From left, Hailey DeGolia, Annie Chandler, Lindsey Kelly and Lara Jackson won the 200 medley relay at last year's NCAA meet. All are back this year.

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If the NCAA selection committee does not include Arizona, ASU and Oregon in its field of 65 teams today, let's hope we don't hear cries of "we wuz robbed."

A senior-laden Oregon club couldn't break .500 in the Pac-10, couldn't win 20 games, and played a lousy nonconference schedule.

A freshman-laden ASU team played an indefensibly weak schedule and went 5-10 down the stretch.

An Arizona team with three McDonald's All-Americans couldn't beat either Oregon or ASU and failed to win 20 games even though it played 33 times.

If any of the three — Arizona, Oregon or ASU — is included in the field, they should be thankful that parity in college basketball has made it possible for average basketball to be rewarded on Selection Sunday.

Frank Busch's UA women's swimming team has finished in second place at the NCAA finals three times, including last year's wild chase in which it scored 477 points, a school record, but couldn't quite overhaul Auburn.

This is probably Busch's deepest and most resourceful women's team at Arizona. When the finals begin Thursday in Columbus, Ohio, the UA will enter 18 swimmers, the maximum number of allowable, and they'll be ranked no worse than a co-favorite against Auburn.

Busch's team is laden with those who scored at last year's meet, including world-record holding relay freestyler Lacey Nymeyer, and returning All-Americans Hailey DeGolia, Anna Turner, Lara Jackson and Annie Chandler, among others.

Busch has worked 19 years to win a national title at Arizona, finishing No. 2 with both his men's and women's teams. This will be his best chance yet.

Through the diligence of Tucson attorney Ted Schmidt, the 2008 College Football Hall of Fame ballot includes 1987 UA consensus All-America safety Chuck Cecil. The nomination process requires some exhausting legwork and Schmidt, who is an executive on the Southern Arizona Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame, took it upon himself to get Cecil's name before the nominating committee. The 10 Hall of Famers will be announced May 1. Schmidt said his next project is to get Tedy Bruschi on the ballot. … Cochise College basketball coach Jerry Carrillo, a UA and Salpointe Catholic grad, will be watching the NCAA tournament with unusual interest. His 2006 ACCAC championship team produced three players who are already in the field of 65: guard Dre Smith of George Mason, forward Frank Borden of American and guard Alex White of Drake. … With the departure of men's basketball coach Mario Ramirez, Pima College athletic director Edgar Soto has a chance to significantly upgrade PCC's long-foundering men's hoops program. There are three dynamic coaching possibilities in the area, including former Ironwood Ridge coach Karl Pieroway, Sierra Vista Buena coach Dave Glasgow and perhaps former UA assistant coach Jim Rosborough. Depending on the numbers — PCC now pays $16,000 for a men's basketball coach — the Aztecs could also check to see if native Tucsonan Lance LaVetter, now director of basketball operations at Washington and a former coach at New Mexico State and Portland, is interested.

A ticket to a March baseball game between the Cubs and White Sox is traditionally the toughest to get at Tucson Electric Park. That has changed. When the Dodgers make their first Tucson spring training appearance in more than 40 years Friday, playing the Diamondbacks at TEP, those who haven't yet purchased tickets will be pushing their luck. The game is sure to draw in excess of 11,000. Already, grass-berm tickets are being sold on the Internet for $17. Seats behind the Dodger dugout are going for $50. … Former UA assistant basketball coach Jessie Evans, pushed out of his job at San Francisco in late December, is "guilty of numerous NCAA secondary violations,'' according to reports in Bay Area newspapers. USF attorney Michael Vartain told reporters that Evans' alleged transgressions "means that the NCAA doesn't trust that your coach is accountable to the program." Evans denied the charges. The case is now likely to go into litigation. … Hassan Adams has left his Italian pro team, Ignis of the B League, after averaging 20.1 points per game. Last week he signed with Siviglia Teramo of Italy, an A League team in a playoff chase. A translated version of the ex-Wildcat's press conference, from Italian to English, said: "He is not specialist, but an athlete who enriches the spin external, able of giving points and bounces.'' Indeed, even through the language barrier. Adams has the spin and the bounces.

