Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 44

(SI Sperts Today Pittsburgh Post-lfuuctte WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 1982 17 Eastern 8 becomes 81 today Phil Musick since it quit the league three years to compete as an independent. The Nittany Lions were fairly successful, reaching the National Invitational Tournament once, but they failed in an effort to become the Notre Dame of the East. "We think that being in a league also will help in our other sports," said Penn State athletic director Jim Tarman. "A league is the way to go for Penn State." The Lions, who had a 15-12 record last season, have achieved a 62-49 mark during Dick Harter's four seasons as the head basketball coach. (Continued on Page 18) closed issue," he said.

"I don't know what Holy Cross is going to do." Casale, however, had no doubts that his school's best move was to flee the sinking East Coast Conference to join the Eastern 81. "The Eastern 8 certainly is more prestigious than where we've been," Casale said. "We're joining as a result of continued discussions we've had with West Virginia, Rutgers and Penn State. We tried to stay together the four football-playing institutions formed an unofficial alliance. I've always been an advocate of the total conference concept." Penn State, once a charter member of the Eastern 8, obviously changed its thinking ment, a permanent setting for its league office, a new suit for the Hoopster Rooster, and its members most fervently hope a television package.

The nine-team League Without a Name will include Duquesne, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, St. Bonaventure, George Washington, Rutgers, Penn State and Temple. Holy Cross almost became its 10th member, but the Crusaders decided at the last minute to remain in the ECAC North basketball conference for at least one more season. As late as yesterday afternoon, Temple Athletic Director Ernie Casale was unsure about Holy don't know if it's a By Phil Axelrod Post-Gazette Sports Writer The Eastern 8 Conference is hoping to advance by retreating. Six years ago, Penn State belonged to the Eastern 8 and the league had a team based in Philadelphia.

Today, the erstwhile status quo will be recaptured in a press conference at the New Jersey Meadowlands Complex. There this afternoon the revamped league will expand to nine teams when Temple and Penn State respectively join and re-join the conference with a three-year commitment. All that now remains is for the league to come up with a catchy, numerically-accurate name, a site for its post-season tourna Eastern 9 proves he's a tough Byrd NCAA sells bad seats for final 4 I 4 NEW ORLEANS (AP) They're possibly the worst seats ever sold for an indoor college basketball game a block from the court and 19 stories up. But nobody's buying a pig in a poke, NCAA spokesmen said yesterday. The NCAA has sold more than 61,000 tickets to its final four college basketball championship playoffs on Saturday and Monday, the most ever sold for an indoor basketball game.

A crowd of 75,000 once watched the Harlem Globetrotters play outdoors in Berlin, and the UCLA-Houston game at the Astrodome in 1968 drew 52,693 to set the previous indoor mark. Included in the 61,000 record sale at the Superdome are some admittedly bad seats about a third of the total. They are so bad that the NCAA felt it necessary to conduct a program of disclaimers trying to forestall complaints. "NCAA officials have made the greatest effort to educate ticket buyers in the history of the industry sports or otherwise," said Cliff Wallace, general manager of the Superdome. "It almost came to the point where we were asking, 'Are you real sure you want to buy these said Dave Cawood, public relations director for the NCAA.

The ticket order form contained diagrams showing seats as far as 375 feet away from the court for $16 a little over $5 a game. More desirable seats ranged to courtside at prices of $26 and $36. Two letters went to the purchasers of the $16 seats, warning them that they were way back and pretty far up. Tickets for the most distant 3,000 seats are stamped, "Distant Vision." Big blowups of seating charts are being posted for visitors wanting to check seat locations in advance. Despite the precautions, there'll be some complaining, said Bill Curl, public relations director for the Superdome.

