Gimino: Budinger Pac-10′s top frosh

So how could 3 other freshmen top him for all-conference honors?

At 6:48 p.m., the Pac-10 office sent out a correction to its all-conference men’s basketball team.

That explains it, I thought.

I had spent most of Monday afternoon wondering why the league’s all-conference team had nine players. Where was the 10th?

The conference has been in the habit of honoring 10, sometimes 11 if there is a tie, since the second season of the league, 1978-79.

And, while it was at it, I figured, the league must have noticed the chasm of logic regarding the postseason honors for the league’s freshmen.

Arizona’s Chase Budinger was selected the Pac-10 freshman of the year, but three other freshmen – common sense says they must be less-deserving – were chosen honorable mention all-conference. Budinger was not.

Make sense to you?

Me neither.

The three are Spencer Hawes of Washington, Brook Lopez of Stanford and Ryan Anderson of California.

“Don’t get me going on that,” Arizona coach Lute Olson said.

So, I eagerly opened up the late e-mail from the Pac-10 and, alas, the correction merely pointed out that the first name of UCLA’s Arron Afflalo was misspelled in the original release.

There you have it.

While the league’s coaches are mostly geniuses on the court, they might not be brainiacs at the ballot box, and the league just gets this postseason awards thing all wrong.

There is no argument here about Afflalo being chosen the conference player of the year, or Budinger being the freshman of the year, or Washington State’s Tony Bennett being the coach of the year.

Fine choices, all.

Ah, but we have questions.

Why does the 10-member all-conference team have nine players?

Pac-10 assistant public relations director Dave Hirsch, who was unavailable for comment late Monday afternoon, told UA officials that players needed to be listed on more than 50 percent of the coaches’ ballots to be all-conference.

Since a coach can’t vote for his own guy, that means a player must be on five of the other nine ballots.

“Frankly, we as coaches have never been told that someone had to be named on ‘x’ number of ballots in order to be selected. I thought it was a 10-man team,” Olson said.

“There are probably other coaches in the league who feel really upset about their guy not making it.”

Yeah, like Lute.

“How Ivan Radenovic was not named All-Pac-10. . . . I’m shocked,” Olson said.

“I think it’s a travesty. And I’m sure other coaches want to talk with the Pac-10 office to see where this came up where they only name nine guys. To me, that’s ridiculous.”

The way it works is that each coach submits to the Pac-10 office a list of worthy players, ranked in order. Olson said he helped organize the method a few years ago because, as he said, who better knows the true value of a team’s players than their own coach?

The full ballot, with the recommendations, was sent to the coaches a few weeks ago, with the votes due at the Pac-10 office by Sunday.

In Radenovic’s case, Olson said, “I would almost guarantee most of those ballots were turned in before Saturday.”

That was when Radenovic had one of the best performances of anybody’s season – 37 points, nine rebounds and seven assists with no turnovers in an overtime win at Stanford.

But we don’t want to turn this into a gripe about Radenovic’s absence from the team, although if we could pick just one UA player to be first-team all-league, we would have chosen him over Marcus Williams. Both are deserving.

The main gripe is the league seems out of step with its all-conference teams, which might be trivial compared to wins and losses, but they do matter to players and coaches and the fans in the upper deck.

What I want to see is a five-man all-conference team.

Then pick a second team.

And, heck, the league is so good, let’s choose a third team, too.

That is, ahem, how the ACC does it.

Throwing 10 players together on an all-conference team, as the Pac-10 does, just seems so . . . so . . . wimpy.

Make some decisions, fellas. Get together on a conference call and hash it out. The football coaches do.

And if you have too many laudable candidates for your all-freshman team, too bad. Cut it to five. This season’s freshman team has six. If somebody has to have his feelings hurt, so be it.

While we’re at it, where’s the all-defensive team? I mean, even the WAC selects an all-defensive team. The Pac-10 can’t?

At least there was one sensible thing, courtesy of Radenovic, to come out of Monday’s bloopers.

“I didn’t come to Arizona to win awards,” he said. “I came to win games.”

That’s a sentiment that needs no corrections.

———

PAC-10 TOURNAMENT

No. 5 Arizona (20-9) at No. 4 Oregon (23-7)

When: 1:20 p.m. Thursday

TV: FSNA

If UA wins, it would play the UCLA-Cal/Oregon St. winner at 7 p.m. Friday.