SPORTS
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, February 25, 1993
9
Tournament selection process is never easy
NCAA at-large picks difficult for committee
The Associated Press
OVERLAND PARK — Parity in college basketball will make seeding the NCAA tournament the hardest part of the selection process this year, the head of the selection committee said yesterday.
Picking the 34 at-large teams for the tournament is always difficult, but will be no more difficult this year than any other year, said Tom Butters, athletic director at Duke and chairman of
the Division I Men's Basketball Committee.
There will be a substantial amount of difficulty in making sure the committee seeds teams appropriately, Butters said.
Butters also said there was a possibility a team with 17 or 18 victories could get left out of the tournament because teams were so evenly matched this year.
"Probably the greatest concern for me is making certain you select the right 34 teams," Butters said. "Once that is done, the seeding process becomes important. You certainly can play your way out of a bad seed. You can't play your way into the tournament if you have not been selected."
The nine-member committee will
meet in Kansas City, Mo., on March 11 and hold intensive sessions before announcing the 64-team bracket on March 14.
Butters said 20 victories was not necessarily a magic number to get into the tournament.
"I can't tell you that a team that wins 15 or 16 games is worse than a team that wins 22 or 23 until all the factors are considered," he said. "I don't think there is a magic number."
Butters said he personally believed a team should have a winning record in its conference to be considered, but that there could be extinguishing circumstances. He offered the example of a team that lost a key player to injury during the conference portion of its schedule and wound up with an overall winning record, but a losing
record in its conference.
Any team that gets at least one vote from a committee member is put on a board and has to fail what Butters called the "nitty grity" test to come down.
The "nitty gritty" includes recommendations from an advisory board of coaches; record against Division 1 teams; overall power rating; nonconference and conference records; road records; the record in the last 10 games; records against ranked teams; record against automatic qualifiers to the tournament; records against other teams under consideration for the tournament.
Butters, in his fifth year on the committee, said the group worked hard to make sure regions were evenly matched. He said he was disappointed by criticism from Arizona coach Lute Olson, who said the West Regional traditionally had been the touchest.
After the teams are selected and the seedings have been made, the single-most critical procedure is to make sure the brackets are equal. Butters said.
"The committee spends an immense amount of effort and time doing that," he said. "If in fact we have made mistakes in the past, they certainly have not been intentional."
Butters is opposed to expanding the tournament field. He said the postseason tournament used by all conferences except the Pacific-10, the Big 10 and the Ivy League gave almost every Division I school a chance to make the tournament.
Women's tennis rises to top
Kansas to face No.7 Georgia in tournament
By Blake Spurney
<ansan sportswriter
KANSAN file photo
The No. 20 Kansas women's tennis team will compete today through Saturday in the prestigious National Indoors at Madison, Wis., for the first time in the program's existence.
Kansas coach Chuck Merzbacher said that only the top programs in the nation are invited to play in the 16-team field. He called it the national championship for indoor tennis.
"This is a historic time for Kansas women's tennis," he said.
Kansas' first round opponent will be No. 7 Georgia, and Merzbach said he liked the Jayhawks' chances to advance.
"We feel like we're a very good indoor team, and we feel that that helps us going into the tournament," he said. "Don't be surprised if you see Kansas and Stanford in the semis."
Stanford is a perennial superpower in women's tennis.
Sophomore Rebecca Jensen serves the ball in practice earlier this season. Today, the women's tennis team will play its first round match, against No. 7 Georgia, at the National Indoor in Madison, Wis.
Sophomore Nora Koves, Kansas No.2 singles player, agreed.
"We have a really good chance to beat them," she said. "We'll see what happens."
Kansas, which is unseeded in the tournament, matches up well against No. 4-seeded Georgia, Merzbacher said.
Last year, the women's team went to the NCAAs for the first time in school history.
A Kansas victory today will most likely guarantee the team a trip to the NCAA Championships in May, which are held in Gainesville, Fla.
"If we beat Georgia, make reservations in Gainesville," Merzbacher said.
If the Jayhawks do win, their second round opponent would be the winner of the Arizona/Arizona State match.
Kansas qualified for the tournament in December, when the team was ranked first in the Midwest region.
The No.1 team from each region will be competing, and the rest of the bracket will consist of the highest ranking teams still available.
Merzbacher said that Kansas was invited because of the team's success last fall and the previous spring.
When the new tennis polls come out, Kansas will probably no longer be the top-ranked team in its
That is because Brigham Young University, then No. 2 in the Midwest, defeated the Jayhawks in a January dual.
After the tournament, the next match for the 'Hawks will be March 7 against Notre Dame in Lawrence. Conference play does not begin until April 3, when Kansas travels to Ames, Iowa to face Iowa State.
region.
Swimmer dives back into action after injury
Kansan sportswriter
By Matt Doyle
Kansas swimmer Dan Philipps has found out a lot about adjustments during his freshman season this year.
He adjusted from high school swimming to collegiate swimming without much difficulty and earned the Big Eight Conference Swimmer of the Month honor for December.
