Big Eight

LOS ANGELES -- If the scriptwriters here had their way, Adrian Autry would be playing in the NCAA West Regional final tomorrow.Autry, the Syracuse point guard, had zero points, three fouls and five turnovers in the first half of the Orangemen's Sweet 16 encounter with top-seeded Missouri last night. He scored 26 points in the second half to bring Syracuse back from a 12-point deficit with eight minutes to play, but Missouri regrouped for a 98-88, overtime victory that brought Autry and the Orangemen back to reality.

Some things to consider before you try to fill out your office pool bracket:East RegionalWho's Hot: North Carolina (1). The real Carolina surfaced two weeks ago with that impressive victory over Duke at Cameron, then survived rigors of ACC tournament.Who's Not: Indiana (5). The Hoosiers have been an enigma. I still have trouble believing they lost to Minnesota by 50.Coaches to Watch: Dean Smith of Carolina is a Hall of Famer attempting to win a second consecutive national championship, but the most intriguing coaches here are Bob Knight of Indiana, who must butt heads with the media after butting heads with Sheron Wilkinson last week, and tempestuous John Chaney of Temple (4)

What Fang Mitchell remembers most about Missouri is its desire."That was a team that absolutely didn't want to lose," the Coppin State coach said of Navy's first-round opponent in Thursday's NCAA West Regional. "They out-willed us, and this Coppin team had a pretty strong will."The Eagles visited Missouri Dec. 19 during their preseason tour of nonconference powers and almost pulled off a major upset before a 12-foot jumper by Lamont Frazier beat them at the buzzer, 64-63.For Navy to equal that effort against the West's top seed, Mitchell says the Midshipmen will have to be resilient inside and hope the Tigers do not enjoy a hot night of jump shooting.

The final AP college basketball poll didn't match the topseedings of the NCAA tournament. It did represent the season, though: There was one more change at No. 1.North Carolina used its Atlantic Coast Conference tournament title to jump from fourth to first today, the Tar Heels' fifth week as the top-ranked team. Arkansas, which had been No. 1 the last four weeks, fell one spot after losing in the Southeastern Conference tournament semifinals.Purdue, which won the Big Ten title yesterday, moved from sixth to third and that's when the national media panel and the NCAA Selection Committee stopped agreeing.

These ought to be great times for Atlantic 10 commissioner Ron Bertovich. His conference has never had more television exposure, and two of his teams, fifth-ranked Temple and eighth-ranked Massachusetts, appear poised to make a lot of noise in the NCAA tournament.But there is much upheaval in Bertovich's world, as the map of PTC college basketball threatens to change as much as a map of Europe."I don't think this is going to end for another couple of years. Thiis going to go on for quite some time," Bertovich said.

Only one thinking day left until the NCAA tournament, leaving little time to grab a pencil, reach for your wallet and dive into some murky, unpredictable water:Your office pool.You've pored over the team capsules, squinted at USA Today's computer ratings and flipped on ESPN to catch Dick Vitale's picks.And you're still having trouble.Or you don't know North Carolina from Coastal Carolina, pick teams because you like their nickname and hope Kansas wins it all because your Aunty Em went there.

"Conference tournaments are dinosaurs and they should be done away with," said Billy Tubbs, leaving absolutely no doubt where the Oklahoma coach stood on the controversial question.Of course, it should be pointed out here that the Sooners were among a half-dozen teams that surprisingly were left out of the 64-team field beginning play Thursday in the NCAA tournament.The number of disappointed customers was about par for this spring ritual rapidly taking on the aura of a three-week Mardi Gras smack in the middle of Lent.

In many ways, the dramatic rise of the Big East Conference paralleled college basketball's explosion during the 1980s: more television exposure, not to mention more revenue, led to nearly unmatched success.By the middle of the decade, the Big East had become the standard against which other conferences measured their progress. In 1985, three teams from the then-6-year-old conference reached the Final Four in Lexington, Ky."You had great marquee players like [Patrick] Ewing and [Chris] Mullin, you had a lot of coaching personalities and you had some great teams," said Maryland coach Gary Williams, who was in the conference at Boston College from 1982 to 1986.

Roy Kramer has had a lot of difficult jobs in his life. As athletic director at Vanderbilt, he tried to revive the sagging fortunes of the Commodores' football and basketball teams. And, in his current position as commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, he has overseen the league's expansion into the largest and most complex in the nation.But those jobs are a lot less stressful than being chairman of the selection committee for the NCAA Division I basketball tournament. Dave Gavitt, who held the position for several years while he was commissioner of the Big East Conference, once said, "It's the kind of job where you can make enemies a lot faster than you can make friends."

NEW YORK -- How nice of No. 1 Duke and No. 9 North Carolina to get together last night at the Dean Dome and provide a warm-up act for the really big game of the week:No. 3 Kansas at No. 2 Oklahoma State Saturday in Stillwater, Okla.Yup, it's finally time to yield to the incessant breast-beating from the Plains States -- or is it Plain States? -- and admit the Big Eight has long since arrived, and made itself comfortable, among the elite of college hoops."We're the best league in the country," said Oklahoma coach Billy Tubbs, who can point to the Big Eight's .882 (97-13)