He said the stadium handled 34,036 for the semifinals of the NCAA's Midwest Regional last year and got no real kickback from that trial run. A crowd of 35,077 watched the Jazz and the Philadelphia 76ers play a National Basketball Association game at the Superdome in 1977. But those crowds were contained easily within the seats now selling for $36 and $26, and no major complaints ensued, Curl said. It's the $16 seats, back where the occupants will have to peer over a set of rolling bleachers, that Curl feels will generate the criticism. The court is situated along one sideline of the football field, and a bank of seats from the other sideline rumbles across on rails to provide the basketball configuration.

The $16 seats are those left on the distant sideline above the movable section. Curl said the best view of the game from those seats is afforded on the stadium's six giant television screens. "What it amounts to, is they are paying $16 to sit in the Superdome and cheer for their team and watch the game on television," he said. "Dick Harter is proving to be a man of bis word. Opening line of the coach's biography in the 1982 Penn State basketball media guide.

That word will be found lodged in Dick Harter's craw early this afternoon when the Eastern 9 convenes at the New Jersey Meadowlands complex to announce: That Harter has been flanked and Penn State is rejoining the league; that Temple will provide an increase in the league's numerical designation; that Holy Cross will not. And, unspokingly but no less compelling, that Leland Byrd could give survival lessons to an aardvark. At a league meeting early one morning three springs ago, the historians among you will recall, then-athletic director Ed Czekaj slipped a note of desertion under the league door and the Nittany Lions fled into the dawn. But Byrd who has outlasted far greater trials as the Eastern 9 executive director has managed to pull Penn State back into the fold over objections Harter embraced no fewer than six weeks ago. And the league whose death Byrd was supposed to be presiding over, continues to fight the good fight.

"If you're going to be in a league, you better be in a good league," Harter said here as recently as Feb. 9, leaving absolutely no doubt he considered the Eastern 8 something comparable to the Sally League. Byrd having managed no television contract, Harter turned up his nose at the Eastern 8. Besides, as he'd said often after taking the Penn State job, he had little interest in commanding a lilly-pad. "We want a national program, not a regional one.

That party line remained intact until Joe Paterno's proposed all-sports Eastern conference was kicked into oblivion by Pitt joining the Big East basketball league. And, apparently, only till then. So it is that early this afternoon, Byrd will mount a rostrum to announce Penn State and Temple have been induced to repair the rip in the conference caused by the desertion of Pitt. That he will do so without a broad smile is attributable only to his forgiving nature. What will transpire today is simply the triumph of Leland Byrd, against odds that would've bordered on astronomical a few months ago when Pitt went AWOL and everyone with vocal cords was calling for his head.

The ADs have been Byrd's cross. When the league TV package sank in a maelstrom of confusion two years ago, all eyes turned to Byrd rather than the league television committee. When there was controversy over the league format, Byrd was assumed the guilty party. When first Penn State, then Villanova, jumped ship, no one suggested that it was Czekaj's colleagues rather than Byrd who should've known what was afoot. Hell, he was literally pinned to the wall the morning he was hired.

A half-dozen media sharks, incredulous that Byrd had been named to head the new league, shouldered him against a wall at a press conference eager to ask embarrassing questions and then wondered in print at the foolishness of it all. Fresh from walking the plank as the West Virginia AD, Byrd was without marketing or media experience. As an administrator, he apparently hadn't convinced the folks at WVU. His lone. qualifications seemed to be a willingness to acquiesce to the ADs who hired him and the fact that he was a pretty fair basketball player as a young man.

The Eastern 8 job, it was said, wanted the flamboyance which might've been brought to it by the other candidate, Beano Cook, a network television publicist and bon vivant who can call Roone Arledge on the phone any time he wants to. Yet, the league ADs had tapped this reserved, soft-spoken man and then used a committee to rope his hands behind his back. Obviously, Byrd has loosened his bonds and he can say this morning with confidence, "I feel very good. We'll be stronger than ever. The schools have made the commitments we needed." There are questions to answer, of course.

Can Byrd run down that ever elusive TV package? Will Gale Catlett be permitted to lure the tournament, so successful at the Civic Arena, to Morgantown? Will the league office remain in Green Tree? But the big one has been answered: Could the Eastern 8 and its executive director survive the loss of Pitt? In a breeze. "Hopefully, we'll have more of a selling point with nine teams and the markets they represent," Byrd said of the attempt to entice a television commitment. "We've appointed a committee and it's at work on it." And another committee is at work on deciding a tournament site. And, presumba-bly, yet another is puzzling over the location of the desk in Byrd's office. But the strings have changed hands.

Once, there were eight, each attached to Leland Byrd. Now, they are to be found gathered in his fist, one running to each of the nine league schools. Byrd's has- been a tour de force in survival. The league has known 11 schools, 19 coaches, one unfortunate tournament site, and a fractured television contract. And of the original elements, there remains Rutgers Coach Tom Young and Dr.

Leland Byrd. Associated Press James Worthy, above, and three other blue-chippers should be enough for North Carolina to go all the way. Blme-chippers Portfolio of talented players should pay dividends for UNC Other voices "Williams never saw a shot he didn't like," Blake says of the 6-foot-2-inch junior. "But he's got great range. He's a downtown shooter in the Houston style one pass and a shot.

Their 7-foot Nigerian center, Akeem Abdul Olajuwon, possibly could go in the first round in two years. So could Larry Micheaux and Clyde Dexter. But they've all got to improve." Since Bill Walton and earlier Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, dominated most of UCLA's 10 national championships in 12 years, the blue-chip theory has proven correct. Indiana had three blue-chippers when it won last year. Isiah Thomas and Ray Tolbert were selected in the NBA's first round two months later, and Landon Turner, a 6-10 center and forward, would have been a likely first-round choice this year if he were not in a wheelchair after an automobile accident last summer.

By Dave Anderson. NEW YORK If the blue-chip theory holds up, North Carolina will win the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball championship next Monday night at the Louisiana Super-dome in New Orleans. The blue-chip theory is as basic in basketball as in the stock market. The blue-chip college player will be an immediate or future first-round choice in the National Basketball Association draft. And in recent years the team with the most-advanced blue-chippers always has won the national title.

On that premise, North Carolina's four blue-chippers should be too many even for Georgetown, unless Pat Ewing, the 7-foot freshman center, proves to be worth three blue-chip certificates all by himself. According to Marty Blake, the NBA's director of scouting, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Michael Jordan and Matt Do- In last year's championship game, Indiana defeated North Carolina, 63-50, when the Tar Heels had another blue-chipper, Al Wood, along with three of the four they have now. But last year James Worthy was a sophomore, and Sam Perkins and Matt Doherty were freshmen. Michael Jordan was still in high school. Indiana had four blue-chippers on its undefeated 1976 championship team: Quinn Buckner, Scott May, Bobby Wil-kerson and Kent Benson.

Two years ago, Louisville won with Darrell Griffith and Derek Smith against a UCLA team that had only one blue-chipper, Kiki Vandeweghe. Three years ago, Michigan State won with Earvin (Magic) Johnson, Greg Kelser and an eventual second-round choice, Jay Vincent, who were too much for Indiana State, even with Larry Bird and Carl Nicks. (Continued on Page 22) 1 herty of North Carolina will be eventual first-round choices, and the Tar Heels' playmaker, Jimmy Black, will be a second-round choice this year. In contrast, Georgetown, in Blake's judgment, has only two sure blue-chippers Pat Ewing, with the wingspan of a jumbo jet, and Eric "Sleepy" Floyd, the outside shooter. "Georgetown," adds Blake, "has three other players who could be first-round choices if they develop forwards Anthony Jones and William Morton, and guard Fred Brown.

But they're not at that level now." Looking at the two other Final Four teams, Blake mentions Robert Williams, the Houston guard, and Derek Smith, the Louisville forward, as the only sure first-round selections..