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From the booth: Maui Invite promises a hoops luau


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By Ryan Casey
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday, November 17, 2005
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Poor, poor Matt Mahar.

As the head coach of the Chaminade men's basketball team, he has the task of preparing his Silverswords to face No. 4 Michigan State on Monday.

Should they somehow get past the Spartans, then No. 10 Arizona, Arkansas, No. 3 Connecticut, No. 9 Gonzaga, Kansas or No. 24 Maryland could be up next.

Ho-hum. Just another day at the office for Mahar, whose Division II team serves as the host of next week's EA Sports Maui Invitational that helps kick off the 2005-06 season.

"To start off against Michigan State is certainly a monumental task," said Mahar in a teleconference last week, in what is an early favorite as the understatement of the year.

As Dave Gavitt, the tournament's chairman, so aptly put, "We haven't done young Matt Mahar any favors."

No, Mr. Gavitt, you certainly haven't. But then again, you haven't done any of the other teams any favors, either.

"I think it's the greatest tournament going outside of the NCAA Tournament," said Gonzaga head coach Mark Few, whose team drew a first-round matchup with Maryland. "I think it's a great way to kind of get a barometer of where your team is at and where they need to be relative to the national caliber of play that you're going to see over there."

"That being said, my heart sunk when Maryland showed up as our opponent," he said.

The coach on the opposing bench, Gary Williams of the Terrapins, has been around a while, so take notice when he says something like this: "I've never seen a field this good."

We haven't even gotten to the Hall of Famers yet.

Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun, inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in September, might have had the best perspective on the tough field, saying it would provide his Huskies an early jump on postseason-caliber competition.

"This is a unique opportunity that you could actually play, hypothetically, a Michigan State, a Maryland and an Arkansas or Kansas or Arizona," said Calhoun, whose team will play Arkansas in the first round. "These are going to be games that are going to be highlighted by the (NCAA Tournament selection) committee."

Arizona head coach Lute Olson, another Naismith Hall-of-Famer, thinks the tough competition awaiting his team will be a benefit as the season wears on.

"I've always been of the opinion that you learn from playing the best competition that you can play," he said. "I've said many times, I'd rather lose one by one or two (points) then win one by 40 because you don't learn anything from the 40-point win."

Should Arizona advance past its first-round game with Kansas, the Wildcats would face either Connecticut or Arkansas.

The head coach of the Razorbacks, Stan Heath, has seen his team make dramatic improvements - from 9-19 his first year to 18-12 last year - but it's the imposing field that looms, not his past success, that has likely kept him preoccupied for most of the offseason.

"I don't really want to look past the first game," he said. "If you look past that first game, I think we - anybody's - going to have some problems."

Any way you slice it, the 2005 version of the invitational will likely be remembered as one of the greatest preseason tournament fields.

"This, in my opinion, is the best preseason matchups in a tournament situation that I've ever seen," Olson said.

Thinking back over all the things the 71-year-old has seen: four Final Fours, 21 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, 18 seasons with 20-plus wins, 51 NBA draft picks, 741 wins and (oh, by the way) a national championship, I'm going to take his word for it.

Ryan Casey is a journalism junior and the sports director at KAMP Student Radio. His radio show can be heard Wednesdays from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1570 AM or at Letter to the Editor

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