Whatever You Do, Don't Sell That Cow. By Tom Danehy NOTES FROM THE NCAA Tournament: Who knew? After all those close losses in Pac-10 play, we thought the Arizona Wildcats were just a bunch of, you know, close losers. Now, after one weekend's play in the NCAA Tournament, we find they've transformed themselves into close winners. Seventy-five percent of the teams in the tourney are done for the year, but the ostensibly underachieving Cats are still alive. Most improbable. Maybe there's something to that notion that sports builds character, after all. No wait, Allen Iverson plays basketball, doesn't he? The first game of the tournament had a sickening familiarity to it. The Cats had all they could handle with South Alabama, a team that moved slower than Fife Symington's legal case. Arizona trailed almost the entire game. Cat fans everywhere were scanning the Web to find the location of that cave Timothy McVeigh tried to buy, the one "at the end of a dirt road, out in the middle of nowhere," perchance to hide out until the stench of a year in which the football team got blasted by ASU and the basketball team lost another first-rounder settled. Like until the Millenium, maybe. Or the one after that. But then the Cats did an amazing thing. They pulled their heads out of their butts (each unto his own, lest this take on a tone of weirdness), and they bore down to the task. They went on an incredible run in which they erased a 10-point deficit and replaced it with an insurmountable advantage in a span of a few minutes. The monkey was off their backs--at least for this year. It would have been very easy for the Cats to lose that game. All they had to do was play not-to-lose rather than play to win. Alas, they appeared to be doing the former for much of the game. The onus of being in a program mostly (and mostly incorrectly) known for its first-round exits from the NCAAs had to weigh heavily on the coaches and players, whether they admit it or not. Plus, it's hard playing against a team like that. It gets boring guarding somebody for a long time. Even people who love to play defense can get ground down by the pace of such a game. To their credit, South Alabama stuck with that nasty strategy and almost pulled off the upset. It's still ugly basketball, however. After having to endure the slings and arrows of know-nothing transplanted Midwesterners over the past decade, I'm smiling the big smile now that there are four Pac-10 teams in the Sweet 16. In most years, there aren't four Pac-10 teams in the Sour 64. UCLA had the best seed (number two) and was considered most likely to reach this round. But Stanford has been the most impressive. They handled Oklahoma and then stuffed third-seeded Wake Forest, running out to a huge lead and then enduring a few tense moments down the stretch before coming away with a 72-66 win. The Cardinal used a great strategy against the nation's best big man, Tim Duncan. Stanford threw several bodies at him, making him earn almost half of his 18 points at the free-throw line. Cal has been the biggest surprise. After losing the Pac-10's leading scorer near the end of the year, the Golden Bears beat ASU and then Arizona, and now two teams in the NCAAs. If Cal coach Ben Braun doesn't get serious consideration for national Coach of the Year, something is seriously wrong. As for Arizona, they're about where they should be, I guess. Face it, the two teams they beat weren't scary, except perhaps in the way they represented another opportunity for an early Cat exit. But Arizona took care of them both, coming from behind in both games to do so. Don't be surprised if they play Kansas tough. Lute Olson didn't lash out at the media, but he did bristle at the mention that Arizona has gone out in the first round three out of the past five years. He correctly pointed out that the Cats have gone out early three out of the past 10 years. They've also made it to the Sweet 16 six of those 10 years. Only Kansas and North Carolina have done better. That's pretty fair company for a program some weenies love to criticize. What are the chances all four Pac-10 teams can reach the Final Four? Oh, about the same as Fife Symington running unopposed in 1998. Even if the outcomes were entirely random, there would be only a 1:256 chance that all four Pac teams would make it. Then throw in the fact that Cal and Arizona are double-digit underdogs against North Carolina and Kansas, respectively, while Stanford is a two-point underdog to Utah. (Only UCLA is favored to win its next game, and then by only a modest five-point margin.) It's nice to dream about, though, isn't it? By the way, if it happened, it would be Arizona vs. Cal and UCLA vs. Stanford in the semis. UA vs. UCLA for the national championship, anyone? Now that No. 2 seed South Carolina got knocked off by No. 15 Coppin State, will Arizona stop leaping to everyone's tongues when talk of first-round upsets come to mind? Don't count on it. Arizona's going to be the King of Chokers for years to come. That's just the way people's minds work. There's a really vulgar story that explains the way people's minds work. I'll have to leave out the dirty stuff, but mostly it goes, "You can play billiards all your life and nobody ever calls you a pool shark; but (engage in a particular act but once) and all of a sudden you're a (colloquialism for someone who engages in that particular act)." The Cats are going to have to reach the Sweet 16 a whole lotta times in a row before that stigma goes away. But at least now they're one of three teams (along with Syracuse in 1991 and South Carolina last week) to lose to a 15th seed in the first round. This, of course, would all be moot if the refs hadn't been afraid of black people and had called a foul on the last-second shot by 16th-seeded Princeton in their one-point loss to No. 1 Georgetown a few years ago. Now that would've been an anchor for Georgetown to lug around. And who deserves an anchor more than the smug, smarmy Hoyas? Finally, let me say: A.J. Bramlett??!! I don't know what he's been drinking for breakfast, but like Gene Hackman said in Bonnie and Clyde, "Whatever you do, don't sell that cow."

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth