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Friday, July 25, 2008

Familiar Name on NIT Board

By Rick Wright
Journal Staff Writer
      OK, everybody — check out the names of people on the National Invitation Tournament Selection Committee and try to figure out why that group is meeting in the Albuquerque area next week:
    Don DeVoe. Gene Keady. Reggie Minton. C.M. Newton (chairman). Jack Powers. Carroll Williams. Rudy Davalos.
    Was it Keady, the longtime Purdue coach who in 1988 turned down the UNM men's basketball job — and later suffered two NCAA Tournament losses with the Boilermakers in the Pit, one as a No. 1 seed in 1996? Guess again.
    If your guess was Minton, the former Air Force coach whose fond memories of Albuquerque include 14 consecutive road losses to the Lobos, no. Wrong.
    Who, then? Davalos, who served for 14 eventful years (1992-2006) as the University of New Mexico's athletics director?
    Correct. Give yourself a Starbucks card, but only a $10 one. Hey, it wasn't that tough a quiz.
    Davalos, 69, is only a part-time Albuquerque resident. He and his wife, Gail, spend about 6 1/2 months a year at their retirement home in Horseshoe Bay, Texas, about an hour northwest of Austin.
    Still, when Newton told him he was looking for a meeting site west of the Mississippi, then said he was leaning toward Las Vegas, Nev., Davalos had what he thought was a better idea.
    "I told C.M., 'Vegas is awful hot in July,'" Davalos said. "I suggested Albuquerque because the NCAA Selection Committee (of which Davalos twice was a member) has met at the Hyatt Tamaya several times.
    "C.M. checked with the NCAA and checked with some of the other (NIT) committee members, and they're all excited about coming."
    Davalos was named to the NIT committee two years ago. That and his role as chairman of the New Mexico Bowl executive board, he said, keep him involved in college athletics.
    "It's fun," he said. "Those are the two areas that (maintain) the ties I've had, still doing things in sports."
    Davalos said the two-day committee meeting (Monday and Tuesday) will focus on the NIT Season Tip-Off.
    "We feel like the postseason NIT is on good footing right now because it's very well respected now," he said. "You're not getting in because you have the big arena or because you give the NIT money or whatever."
    The NCAA purchased and assumed operation of the NIT in 2005.
    The NIT Season Tip-Off, Davalos said, is trying to deal with the proliferation of exempt preseason tournaments.
    "It's tough, because there's something like 30 of them now," he said.
    Next November, the UNM men's basketball team is playing in the Cancun Challenge. The Lobos are guaranteed two games at the Pit and two games in Mexico on a neutral court, win or lose — and those four games count as one toward their NCAA-sanctioned allotment of games.
    The NIT Season Tip-Off is an exempt event as well. But it's a one-and-done tournament, and no one is guaranteed even one home game, let alone two. For the NIT committee, populating a 16-team bracket has become a challenge.
    "We're in competition with promoters that are trying to make a buck," Davalos said.
   

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