From Ncaas To An Nit Wannabe

Their season on call-waiting, the Gonzaga Bulldogs have no games this week but plenty of opponents.

Miami of Ohio. BYU. Missouri. Alabama-Birmingham. Houston.

Any school good enough to win its conference basketball tournament but otherwise of dubious cachet.

It works like this: each time a Detroit Mercy upsets a Wisconsin-Green Bay, the NCAA tournament bouncers guarding the door at Studio 64 must rearrange the queue. Mercy gets in, Green Bay waits on deck and the Gonzagas and Santa Claras of college hoops hail a cab to Club NIT and hope they can still get a table.

But in the wake of their West Coast Conference championship game loss to Portland, the Bulldogs themselves are the vaguest of celebrities.

The NCAA bid never comes. And let this be no shock - 50-50 odds on the NIT are generous.

“If things are logical, we’re in,” offered coach Dan Fitzgerald, “but this is not a logical deal. There are a lot of scenarios that bump us out.”

Until then, the Bulldogs can practice, posture and politic. Nothing more.

Practice resumes Thursday. The posturing and politicking have been under way since Sunday, when Fitzgerald began making Gonzaga’s case relative to Santa Clara, the WCC co-champs who flamed out in their own gym.

There was lots of lively Irish rhetoric and muddy campaigning - in other words, he did a Dole. But Fitzgerald was on the other guy’s turf then, and by the time he deplaned in Spokane on Tuesday he was less strident.

“I’d like us both to get into the NCAA, but I don’t see it,” Fitzgerald said. “I would be really disappointed if we didn’t get some consideration with them, but I don’t think they’re our competition in that field. Our competition comes from the other conferences.

“Now, they could very easily be our competition in the NIT. They have a marquee player, more national publicity - I think they’re in the NIT.”

And he dreads, as do his players, that Gonzaga may not be.

“You want to practice hoping that you’re going to play for sure, but that’s not even a guarantee,” said senior Jon Kinloch. “It would be pretty anticlimactic to lose your last game, practice for three or four days and then not get a bid for either tournament.”

Well, let’s consider that.

The Zags won’t see themselves on the CBS big board come Sunday not because they’re not worthy, necessarily. But just as they ran out of time after a dreadful first half against Portland on Monday night, they’ll run out of space.

Automatic berths will fill half the NCAA field, and another 20-25 will be taken by big-name also-rans. Then the selectors will throw a rope to those teams with gaudy records who fell overboard this week.

So Green Bay with its 25 wins gets in. Bradley makes it. Davidson - another 25-game winner. Maybe Arkansas-Little Rock. Even the College of Charleston, which made it two years ago with the same 24-3 record it has now, looks likely even though it hasn’t been Division I long enough to play in the Trans-America Athletic Conference tournament.

“Every upset,” Fitzgerald noted, “is a defeat for us.”

And the other party? In 1981, the NIT told Gonzaga to print tickets for a home game and then didn’t choose the Bulldogs at all. That’s pretty much the all-purpose anecdote in any NIT conversation.

History shows us this New York cabal keeps a limited number of spots open for its friends out West. A guess says three will go to the Pac-10 (Washington State, Washington and Oregon), and two or three to the WAC (Fresno State, Colorado State and possibly BYU). The Big Sky and the Big West usually get a bid. Santa Clara, as noted, looks like a lock.

So where do the Bulldogs fit in?

“Geographically, with Washington or WSU,” Fitzgerald said. “I think it’s logical that we play one of them. But these are the same people who thought Minnesota was closer to Pullman than Spokane a few years ago. If they pass geography this year, I’m confident.”

But that geography lesson will reveal that the Zags have already lost to both WSU and the Huskies.

“Could be a problem,” Fitzgerald admitted.

Again, worthiness isn’t the issue. The 21 wins this year, the 103 in the last four, last year’s NCAA appearance, the NIT in ‘94 - all of that is significant, but possibly irrelevant.

“If we do get the NIT bid, it’d be a challenge for our team,” Kinloch said. “It takes a little time to regroup and decide the NIT isn’t bad and I don’t want to come across like that’s the only option.”

It’s not. But realistically, it’s the only option they want to think about.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review