News Scrapbook 1986-1988

u__ to Play P pperdine in Conferenee Semifinal ::i-ti s-< , . By CHRIS COBBS, Times Staff Writer SA FRANCISCO-The ~ .i:ersit..LQ{ San Diego has a busy agenda for the weekend. . also was named to the IO man All -WCAC team.

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But the focus of USD, the confer - ence's regular-season champion, was on the business at hand, not on the honors accorded Thursday. After the USD-Pepperdin e game, Santa Clara will face St. Mary's. The two winners will meet Saturday night. and the tourna- ment champion 1s assured of a bid to the NCAA tournament, which begins next week. "I think the tournament has been exciting for everybody, but it's probably a little nervous for Hank," said Coach Jim Hamck of Pepperdme. who rates the Toref os, Please see USD, Pag 1 ·

The Toreros will attempt to hve up to their honors and acclaim, and they also w!ll try to earn their second trip to the NCAA tourna - ment m four years. The spotlight will be squarely on USD, which will meet Peppe\d~ne at 6:30 tonight at the Universi Y of San Francisco in the semifinals of the West Coast Athletic Confer- ence tournament. On Thursday, after a vote of WCAC coaches, the Toreros' Hank Egan was named coach of the year and center Scott Thompson player of the year. Forward Nils Madden

Los Angeles, CA (Los Angeles Co) Times (San Diego Ed.) (Cir. D 50,010) (Cir. S 55,573) MA 6

KE!\' LEVl'IE For The Times USD basketball Coach Hank Egan gives his team instructions during a game. He' ll be doing that tonight against Pepperdine.

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\I ,t h 18 and 26 points Pepperdme has been r>consis tept according to Harrick, w~o said the team is peaking. Of course, the latter could be said of l.JSD 'I ask myself, 'How many straight games can they win?' " Harrick said. "Their advantage is having so many great shooters. It seems hke everybody hits 50% or more. The only ones who don't are the guys who ,hoot the three- po nters." Ega 1's goal toriight 1s o keep his tear:i organized and avoid ore-on- onc play, offensively or defensive- ly ·We know they are talented athleucally, and now they are a veteran club, as well," he said. "We are bigger and stronger, but they are more athleur so the game becomes a rea chess game when th e} make a sub titutJon " Thompson sa 1 d the Toreros un- derstand what's d stake but proba- bly won t be as nervous as they

were in their victory over Loyola Marymount to open the WCAC tournaMent ,ast weekend. ·We're real jacked up," he said. 'We know the whole year rests on these couple of games here th is weekend. I think we play well n big games, and we're going to have a good time." Despite their status wi thin the confer nee. the To reros have ~omethmg ro prove to the wor ld at large as they discovered Thursday when they boarded their flight to San Franc sco. "We'd hke to say good luck to the basketball tea!l" from UCSD, ' the flight attendant said, mistaking the private university in Alcala Park for the University of Califor- nia campus in La Jolla said. "We're used to it." But things could change, as Har- rick said. 'Tris 1s March Madness," he said. "This is crazy t me. Anything can happen.' "We all laughed," Thompson

San Francisco, CA (San Francisco Co.) Chronicle (Cir. D. 630,954) (Cir. S. 483,291)

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AnotherMork Eaton?

