Pac-10 Tournament Talk Resurfaces
For years, Arizona State basketball coach Bill Frieder has been complaining about the absence of a Pac-10 tournament, but few would listen.
Recently, seven of the 10 men’s coaches and seven women’s coaches agreed with him. Only Arizona and Stanford voted against it among men’s teams. The conference wouldn’t disclose which two women’s coaches voted against it. One women’s coach abstained.
Pac-10 presidents and athletic directors discussed the idea earlier this month at a conference meeting and plan to talk about it again next spring.
The league hasn’t had a tournament since 1990, and the earliest it could be brought back is March of the 1998-99 season.
Frieder thinks the perfect place to reinstate the tournament would be America West Arena and said Phoenix was voted the first site to have it.
America West Arena is one of several new facilities that have opened since the Pac-10 last had a tournament. Other new venues that could host the tournament on a rotating basis are the Rose Garden in Portland, San Jose Arena, KeyArena in Seattle and the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim.
The men’s and women’s tournaments would be played in the same city, but more than one facility likely would have to be used.
When the Big Ten voted last week to add a tournament beginning in March 1998, the Pac-10 became the only Division I conference other than the non-scholarship Ivy League to not have a tournament.
“Some people in our league would like to turn this into the Ivy League,” Frieder said. “Now we can’t use the Big Ten as an excuse anymore. It’s going to be a tough issue, but the (school) presidents are talking and money is talking.”
One reason the Pac-10 has not had a tournament is academic concerns.
“One year, 1988, when we went to the Final Four, we were on the road the week before the conference tournament, then for the tournament and then again for the (sub-regionals), the regionals and the Final Four,” said UA men’s coach Lute Olson, who is against reinstating the tournament. “That’s five consecutive weeks on the road missing school.”
Frieder said a solution to that problem is to reduce the number of Pac-10 games to 14 from 18. “Go to Duke and see how they have the ACC tournament and then play three straight weeks of the NCAA Tournament, and, you have to agree, Duke is a school concerned about academics,” Frieder said.
Frieder thinks the lack of a Pac-10 tournament has hurt the conference “immensely.”
“The first year we were here (1990), we got an extra team, UCLA, in the NCAA Tournament because of it, and we got in the NIT,” Frieder said.