Dec. 14, 2006

Sean Sutton is chasing a record that can only be tied, and it hasn't been for 82 years.

The first-year coach has No. 15 Oklahoma State off to a 10-0 start, one of nine unbeaten teams in Division I entering this weekend's games.

Only one man - Norman Shepard at North Carolina in 1923-24 - has gone unbeaten in his first season as a head coach. The Tar Heels went 26-0 that season and were selected national champions by the Helms Foundation (the first NCAA tournament would come 15 years later).

The odds are long for Sutton to match Shepard, since the last team to have an undefeated season was Indiana in 1975-76, but one coach - and his star player - came close a few years later.

Bill Hodges was in his first year as coach at Indiana State when Larry Bird led the Sycamores to a 33-1 record in 1978-79, losing to Michigan State and Magic Johnson in the NCAA championship game.

Two other coaches had one-loss seasons as rookies: Lou Rossini went 21-1 at Columbia in 1950-51, and Tom Gola led La Salle to a 23-1 record in 1968-69.

The other unbeaten teams through Friday's games were: No. 1 UCLA (8-0), No. 2 Pittsburgh (10-0), No. 8 Wichita State (7-0), No. 14 Connecticut (8-0), No. 22 Oregon (8-0), Clemson (10-0), Southern Mississippi (7-0) and Central Florida (6-0).

On the other side of the won-loss record, there were four winless teams entering the weekend: Delaware (0-7), Iona (0-7), St. Francis, N.Y. (0-11) and Southern University (0-10).

The last team to go a season without a win was Savannah State, which was 0-28 in 2004-05.

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REMEMBERING EVANSVILLE: Wednesday was the 29th anniversary of the plane crash that killed all 14 members of the Evansville basketball team.

There weren't any major ceremonies or remembrances of the event, but Wallace Graves, the president of the university when the crash occurred, said he believes next week's release of "We Are Marshall," the film based on the 1970 plane crash involving Marshall's football team, will bring back memories of the tragedy that befell the Purple Aces.

"Wherever I travel in the world, I always run into somebody - once they find that I'm from Evansville - who says they remember" where they were when they heard about the Dec. 13, 1977, crash that killed all 29 people on board. "I think it's one of those events that lingers in the minds of people for a long, long time."

The Evansville team was traveling to Middle Tennessee State when the twin-engine DC-3 crashed 90 seconds after takeoff.

On Nov. 14, 1970, the Marshall football team was returning from a game against East Carolina when the jet it was on crashed into a hill near the Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, W.Va., killing all 75 on board.

The day after the Evansville crash, the president of Marshall University called Graves and offered to send one of the West Virginia school's vice presidents to help the small Methodist school deal with the tragedy.

Graves declined.

"I told him how much I appreciated that ... and I would call on him if we needed him," he said. "We managed without him."

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LONG WAIT: UNLV's 58-49 victory over then-No. 20 Nevada last weekend was the Runnin' Rebels' first road win over a ranked team since they beat No. 15 New Mexico State 86-74 on Feb. 25, 1991.

That UNLV team featured Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, Greg Anthony and Anderson Hunt and was coached by Jerry Tarkanian. The Runnin' Rebels went on to lose to Duke in the national semifinals as they tried to become the first repeat national champions since UCLA's seven-year run ended in 1973.

The current UNLV team is well aware of the history.

"This was huge for us," senior point guard Kevin Kruger, the son of coach Lon Kruger, said after beating Nevada. "We want to get the UNLV program back to the way it was in the glory years."

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SERIES OVER: Gonzaga's 97-77 victory over Washington last weekend was the last in a series dominated recently by the smaller school.

The win was the eighth in the last nine meetings for the Bulldogs, who trail 29-14 all-time in the in-state matchup.

Washington coach Lorenzo Romar opted to discontinue the series, which resumed on an annual basis in the 1996-97 season, for at least the next two seasons in order to build a higher-profile schedule for Washington.

The Huskies started home-and-home series with LSU and Pittsburgh for this and next season. In 2007-08, they will play in the Pac-10/Big 12 Challenge and the NIT Season Tip-Off.

"The games we're playing in place of Gonzaga, at LSU, the Big 12 challenge at Texas A&M, the Preseason NIT, those games are going to be televised on a national television audience," Romar said. "Everyone around the country will see those games as opposed to just the state. Eventually, we'll end up doing both, it just didn't work out for now."

Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth - a driving force in helping the West Coast Conference school build one of the country's top nonconference schedules in an attempt to shed the "mid-major" label - dryly noted in October that the Huskies were "raising themselves to our level" when asked about Washington's new scheduling philosophy.

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FILL OF PHILLY: Fordham suddenly has fallen in love with the City of Brotherly Love.

The Rams beat Temple in the regular-season finale last season to snap a 34-game losing streak in Philadelphia, a drought that started in December 1990. They started a run the other way by winning 77-60 at Penn last week.

The suddenly confidence-philled Rams play at La Salle on Jan. 27.

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THIS WEEK: Oklahoma State puts its perfect record on the line with a game at Tennessee on Monday and against Pittsburgh at Oklahoma City on Thursday. ... Wednesday has two great intersectional matchups with Memphis at Arizona and LSU at Washington. ... One of the most intense border wars resumes Tuesday with Illinois meeting Missouri at St. Louis. ... On Thursday, Duke plays Gonzaga at Madison Square Garden, the building where the Bulldogs beat North Carolina, the Atlantic Coast Conference's other marquee program, last month. ... Freshman sensation Greg Oden gets his first major test against other big men on Saturday when Ohio State plays at Florida and frontcourt stars Joakim Noah and Al Horford on Saturday.