Coaches like mood at McCarthey Center

Aside from San Francisco’s Jessie Evans, most West Coast Conference men’s basketball coaches seem to embrace the idea of playing this year’s league tournament in the home arena of regular-season champion and top-seeded Gonzaga.

Evans said earlier this week that he thought the Bulldogs’ home crowd intimidated the officials during USF’s regular-season finale against the GU in the McCarthey Athletic Center on Monday. And he expressed concern that the same thing might happen during the tournament, which is being hosted by the Zags for the first time in its 20-year history.

Evan’s counterparts, however, said they are looking forward to once again experiencing the atmosphere in GU’s 6,000-seat arena, which opened last season and has sold out for all 26 games the Bulldogs have played there.

“It’s a great facility to play in,” said Santa Clara’s Dick Davey, the dean of WCC coaches. “You’d surely give the advantage to the home team, but it also creates a lot of vigor for the visiting team.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm, they do a great job of promoting the event and it’s a full house every night. That’s exciting for opponents as well as the home team.”

Portland’s Michael Holton said McCarthey creates a “tremendous” environment for a home team.

“It’s a tremendous environment for college basketball, period,” he added. “(Their fans) are so well educated and coordinated in their cheers and what they do. The environment is unbelievable. But I think it energizes the visiting team, too, so what you get is an electric atmosphere.”

Of course, GU’s Mark Few agrees wholeheartedly with Davey and Holton.

“There’s no better venue in the entire league, and there’s no better atmosphere in the entire league,” he said. “The way we draw is second to none, and that’s what college basketball is all about.

“I think the tournament will show itself well up here.”

Gerrity remains doubtful

Pepperdine coach Paul Westphal stopped short of declaring Michael Gerrity, his freshman point guard and leading scorer, out for tonight’s tournament opener against San Diego.

“But I’d say he’s very doubtful,” Westphal added of Gerrity, who was averaging 14.8 points and 3.5 assists prior to being sidelined for the Waves’ last five regular-season games with a stress reaction in his foot.

According to Westphal, Gerrity has been wearing a protecting boot.

“Knowing Michael, he’ll probably want to cast the boot aside and play,” Westphal said, “but I don’t know, yet, what the doctors are going to say.”

Women know the score

In the 12 seasons prior to this one, the West Coast Conference sent nine women’s teams to the NCAA Tournament in addition to the winner of the automatic bid.

Another 11 teams made it to the Women’s National Invitation Tournament in the past seven seasons.

But that includes the last three seasons when only the WCC Tournament champion went dancin’ and Gonzaga, despite a 27-3 record, couldn’t get in last year after losing to Santa Clara in the tourney finale.

Why?

“That’s a good question,” Loyola Marymount coach Julie Wilhoit said. “That’s a question we have to be asking ourselves every day and every year.”

Sure it could be a down year but the power ranking for the conference was about 13 last year and GU had to settle for the WNIT. And this year the RPI has fallen to 24 out of 32 leagues, commissioner Michael Gilleran said Thursday afternoon between sessions of the league tournament at McCarthey Athletic Center.

“That’s not good,” Gilleran said. “No excuses. We’re scheduling decently but we have not performed. You don’t get credit for constant losing. Are we concerned? Of course, our schools put a lot of money into this sport. We had an NCAA champion soccer team and an NCAA semifinal volleyball team. We should aspire to that.”

Only four years ago the league RPI was seven.

“We have to all get better as a conference,” GU coach Kelly Graves said. “Simply put, we have to play better teams and beat those teams. That’s the only way it gets done (but) it has to be done through all eight teams, not just the ones on top.”

Despite its gaudy record last year, GU didn’t get in and it wasn’t all non-league scheduling, Gilleran said.

“No one stepped up to be a big-time opponent for them,” he said. “If the league, two through eight, had done better, they would have gotten in.”

Graves improved his schedule. The Bulldogs played highly-ranked Tennessee, Maryland and Michigan State in a preseason round robin.

“I don’t mean to harp, I know what it’s like to be (on bottom),” said Wilhoit, who won three of the last five Coach of the Year awards. “It’s getting top teams beating some top teams and our bottom half performing on a higher level and winning some key games.”

Gonzaga, after a miserable opening half in its opener against Maryland, played respectably against Tennessee and Michigan State but was never a real threat to win.

“We tried to schedule up this year but quite frankly if I would have re-thought it, I would have tried to play good teams but maybe not the level of teams we did,” Graves said. “We weren’t ready for that. Maybe that sends a message but at the same time you have to beat them. … And that’s conference-wide.”

Three-pointers

For the first time in the 20-year history of the WCC men’s tournament, Pepperdine comes in without having a first-team all-conference player on its roster. … No. 2 seeded Loyola Marymount is the only tournament team with three players – Matthew Knight, Brandon Worth and Wes Wardrop – ranked among the league’s top 15 scorers. And all were named to the 10-player all-conference team.