Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 17, 1992                   TAG: 9203170017
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DOUG DOUGHTY ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAVS RATED 65TH IN A 64-TEAM FIELD

That's the word from ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan, who said Virginia may have been the 65th team for a 64-team field.

"They were that close," said Corrigan, who had spoken with Duke athletic director Tom Butters, a member of the committee. "My understanding is they were at the very edge. It was a tough decision, one that did not make Tom particularly happy."

Butters was not allowed to participate in any discussion of ACC teams, although sources indicate the Cavaliers may have been among the chosen until they were taken off the board late in the afternoon.

"There wasn't anyone there who wasn't sensitive that this was going to raise questions in Virginia and across the country, perhaps," Butters said. "No amount of explaining on my part is going to solve that."

Before the selections, there was much debate over the merits of Virginia and Wake Forest, which had a better overall record (17-11 to Virginia's 15-13), but trailed the Cavaliers in the ACC standings. Wake appeared to make the field comfortably as a ninth seed.

"I'm not sure Wake made it that comfortably," Corrigan said. "I think Virginia would have been a ninth-seed, too. Who wants to play 'em. After you put them in, you place them.

"I was on the committee for six years and I was literally tormented by the time I came home. And that was when I was at Notre Dame, where we weren't in the conference."

The final choice apparently came down to Virginia and Stanford, which defeated the Cavaliers 74-60 in September but had no victories over teams ranked in the top 25 in the NCAA's power index.