Four From Loaded Pac-10 Among Top-Seeded Teams

By GARY KLEIN

May 23, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Pacific 10 Conference, long regarded as one of college baseball’s best, flexed its muscles Monday when the 64-team NCAA tournament field was announced.

UCLA, Stanford, Arizona State and USC were selected as top-seeded teams for four of the 16 four-team double-elimination regionals that begin Friday.

Winners of the regionals advance to best-of-three super-regionals June 2-4. The eight super-regional champions will play in the College World Series from June 9-17 at Omaha.

UCLA (35-24), Stanford (42-13) and Arizona State (42-13) tied for first place in the Pac-10 with 17-7 conference records. USC (38-18) finished fourth at 16-8.

“We felt this was the strongest we have ever seen the Pac-10,” said Dick Rockwell, chairman of the NCAA Division I baseball committee. “When you look at the strength of what they did outside the conference, the committee felt two [teams] should be rewarded with national seeds and two others with No. 1 [regional seedings].”

South Carolina (52-8) is the top-seeded team nationally, followed by Louisiana State (43-17), Georgia Tech (47-14), Clemson (45-16), Houston (44-15), Florida State (45-15), Arizona State and Stanford.

USC is the top-seeded team in a regional with Big West Conference champion Cal State Fullerton (36-19), West Coast Conference champion Loyola Marymount (39-17) and Virginia Tech (34-23-2) at Fullerton.

UCLA is the top-seeded team at Oklahoma City in a regional with Oklahoma (39-21), Oral Roberts (48-13) and Delaware (37-18).

Arizona State is the top-seeded team at Tempe, Ariz., in a regional with Texas (40-18), Creighton (38-21) and Miami of Ohio (39-21).

Top-seeded Stanford will play host to Alabama (38-22), Nevada (37-17) and Fresno State (40-19) at Palo Alto.

WCC runner-up Pepperdine (36-23) and Long Beach State (31-25), which finished fourth in the Big West, were not among the 35 teams receiving at-large berths.

Rockwell said geographic and attendance considerations were factors in placing USC and Loyola at Fullerton, a regional host for the first time.

Fullerton Coach George Horton said he welcomes the local flavor, but disagreed with the committee’s selection of four Pac-10 representatives as top-seeded teams.

“I don’t get the rationale--a fourth-place team in any conference, no matter what conference, does not have the right to a No. 1 seed,” he said. “It’s not a case of USC not being one of the 16 best, but there has to be some separation in the way the league came out.”

USC Coach Mike Gillespie was pleased with the Trojans’ seeding but acknowledged his team might have benefited if it had been seeded No. 2 and sent elsewhere.

“If I had my druthers, we would not be hooked up with local teams,” he said. “I think it’s very fair to say it’s a rugged regional.”

UCLA Coach Gary Adams, who guided his team to a share of its first conference championship since 1986, said the Bruins are happy to hit the road as they try to return to the World Series for the second time in four years.

“These things you don’t have any control over,” he said. “It’s like the weather and the umpires.”

Defending national champion Miami (37-17-1) extended its own record with its 28th consecutive regional invitation.