By Craig Degel
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 28, 1998

Wildcats ready for rough crowd

Ian Mayer Arizona Daily Wildcat UA junior guard Jason Terry (31) shoots for three in Sunday's game against Oregon State. The Wildcats will play the Stanford Cardinal this Thursday in California.

While it may not have the mystique of Duke's Cameron Indoor Arena, Maples Pavilion - home of fourth-ranked Stanford - is quickly becoming a house of horrors for visiting teams.

Just ask troubled UCLA center Jelani McCoy.

During the Cardinal's 93-80 win over the Bruins on Jan. 17, the Maples crowd serenaded McCoy, who was reportedly suspended for a positive drug test earlier in the season, with chants of "marijauna ... marijuana" whenever he touched the ball.

"I expect the same for Miles (Simon) or Mike Bibby," UA sophomore Eugene Edgerson said. "But that's part of the game to try and frustrate your opponent any way you can."

Edgerson for one, welcomes that kind of environment.

"Maples is going to be rockin," he said. "We should just take them out of the game early."

Arizona junior Jason Terry, who plays with the same kind of emotion that Edgerson does, thinks he can feed off of that kind of crowd, no matter who they cheer for.

"We'll let them do their thing," Terry said. "This game is important to us because this will probably decide the Pac-10 Championship."

If this floor's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'

The Maples Pavilion floor is also an advantage for the Cardinal (18-0 overall, 7-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference). It is a springboard-type floor - McKale Center will have one installed after the season - that bounces as much as 1/4 of an inch when the students begin to bounce up and down.

That can cause problems for an opposing team unaccustomed to shooting the ball off a trampoline.

"The Pac-10 needs to make sure they don't allow the students to bounce when you're shooting free throws," UA head coach Lute Olson said.

One positive note, however, is that Arizona tends to shoot well at Maples and has played well despite not wining there since 1995. Last season, the Wildcats (17-3,7-0 Pac-10) lost on a last-second shot by Pete Sauer. Over the last ten years, the winning team's average margin of victory in this series is a mere five points.

From Lavin with love

Much has been made of Steve Lavin's statement that Stanford - not Arizona - is the team from the conference with the best chance of going to the Final Four.

Try finding anyone in Tucson, or Palo Alto, Calif., for that matter, who agrees with the UCLA coach.

"Lavin tends to get a little excited about things," Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said. "Arizona is the defending national champions with everybody back. That would indicate to me that they have a good chance."

The Wildcats, for the most part, brush off Lavin's comment but do admit that it provides some motivation.

"That really motivates us," Edgerson said. "Thursday we're going to play and Lavin's going to have some words to eat."

All in favor ... say aye

If a vote ever came on whether to continue the conference tournament, count Olson among the nays.

The Pac-10 is one of the last conferences in America to play a full conference schedule and Olson thinks the tournament is a waste of a school's time.

"Conference tournaments have no value whatsoever except finances for some leagues," Olson said.

Montgomery, whose players attend classes on the quarter system - which end and begin around tournament time - said he feels another week of conference play would cause too many scheduling problems.

"My point is that after 18 games you should be able to determine who the best is," Montgomery said. "Maybe when only the conference champion went to the tournament it was important, but now, with 64 teams in, it doesn't have the significance it once had."