Men's Basketball | Few and far apart in NCAA homestretch

Jim Boeheim of Syracuse and Gary Williams of Maryland are two of the visitors who have come west in past years to take part in Gonzaga coach Mark Few's Coaches Versus Cancer golf fundraiser in Spokane.

If the three of them were teeing it up today, what a tale they could tell of last weekend. No doubt Williams and Boeheim, the national-championship coaches of 2002 and 2003, would reach one conclusion:

Few has cracked the code, even if he is the one without a ring.

Let's backtrack to a telling 24 hours of Saturday and Sunday. Syracuse (18-12), trying mightily to avoid last year's snub by the NCAA selection committee, led Pittsburgh by 11 inside the final television timeout. Then it began slowing the pace, suffered a killer turnover in the last 15 seconds and lost.

Boeheim punctuated the final seconds with a technical foul. Then he refused to take questions at his postgame media gathering.

Here's how an overheated fan expressed his frustration on the Syracuse Post-Standard's Web site:

"I am totally fed up with Jimmy B. Tired of his zone defenses, minimal offensive plays and lack of player discipline down the stretch. It is time for a change."

Sunday brought Clemson, the Atlantic Coast Conference's third-best team, to Maryland (18-12), which is battling to avoid missing the NCAA tournament for the third time in four years. Ahead by 20 with less than 12 minutes left, the Terps coughed up the lead and lost.

Within a few hours, there were 109 posts on a Maryland fan Web site weighing in on the topic of Williams. Said one:

"How much longer do we as fans have to put up with mediocrity? There is too much talent in the D.C./Baltimore corridor for this to keep happening. No top-25 ranking, no top-10 ranking, no longer relevant in the ACC, no longer relevant on the national scene. A coaching change is needed in the offseason."

Wedged between those heartbreakers was Gonzaga's 88-76 victory over St. Mary's, clinching an eighth straight West Coast Conference championship. At 24-6, the Zags are hardly without flaws, but they're undoubtedly headed for a 10th straight NCAA appearance, a streak bettered currently by only five programs.

In the big conferences, unless you're somebody like Duke, Kansas, North Carolina or UCLA, the schools eat each other alive. And the coach that wins an NCAA title and plays a couple of years in the NIT gets ground up in the anonymity of message-board savagery.

The other day, as Williams was licking post-Clemson wounds on the ACC conference call, I asked him whether Few had found a success/survival formula.

"Mark's done a great job in taking Gonzaga to where it is," said Williams. "They play a schedule now that they're respected for whom they play before conference."

Williams, a veteran of the ACC, Big East and Big Ten, bears the scars of some of those years. He added, "Some years, you think you're really close, but you don't get a break or whatever and all of a sudden, you're a .500 team. You think you're a real good basketball team, but you really can't say a lot about it.

"The toughest thing is, it gradually builds. You don't see that game you're definitely going to win. You can lose three or four in a row and play well, and that builds up in your mind, and now you've got to play Carolina or somebody like that. That's when it gets really tough.

"Everybody's got the budgets now, everybody spends the same on recruiting or whatever, so nobody really has an edge. It's going to be competitive every year in the major conferences."

So, the debate: Do you have to go to a Bowl Championship Series school (or Memphis) to win a national title? Few might get an overture from Indiana as he did two years ago, or he could take the bait from longtime friend Pat Kilkenny, the Oregon athletic director, whenever Ernie Kent's reign is done there.

And maybe there will be a title for him somewhere out there. But it won't come without a few cautionary tales.

Breakouts and Busts

Our annual list of the season's breakthrough teams and the disappointments:

Uppers

1. Drake. Nobody picked the Bulldogs higher than eighth in the Missouri Valley. Drake is 25-4 and Keno Davis is likely national coach of the year.

2. Arizona State. Consensus No. 9 choice in Pac-10 is 18-10 and should be NCAA team.

3. Purdue. Figured to be good, not conference-contending, 23-7 good.

4. Miami (Fla.). ACC last-place finisher in '07 is 21-8.

5. Morgan State. Was 13-18 last year, now 19-9 and leading the MEAC. The coach? Todd Bozeman, the ex-Cal wheeler-dealer. The nickname? Golden Bears.

Downers

1. North Carolina State. Blue Ribbon yearbook's choice for No. 17 nationally is just 15-14.

2. Syracuse. Three ex-McDonald's All-Americans, and on the wrong side of the bubble.

3. Fordham. Atlantic-10 team is 11-16 after an 18-12 season last year, with everybody of note back.

4. Illinois. At 12-17, has lost its way after title-game run in 2005.

5. Montana. Media pick to win the Big Sky, the Griz (14-15) lost by 52 to Portland State on senior night in Missoula, worst home defeat in 94 years.

Good to the Bone

When Ken Bone, the former Seattle Pacific coach and ex-Washington assistant, took the Portland State job three years ago, he saw potential where others didn't.

"I felt strongly we could be as good as anybody in this league, year in and year out," Bone said earlier this week.

So far, so good. The Vikings are 21-9, won the Big Sky Conference regular-season title, and host the league's postseason tournament, needing two wins to get to the NCAA for the first time in school history.

"There's a little bit of a buzz," Bone said.

Bone says Washington transfer Phil Nelson, sitting out this year, "is probably the best player in the program," and two other redshirting transfers "are pretty good, too. I'd be very surprised if we're not as good next year."

Bone is busy with the Vikings, but don't sleep on him as a candidate for the Oregon State job. The downtrodden Beavers would like a bigger name like Randy Bennett of St. Mary's, but they could do worse than a solid basketball man with lots of Northwest contacts.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com