UW coaches have been touched by tourney magic

In the year 2000, back when the turn of the century was so enchanting, Lorenzo Romar experienced a miracle. He stood there as pixie dust fell on his sports coat and dared not brush it off.

As the Saint Louis University men's basketball coach, he guided a team from the infirmary to the Big Dance, winning four Conference USA tournament games in four days to complete a resurrection.

So his task this week is difficult yet familiar. Miracles do come in gift packs, don't they?

"I'm packing four suits," said Romar, whose Washington Huskies are now in need of the 4-for-4 magic act this week at the Pac-10 tournament. "That's not a prediction. It's optimism."

Pessimism can't really live at this time of year anyway. March is far too chipper. It's a month for buzzer-beaters and cute story lines. It's a month to believe in nostalgia over logic.

You already know how difficult it will be for Washington to qualify for the NCAA tournament. The only way the Huskies won't dread Selection Sunday is if they win the conference's automatic bid. And the challenge is even greater than simply beating four teams in four days. If the higher seeds win, the Huskies would have to beat three ranked teams in the final three days, concluding with a grudge match against UCLA.

On the eve of this improbable undertaking, at least Romar has a good story. Cameron Dollar, an assistant on that Saint Louis team, can help tell it, too.

It starts with the Billikens losing five of their final six regular-season games. The last of those defeats wasn't even a game. Top-ranked Cincinnati pummeled them, 84-41.

Saint Louis finished conference play at 7-9 and entered the tournament as the No. 7 seed. (The 2007 Huskies: 8-10 and No. 7.)

After the Conference USA bracket was determined, Romar learned his Billikens would have to play Cincinnati again if they survived the first round.

"Our own administration, I think, had scheduled flights coming back the second night," Romar said. "Because if we won the first game, we'd have to play Cincinnati again, and they saw what had just happened to us."

Something unexpected occurred in that rematch with Cincinnati, however. Kenyon Martin, widely regarded as college basketball's best player that season, bumped into Saint Louis' Justin Love while setting a screen and fractured his right leg.

It was an injury that cost the Bearcats a possible national championship. And it was an injury that allowed light to seep into the Billikens.

After Saint Louis won the game, 63-58, Romar noticed a difference in his players. They finally believed.

"In our guys' minds, there was no way we were going to lose," he said.

In winning the Conference USA tournament, Saint Louis defeated four teams — Southern Mississippi, Cincinnati, Tulane and DePaul — that it had lost to during that previous losing stretch.

It was about guts. It was about heart. It was about having the brainpower to believe.

Beware the insides of March.

You never know what college kids possess inside until they're forced to show it.

So we'll find out much about Washington this week.

Logic says the Huskies have won only one game away from home this season. Logic says only one team seeded lower than second (fifth-seeded Oregon in 2003) has ever won the Pac-10 tournament. Logic says Washington's warts still exist, and some team is likely to expose them once more.

Nostalgia offers you a pine cone.

In that 2000 tournament, the Billikens staged a shoot-around each day in their hotel's parking lot. They were just going over the game plan, so they had a pine cone serve as the basketball. Love, who was the MVP of the C-USA tournament, was in charge of keeping the pine cone.

On championship day, Love lost the pine cone. The players and coaches scrambled to find the silly little thing. Luckily, they did.

"It was a little battered and worn, but we continued to use it," Romar said of the pine cone. "Little things like that were fun things that you never forget."

This Huskies team is much more gifted than those Billikens. It's also in a tougher conference. So it's the same situation, right down to a possible quarterfinal matchup against a Washington State team that blew out Washington earlier this season.

If the Huskies adopt an item from nature this week, then you'll know something's up.

"We've just let it be known, not only can it be done, but it has been done," Dollar said before breaking into a grin.

"And there are people around that know all about it."

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com.