GU doesn’t take a cavalier view of visit

As the extraordinary grows ordinary, big deals become blasé.

Take, for example, the current dither over Gonzaga basketball, in which the three-overtime epic last month – the best non-March madness, said some – is a faded clipping already. Now it’s all about the 3-pointer off the glass – did he call it or didn’t he? – and magazine covers and all the love or lack thereof from the loathsome career arguers on television, Tony and Romey and the rest.

Unless Adam Morrison wins the Zags another one soon with a half-court hook shot, a la Meadowlark Lemon, the rest of the season may be a study in anticlimax.

In the meantime, Virginia comes to town Saturday. Ho and hum.

You see, the Zags have already dispatched two teams from the Top 25 and lost down-to-the-last-shot stabs against two more. Once again they have faced down Eddie Sutton, and that’s some face. And the Cavaliers are a mere 3-3 so far, coming off a loss to – ugh – Fordham and sporting an RPI of 224.

That’s a bad thing, as it is in cholesterol and golf.

So what’s the big deal?

Well, this: It’s the first time an Atlantic Coast Conference team has deigned to play basketball in this area code, if you don’t count Duke being shipped here – no doubt against its will – for the 1984 NCAA Tournament in Pullman.

The ACC, of course, is where Billy Packer was invented and where he subsequently invented the game, much to James Naismith’s surprise.

The conference has won more NCAA Tournament games than any other, and if not for John Wooden more championships than any conference except the Big Ten.

Tobacco Road means basketball. Also 400,000 smoking deaths each year.

But for years and years, their stature in the game meant that rarely did ACC members feel the need to play non-conference road games – not tournaments or neutral-court “classics” – far beyond their footprint.

Twenty years ago, for instance, in the 1986 season ACC teams played in hostile arenas west of the Mississippi exactly twice – Virginia at Missouri and Clemson at Texas Tech. Maryland hasn’t played a home-and-home series with a school in the Pacific time zone since losing at UNLV in 1985; same goes for Clemson, but going back to 1983.

This is hardly out of cowardice. ACC teams, as you’d expect, make out quite nicely at the gate in their own joints, and there isn’t much incentive to subjecting your team to cross-country flights even in search of a strength-of-schedule bump when you can meet a ranked team an hour plane ride away.

Not that the ACC generally needs to bother with the RPI. League play is cruel and unusual enough.

So how did Virginia at Gonzaga come about?

Gonzaga coach Mark Few recalled it vaguely as two schools looking to strengthen their non-conference schedules, but it may have been more about two schools looking for a couple of attractive home dates.

Jon Oliver is UVa’s executive associate director of athletics and the point person for the new 15,000-seat John Paul Jones Arena, scheduled to open next season.

Oliver – a former associate AD at Washington State – said he had a discussion with Few at the 2004 Final Four in Seattle about a home-and-home.

“It was part of an effort to bring some exciting teams to our new arena,” said Rich Murray, a UVa spokesman. “Jon was aware they were opening their arena, and the timing provided a mutual opportunity. We’re doing the same thing with Arizona and Stanford.”

The Cavs need to fill some seats. They sold out 8,392-seat University Hall just twice last year, and now supply will be about twice that.

Of course, the Cavs also need to get back to the NCAA Tournament. They haven’t been since the Zags and Casey Calvary’s putback knocked them out in 2001 – GU is a neat 6-1 against the ACC – and that’s why Pete Gillen is no longer the coach. UVa had a couple of bubble teams – or vicinity-of-the-bubble teams – during this drought that could have used a quality non-conference victory or two over someone other than High Point or Howard.

Few pointed out that UVa athletic director Craig Littlepage is chairman of the NCAA men’s basketball committee – you know, what remains of the smoke-filled room – and a former head coach himself at Penn and Rutgers who “has a great feel for the game.

“I think he understands what you have to do in scheduling to put yourself in the NCAA Tournament,” Few said. “That committee has been steadfast in their message. We all have games we can control, whether we’re in the Big Ten, ACC or WCC or Pac-10. You can’t just hide behind your league.”

Does Few get the impression more of the so-called BCS teams are getting the message?

“How can I put this?” he said. “The right ones are. And the ones that aren’t deserve to be punished, basically.

“If UConn and Michigan State and Maryland and those types can play a lot of big-time games in the preseason, then everybody can.

“The guys who are hiding behind guarantee games at home don’t deserve any breaks at the end of the year.”

Naturally, Few doesn’t consider it a coup – he’s the guy with the nation’s 10th-ranked team.

But he acknowledges that Virginia remains an outstanding “get” on the schedule, and not only because of the Cavs’ pedigree or the old and stretched notion that nobody wants to play Gonzaga here.

“I think people are always guarded about home-and-homes with anybody, not just us,” he said. “There’s just a limited number of those opportunities now when you factor in all these Battle in Seattles and neutral court games in Las Vegas and New York and wherever.

“Those things have eaten up a lot of true home-and-home opportunities. You have to have a balance. And since our schedule is dictated by two things – strength of schedule and television – that’s going to limit us even more.

“All those neutral-court games are TV matchups against high-RPI teams, and so it can be tough finding the right partner for something like this.”

Not a bad package to find under the tree, ho, ho, ho. And no hum.