DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997          TAG: 9702260747

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

HEY FANS, IT'S TIME TO GET EXCITED ABOUT ODU

It's tournament time for the Colonial Athletic Association, and you can throw out the records.

Please.

As Lefty Driesell says in a plain-spoken assessment of this weekend's festivities: ``Somebody's going to the NCAAs, and it's not going to be a national contending team.''

The feeling here is that the team will be Virginia Commonwealth, 9-7 in the conference, a mere 14-12 overall. Monday night at the Richmond Coliseum, the Rams should be cutting down the nets.

If they aren't, though, I wouldn't be surprised. No CAA team is superior enough to warrant a strong endorsement.

Following James Madison's loss to Old Dominion Monday at Scope, Driesell said, ``We're just as good as anybody in this tournament.''

If true, that says more about the league than JMU.

``ODU is just as good as anybody in this tournament,'' Driesell went on. ``William and Mary is as good as anybody in the tournament. Everybody is as good as anybody in this tournament.''

We get the point.

On the one hand, no team proved itself much superior to the field. ODU and North Carolina Wilmington finished atop the standings with six losses each.

On the other hand, no CAA club except George Mason exhibited a rank inferiority to the rest of the league. ODU fans can vouch for this. William and Mary may be 8-8, but the Tribe twice shocked the No. 1-seeded Monarchs.

Conventional wisdom has the Monarchs playing much better now after surviving an inexplicable mid-season swoon. ODU resurgence, though, has taken place in Norfolk, site of its four-game winning streak. What happens when Jeff Capel's team travels to Richmond?

Then again, it's not as if the fans at Scope had much of an impact on ODU's victory over JMU. Announced at 6,311, the crowd was without a pulse. It was as passive as a still life.

This was disappointing. James Madison has always been a big rival. But Monday, the juice was missing.

One way to measure a basketball program's popularity is to count noses in the arena, or season tickets sold (if not always used).

Attendance figures don't tell the whole story, though. Enthusiasm can be measured in other ways. You can't always count it, but sometimes you can hear it. Or not, as was the case at Scope.

Perhaps ODU's earlier debacles took the starch out of Monarch boosters. Maybe, too, the lack of a certifiable power in the CAA has muted enthusiasm all over.

Perceptions aside, though, the CAA actually enjoys one of its strongest seasons. The league is higher ranked than usual.

And outside conference play, the CAA got noticed here and there: Last place George Mason upset Colorado, now ranked 19th; VCU beat Big East Pittsburgh; ODU outplayed Pac-10 Washington, SEC Mississippi State; and UNC Charlotte, which is ranked 37th in the Rating Percentage Index.

Going into Monday's play, ODU had an RPI of 109. The highest rated CAA team was East Carolina, at 100.

I leave it to hoop astrophysicists to locate this conference in the basketball galaxy. The CAA is what it is, a wide-open league struggling for a greater identity.

And perhaps never before have more teams had a better opportunity. Not, as Lefty reminds us, to become national players. But to prove they're as good as anybody in their tournament.

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