Advantage at home turns ugly
When people discuss home-court advantages in the Pac-10, Oregon
State’s Gill Coliseum usually isn’t the first place to come to
mind. But, things are slowly turning around in Corvallis.
The Beavers are 4-0 in conference play at home and have won nine
straight at home – their longest winning streak since 1991.
Included in that streak were wins over UCLA and Arizona – two teams
that were in the Top 10 at the time.
But, some say the OSU home-court advantage isn’t a fair one.
This year the university decided to sit students on the floor
behind the opponents’ bench, a situation that other conference
schools avoid.
This caused problems in OSU’s sweep of the Arizona schools last
weekend.
First, in the victory over Arizona State, there were rumored to
be racial comments directed at ASU head coach Rob Evans, an African
American.
"Some of the things that were being said back there were kind of
out of line," he said. "The remarks were not in the context of what
I would consider racist, but it wasn’t pretty for my wife, I’ll
tell you that."
Two nights later, in OSU’s victory over Arizona, students
actually stole some uniforms and jackets from the Wildcats’
bench.
And though Arizona head coach Lute Olson said he heard no racist
comments, he didn’t like what he did hear.
"The language was gross," he said.
"In our case it was just that they needed a class in English or
something. I think something needs to be done with that."
Most conference teams sit visiting fans behind the visiting
bench.
"I think you’re asking for trouble putting kids behind the
bench," Olson said. "I think it’s a time bomb."
Oregon suffers tough losses
While Oregon State is busy surprising everybody with its success
at home, down the road in Eugene, the Ducks can’t find a way to win
in always-tough McArthur Court.
Oregon has lost all four of its conference home games, but only
by a combined nine points.
The Ducks’ losses at home include two-point losses to Arizona
and UCLA, a 64-60 loss to Arizona State, and an 85-84 loss to USC
in which the Trojans’ Adam Spanich hit two three-pointers in the
final three seconds to win the game.
"We need to make a few more breaks for ourselves," head coach
Ernie Kent said.
"We have looked at the tapes and found areas where we can
improve and win a few more ball games."
"The mood is very positive. This team is a group with a lot of
character and a lot of pride," Kent said. "The key thing is you’re
going to get through the adversity, the key thing is to stay
positive."
Trio of Pac-10 teams in rankings
Once again, the only Pac-10 teams to appear in the rankings are
Stanford, UCLA and Arizona.
In both the AP and ESPN/USA Today Coaches polls, Stanford
remained steady at No. 3, while UCLA jumped up a few spots to No.
11 after blowout victories over USC and Louisville. After its loss
to Oregon State, Arizona fell to 12th in the coaches poll, and 13th
in the AP.
Arizona State received some votes in the AP poll, while
California, Washington and Oregon State received votes in the
coaches poll.
These polls are much more friendly to the conference than the
computers are.
In the RPI rankings only Stanford (No. 2) is in the top 15. The
computers, which rank all 310 teams in Division I spit out the
following rankings: UCLA (16th), Arizona (20th), Washington (29th),
Oregon (37th), California (53rd), Arizona State (67th), USC (68th),
Oregon State (101st) and Washington State (105th).
Notes compiled by Brent Boyd, Daily Bruin senior staff.
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