It’s No-Pain, No-Gain Tack

It’s doubtful USC Coach Chris Gobrecht would have changed her mind about the Trojans’ grueling nonconference games, even if she had known the outcomes beforehand.

The partial mea culpa delivered by Gobrecht after Saturday’s big loss to Tennessee -- “It may have been a mistake to schedule as many of these top-10 opponents as we did so close together” -- should not make her or other Southland coaches skittish about playing the best teams they can.

Take it from Tennessee Coach Pat Summitt, who says that the benefits of playing top competition outweigh the concerns.

“It’s important to weather the storms,” Summitt said. “I know in 1997, when we were 6-4 in January and went on to have 10 losses, it was a matter of us not giving up on each other. This year, when we lost to Duke, we examined ourselves individually and collectively. If you get through the pain of it and get past it, that’s when you grow.

“Sometimes your losses have to be your greatest lessons.”

By the way, that 10-loss team won the NCAA title.

*

Add Summitt: As a consultant to the Washington Mystics, the Tennessee coach has been closely following the off-season maneuvers of the WNBA franchises -- Miami and Orlando shutting down operations and looking to relocate, Portland uncertain whether Trail Blazer owner Paul Allen will buy the team, Seattle’s team considering a move to another city in the state, and Utah’s team moving to San Antonio.

She sounded nervous about the league’s health and about labor negotiations.

“Anytime you start up a league, players have to be sensitive to making it work,” Summitt said. “Obviously all of the GMs are working hard and [NBA Commissioner] David Stern is behind it. It certainly concerns me.

“It’s time for everyone to get in a room and figure out how to make it work. A lot of teams have lost a lot of money, and there’s been a lot of money put into this league. There’s no question that without the NBA, there would be no league. Sometimes you have to learn to work with people through the process and [endure] growing pains to get where you want to go.”

*

Santa Barbara will play host to sixth-ranked Purdue tonight. The Gauchos would love a full house at the Thunderdome for obvious reasons -- and one not so obvious.

Every year for the last four years, Santa Barbara has designated one home game as a fund-raiser for charity. For every ticket sold beyond 2,500, $2 goes to a charity.

This year the Gauchos are working with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The goal is to eventually raise $5,000 this season to help grant wishes of local children who have life-threatening diseases.

“We want our athletes to be givers, not takers,” said assistant coach Cori Close. “So once a year, we have a game to try and make a difference.”

Close said the idea was struck four years ago when the team decided to raise money for David Clark, a boy whose family had incurred large medical bills in his fight against aplastic anemia, a rare blood disease that keeps the bone marrow from producing healthy cells. Clark is alive today, in part because of the assist by the Gauchos.

Last year the team’s donation went to a fund set up for the surviving children who’d lost parents in the terrorist attacks on the New York Twin Towers.

Close said Santa Barbara usually draws 2,500 in its 6,000-seat arena.

Here’s hoping more people will drop by.