The WCAC's Monster

By Pam King

line. Now he has a hook shot, too, and the combination is devastat- ing. "You take away Scott Thomp- son and everyone's equal," said Pepperdine Coach Jim Harrick, whose Waves face the Toreros to- night. "But he makes them un- stoppable." The problem, Harrick said, is that if you collapse on Thompson, San Diego's superb outside shoot- ers (a combined 137-for-303 In 3- pointers) will kill you. And, al- though a smaller, quicker defen- sive center can pester Thompson, he's a good enough passer that the perimeter players get their shots. "It's like having a point guard on the Inside," Egan said. "The efficiency of our offense is due to Scott's ability to see the court and pass and catch the ball. "I played with a big man in college, and when you passed into him, it was like throwing it down a well. Our players love playing with Scott." Brovelli said there's no ques- tion that Thompson could score more than the 15.8 points he's av- eraging, but he can't help but pass when he sees a teammate open for an easy shot. "He has an uncanny ability to know when the defenders are trapping down low," Brovelli said. "If they are, he'll hit the open man. If they're not, he goes to the basket." Even so, Thompson some- times disappears in an effective zone defense. Egan shrugs, and quotes Al McGuire: "A good zone defense can take any player out of a game." Thompson remains level- headed, even when he's being tri- ple-teamed. And eventually, he gets his tip-ins or ends up on the free-throw line, where he is a 77 percent shooter. "He's a monster," Barrick said. "It will definitely be an upset if we can beat that team."

Eventually, certain name comes up in every con- versation about a big, strong college center of unknown po- tential. Mark Eaton. The Utah Jazz took a chance on this 7-foot-4 Goli- ath in 1982, even though he couldn't play his way off the UCLA bench. Today, he's one of the premier shot-blockers in the NBA and a true force Inside the paint. As his coach, Frank Layden, says, "You can't teach height." Which brings us to t he case of one Scott Thompson, another 7- footer. A senior at the University of San Diego, he's the leader of a team that's 24-4 going into to- night's West Coast Athletic Con- ference semifinal game against Pepperdine at 6:30 at USF's Me- morial Gym. One NBA scout called the 250-pounder "The Statue," but scout Marty Blake said he has the ability to be an NBA starter, "if he wants to work at it. He's big and strong, but he needs to learn to move around. He's one of the five or six best centers in the coun- try." Thompson's coach, Hank Egan, admits his center Isn't quick or active, like an Akeem Olajuwon. "He's just starting to become more mobile," Egan said. "It was this year that his weight- to-strength ratio began to im- prove, and he became more ath- letic. Until now, he was so big, but not strong enough to carry it - a late bloomer. God and time have a lot to do with it." In the WCAC, a conference in which most "big men" stand 6-9, Thompson clearly is The Big Man, even though he's dropped about 10 pounds of baby fat this year. Yesterday, he was named the league's MVP, as the central play- er on the conference's dominant team. "It's nice to finally accom- a

San Francisco, CA (San Francisco Co.) Chronicle (Cir. D. 630,954) (Cir. S. 483,291) MAR 7 - 1987

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Toreros r. tY8t a cinch By Jay Posner Times-Advocate Sportswriter

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SCOTT THOMPSON 7-footer is league MVP

Of the 290 Division I college bas- ketball teams in the couptry, 64 will receive bids Sunday to the NCAA tournament. And, of those 290 teams, the Universitv..,of S_an Diego has the ninth-highest wm- ning-percentage. Simple arithmetic, then, tells us the 24-4 Toreros should be one of the select 64. Realit y, however, t~lls us the Toreros are not yet a cmch. There is an easy way for USD to earn a bid: Win the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament and the automatic National Colle- giate Athletic Association berth that goes with it. . The WCAC tournament semifi- nals will be played toni~ht ~t the University of San Francisco s Me- morial Gym. USD, the re~lar-se~- son conference champions, ~ill meet seventh-place Pepperdme (ll-17) at 6:3~ p.m. The nightcap will match third-place St. Marys (17-12) and fifth-place Santa Clara (16-13). The two winners will play Saturday night at 7:30. That's the easy way. The hard way is if the Toreros - who ~ave won 14 straight games, the third- longest streak in the nation - los,e either tonight or Saturday. The_y would then have to hope their overall record is impressive enough to warrant a bid. Observers have placed those odds at about 50-50. USD's Hank Egan, who was named WCAC Coach of the Year Thursday, would rather not take his chances. "I'm not confident at all," Eg~ said of his team's odds should 1t lose this weekend. "If we approach it any other way, we're foolish. To be sure, we've got to win this tour- nament. "I'd like to think we'd have an outside shot if we don't win, ~ut I don't think we should leave 1t to that . We should go after it like it's our last hope. "The way the NCAA selection process has worked recently, if you're west of the _Mississippi Riv- er, you better wm your confer- ence." The Toreros have done that once already, breezing through their 14-game WCAC schedule with only one loss, to Gonzaga. The Bulldogs, who finished second in the regular season, were upset ,by Pepperdine last Friday. Gonzaga's loss did ie Toreros Please see USO, pageJ.2