"I knew the team was relying on me, and if I didn't recover from this injury I would've felt I was letting the team down," Philips said.
But in January, Philips had to adjust to life without swimming when he broke his left wrist after he slipped on the pool deck before a meet at Minnesota.
Philipps recovered from the injury quickly and returned to compete for the Jayhawks in the meet against Nebraska earlier this month.
A broken wrist was nothing new to Philipps, who has broken each wrist. But he was not allowed to swim in actual competition with a cast on his wrist. He had been able to swim with a cast on his wrist after each of the previous injuries.
Kempf did allow Philippines to continue to train with the team each day. Philips said that his training, except for the butterfly stroke, was not hampered by the burden of wearing the cast.
"I could do all the training that everyone else on the team was doing," he said. "I couldn't do the butterfly
because the stroke was so lopsided because of the cast."
The injury was supposed to keep Philips out of competitions for six weeks, which meant his first competition would have been next week's Big Eight Championships at Oklahoma City.
Philippus, with his left wrist heavily taped, competed in three events that day. His best performance, a second-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle, was also the most disappointing for him.
But his wrist healed quickly enough to allow him to swim against Nebraska on Feb. 6.
"I thought I performed pretty well, but I was also down on myself after the Nebraska meet," he said. "I let their guy barely touch me out in the 200 freestyle."
The 'Huskers Gary Albertyn beat Philipps by .37 seconds in the 200 freestyle.
"Dan had just got his cast off a couple days before that meet." Kempf said. "I thought he did a great job that day, considering the circumstances."
Philippus bounced back the following week in the meet against Southern Illinois. He turned in his best performance of the season with a second-place finish in the 100 butterfly against the Salukis with a time of 50.2 seconds.
"The wrist was 100 percent for the SIU meet, and I've got my stroke back now," he said. "Everything's back to normal now."
BRIEFS
Bowlers finish fourth in conference match
Kansan staff report
The Kansas men's bowling team concluded its regular season last weekend, finishing fourth in the eight-team Great Plains Intercollegiate Bowling Conference Match.
Nebraska, ranked third nationally, won the match. Kansas finished eight points behind the second-place team. Kansas senior Jay Kreitzer earned Most Valuable Player honors in the conference. He posted a 22-8 individual record, the best in the league.
Reeves' late heave aids Cowboys against Mizzou
The Associated Press
The Jayhawks travel to Manhattan this weekend to compete in the Association of College Union International Regional Tournament. If Kansas finishes in the top four there, it will qualify for the sectional tournament in Albquercue, N.M., in mid-March.
STILLWATER, Okla. — Bryant Reeves' desperation three-pointer at the buzzer tucked the game at the end of regulation, and Oklahoma State took a quick lie in overtime on its way to beating Missouri 77-73 last night.
Reeves' first career three-pointer — the 7-foot sophomore was 0-of-1 lifetime — came after Jevon Crudup's three-pointer with two seconds left had given Missouri a 64-61 lead.
After a timeout, Reeves took an inbound pass just across the half-court line, wheeled and tossed up a two-handed shot from 45 feet that banked in as the buzzer sounded.
Oklahoma State is now 17-5 overall and 7-4 in the Big Eight Conference, and Missouri is 15-11 and 4-7.
SWIMMER
Ed Riddle
Senior 'Hawk appreciates four years
Within a few months' time, six seniors from the Kansas men's swim team will retire.
Finishing up a career is something very emotional for any athlete. After many years of long, tedious training and physical punishment, it may seem odd, but I know it will be difficult to say goodbye.
Being a co-captain this year has been very eventful for me and has enabled me to have a better perspective on what a true team is all about. Spending as much time together as a close team does, these people soon become more than just special friends — they become family.
They are in the water with you every day, fighting the rigors of workouts and the fatigue of exhausting dual meets. And along with the constant strive to become better athletes, we all share a common goal: to be the best we possibly can be to ourselves and to each other and to push extremely hard for a winning season.
This season has already been a winning season for me. With the considerable strength and depth of our Kansas men's swim team, some positive things are really starting to happen.
The season began with one of the toughest dual meet schedules ever. We faced several nationally ranked teams. This highly competitive level allowed us to take many positive strides. Even when we competed as complete underdogs, we always came away with much due respect.
Never before have I seen a team as talented and as focused on improving. This intense attitude will without a doubt be carried into the Big Eight Conference Championships March 4-6 and the NCAA Championships soon after.
I'm extremely proud to be a Jayhawk and a member of the Kansas swim team. Even though I have had much success in my career here, I still look for continued improvement in myself and my team. When we enter the pool at the Big Eights and NCAAs, we will be there only to be the best.
In finishing my career, I look back on all these experiences with great emotion and gratitude, and look forward to some incredibly fast swimming as we finish up our season.
What a great season it's been thus far, and what an unforgettable four years.
Thanks, and I speak for us all.
Ed Riddle is a Topeka senior major ing In psychology.