They Fall to Sleepers in Seattle

A depressing season of living in denial came to the right place, the city of Seattle, to finally wake up and smell the coffee.

It began in November, droned on into December and January, and began to get really annoying in February and March. But we did what we could to ignore it, to refute it.

They said: “West Coast basketball is down this year.�

We said: “What about Gonzaga?�

They said: “The Pac-10 isn’t what it used to be.�

We said: “What about Stanford?�

What about Gonzaga?

Gone in the second round of the NCAA tournament, blown out, 91-72, by Nevada, a school that had been winless in the NCAA tournament before Thursday.

What about Stanford?

Also knocked out in the second round, 70-67, by an Alabama team that scored all of five points in the first 13 minutes of Saturday’s second half.

What about the ammunition we needed to extend this argument at least as far as the Sweet 16?

Well, we still have those two tradition-laden hotbeds of basketball excellence, Stockton and Reno.

Today, Pacific plays Kansas in a second-round game in Kansas City, hoping to join Nevada in the round of 16. Pacific and Nevada, the last two schools west of the Rockies still standing in the 2004 NCAA tournament.

Just as everybody expected.

Just as soon as we learn how to spell and pronounce the names of the best Pacific and Nevada players.

(Helpful study tip No. 1: Nevada’s junior forward spells his name Kevinn Pinkney. That’s two n’s in Kevinn, two n’s in Pinkney and 20 points on nine-for-13 shooting against Gonzaga.)

(Helpful study tip No. 2: Nevada’s second-leading scorer against Gonzaga, with 19 points, was Todd Okeson. That’s Okeson. Not Okafor. Okeson plays guard for Nevada. Okafor plays center for Connecticut. One more way to tell them apart: When Emeka Okafor scores a basket, he doesn’t bulge his eyes, pound his chest, hop and skip, pump his arms and/or tug on the front of his jersey to let everybody watching know which school he just scored for. Okeson does that. It must come with playing for Nevada. In Reno, it can be tough getting the word out.)

People are starting to call Nevada the Cinderella of this year’s tournament, but that doesn’t sound quite right. The last time Cinderella passed through Reno, she wound up pawning her gown and glass slippers to keep her spot at the blackjack table.

Nevada’s basketball team calls itself the Wolf Pack, a more appropriate fit. A wolf pack is nomadic, always on the move, and that pretty much summarizes the last 35 years for the university’s athletic department. Since the 1968-69 season, Nevada has played in five conferences, including the Big West, where it was briefly an annual rival of Pacific’s.

Today, Nevada is a member of the Western Athletic Conference, which hadn’t gone anywhere in the NCAA tournament since Tulsa reached the fourth round in 2000. Nevada last appeared in the tournament in 1985, losing in the first round in a memorable tale of two wolf packs, losing to North Carolina State.

Since then, Nevada has spent a lot of time ordering new athletic department stationery, but it’s also kept an eye on the yearly big basketball tournament. And it has taken notes.

In 1999, a No. 10-seeded team named Gonzaga took this road to the Sweet 16: It upset Minnesota of the Big Ten in the first round, then knocked off the No. 2-seeded team in Seattle.

Sound familiar?

In 2004, Nevada has followed those footprints closely. Seeded 10th in the St. Louis Regional, Nevada upset another Big Ten opponent, Michigan State, in the first round, then took out the No. 2-seeded team in Seattle.

Only this time, that No. 2-seeded team was Gonzaga.

In 1999, when Gonzaga played the role of shocker instead of shockee, the No. 2-seeded team going out in the second round was Stanford, which completes a full circle so eerie, no wonder the Cardinal was rattled in the second half against Alabama.

Of course, Stanford had to be unnerved going into the game, having been forced to spend most of the week in its least-favorite city. The Cardinal, seeded No. 1 in the Phoenix Regional, ends its season 30-2. Or, to break it down geographically:

Stanford’s record in games played anywhere but Seattle: 29-0.

Stanford’s record in Seattle: 1-2.

Both Cardinal defeats came in the Emerald City. Stanford was unbeaten until it lost its regular-season finale to Washington in Seattle on March 6. Stanford was on another winning streak, four in a row, when it lost again in Seattle, this time to Alabama, despite holding a 13-point lead with 8 minutes 40 seconds remaining.

More eeriness: Seattle is where UCLA won its last national basketball championship, in 1995. An assistant on Jim Harrick’s staff that season: Mark Gottfried, now Alabama’s coach.

For Stanford, second-round elimination has become a disturbing trend. Five times in the last six years, Stanford has exited the tournament at this stage.

Three days in, this tournament is also out of Pac-10 teams. Arizona lost on Thursday, Washington on Friday, Stanford on Saturday, leaving the Pac-10 without a team in the round of 16 for only the fifth time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 -- but only the second time since 1987.

They said it was a down year for Pac-10 and West Coast basketball. Or, as many fans inside KeyArena voiced it during the final seconds of Stanford’s season-ending defeat, “O-ver-rated! O-ver-rated!�

We didn’t need to hear it.

Seeing it more than sufficed.