plish something," said Thompson, the Toreros' leading S<;orer and rebounder. "When you're big, people expect certain things and sometimes it's easier to criticize." Next month, he will play in the Aloha Classie, essentially an exhibition for NBA general man- agers and scouts. "I haven't talked to many scouts," Thompson said, "because I'm trying to keep it to a mini- mum. But If the honors keep flow- ing my way and the team keeps doing well, all that will work out. ' Success here will carry over in my future." USF Coach Jim Brovelli was head coach at San Diego in 1983; and recruited Thompson out of Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacra- mento. "There's no question he's an NBA prospect," he said. "He's . not quick baseline to baseline, but when he gets the ball in the post, he's quick. "When I was recruiting him, I was just drooling. I knew he wasn't quick, but when I saw his hands and soft touch . . ." As a freshman, Brovelli said, Thompson had just one move - a turnaround jumper on the base-

'Ihird-tlm ;'l'hompsoa of S~ ego and Eric White of Pepperdine head this sea- son's All-WCAC team, the league an- nounced yesterday. St. Mary's sophomore Robert J augen, who averaged 12.5 points per game and shot 60 percent from the field to share the league lead for conference games, and USF's first all-WCAC pick in five years, Mark McCathrion (12.1 points average), al- so made the 10-man team. Portland's Greg Anthony, who averaged 15.3 points and 1.9 steals, was a unanimous pick as Freshman of the Year and the only guard cho- sen to the All-WCAC team. Complete team in Scoreboard erections Scott

Escondido, CA (San Diego Co.) Times Advocate (Cir. D. 32,685) (Cir. S. 34,568)

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USD Continued from page C1 no vors. USD matches up much better with the slower Bulldogs than with the quicker Waves. USD won both its meetings against Pepperdine this year, 69- 66 in San Diego and, six days later, 78-73 at Malibu. "We struggled with them twice because we give a little away ath- letic-wise," Egan said. "They had a lot of new players this year, but now they've played 28 games. They've got experience, and they've got new life." Indeed, the Waves' only hope for postseason play is to win twice this weekend and get the WCAC's au- tomatic bid. Conversely, even if USD is ignored by the NCAA, it will almost certainly play iIT the

National Invitational Tourna- ment. Pepperdine is led by senior for- ward Eric White, who Thursday was named to the All-WCAC team for the third straight year. White tied for the conference scoring lead with Loyola Marymount's Mike Yoest at 19.3 points per game. The Waves' hero last week was freshman guard Craig Davis, who had a career-high 28 points, in- cluding 26 in the second half. USD has been paced all year by 7-foot center Scott Thompson, who Thursday was selected confer- ence Player of the Year. Thomp- · son, who was joined on the All- WCAC squad by teammate Nils Madden, is averaging 15.8 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. "The reason for our balance 1s Scott Thompson," Egan said. "His

presence contributes an awful lot. In college, you can take someone away (by double-teaming), but you've got to pay the price. He's forced people to pay the price, and the other people have stepped in and done the job." Recently, the "other people" have been Mark Manor, Paul Leonard and Danny Means, who are shooting a combined 49.6 per- cent from three-point range. Man- or, who has made 19 of 28 long-range shots in his last four games, ranks fifth in the nation in three-point shooting percentage (54.0). The Toreros support their bal- anced offense with a ferocious de- fense that leads the nation in field goal percentage allowed (39.7) . USD is fifth in points allowed, yielding an average of just 60.1 per game.

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