The two ranking figures on the Mount Rushmore of Tucson high school sports, former Sahuaro basketball coach Dick McConnell and Amphi football coach Vern Friedli, learned last week that they are being accorded to top honor in American prep sports. Both will be inducted into the National High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame. McConnell and Friedli will be honored June 21-25 in Colorado Springs at the NHSCA's annual convention. Only two Southern Arizona coaches in the last decade have been so honored: St. David baseball coach Jim Crawford and former Marana High School girls basketball coach Mike Dyer. … Tucson postal worker Bob Scofield was honored as one of the top three basketball referees at the Big Sky Conference tournament championship last week. Scofield was one of three men chosen to officiate the Portland State-NAU title game on the league's merit system. … Very good news for UA volleyball coach Dave Rubio: His best player, Whitney Dosty, was cleared to participate, with no restrictions, in spring competition last week. Dosty, of Salpointe Catholic, missed the 2007 season with a knee injury. … If you stayed up until midnight Thursday, watching Spike TV, you saw 40-year-old Tucson legend Sean Elliott toy with two young challengers in a pair of one-on-one basketball games. Elliott won both games 21-4 in the made-for-TV reality special, knocking off Tucson medical supply sales rep Cory Driggs with ease. Elliott, minus a kidney and out of the NBA for four years, looks like he could still play.

If UA athletic director Jim Livengood opts to release women's basketball coach Joan Bonvicini this week, it would leave the Wildcats with just two female head coaches: golf's Shelly Haywood and tennis' Vicky Maes. The NCAA gender equity people would not be pleased. That means Livengood would almost certainly have to hire another female for the job. Cindy Fisher, coach of the NCAA-bound San Diego Toreros, would figure to be a strong possibility, as would Stanford assistant Bobbie Kelsey and Marana native Patty Patton-Shearer, who has won 127 games as a head coach at Division II Fort Lewis (Colo.) and Nebraska-Omaha. … Pac-10 basketball referees have been widely criticized over the last month for some woeful calls that influenced close finishes in the UA-Stanford, UCLA-Stanford, UCLA-Cal and ASU-USC games. The quick reaction is to say that Pac-10 refs are "the worst in college basketball." That's the usual refrain. But during the NCAA tournament every year for the last 23 years, I've listened as media colleagues from every conceivable part of the country — ACC, Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 — all say the same thing about the refs in their conferences. "Worst in the country.'' My opinion is that it is such a difficult game to get right, especially in the final minute of close games, with pushing and shoving everywhere, that it's just part of the game. And it isn't going to get appreciably better (or worse).

Bidding to become a consensus All-American, ex-Salpointe Catholic golfer Sara Brown of Michigan State won her second consecutive tournament last week, this time at Texas A&M. Brown beat the field of 85 golfers by eight strokes. She'll tee it up again in the final week of March in a North Carolina event. … Tucson golfer Ben Kern, who played at Palo Verde High School, won the Gateway Tour's winter series, earning $63,915 in seven Phoenix-area satellite events. Former Salpointe and UA golfer Brian Prouty rallied late in the tour to finish third on back-to-back weeks. He earned $27,243 for No. 8 overall. An unusually long hitter, Prouty averaged 334 yards per drive. He will attempt to qualify for the Nationwide Tour event in Louisiana next week. … Catalina Foothills grad Sage Suffecool is off to a terrific start as a college golfer. In her freshman year at Gonzaga, Suffecool won the Santa Cruz Invitational last week in California. She helped Mark Polich's Falcons to state titles in 2004 and 2006.

Tuesday's Arizona at ASU baseball game is technically a nonleague game; it won't count in the Pac-10 standings. But it has attracted as much interest as a UA-ASU baseball game since the days of Jerry Kindall and Jim Brock.

The game is sold out. It will be televised on Fox Sports Net Arizona. ASU is ranked No. 1 by Collegiate Baseball and by ESPN/USA Today. Arizona is ranked No. 1 by Baseball America.

But it will merely be an appetizer for what is to come at Kindall/Sancet Stadium on May 22-24. That's when the Wildcats and Sun Devils will meet in a three-game series to cap the Pac-10 season.

If interest in UA baseball during the first month of the season is any indication — 4,250 attended Friday's Arizona vs. Cal State-Fullerton game — it might be wise to get your tickets for the May series as soon as possible.