By Dayton Morinaga
Advertiser Staff Writer
TULSA, Okla. — Of all the cities ...
The University of Hawai‘i men’s basketball team will leave Tulsa today for Dayton, Ohio, the same city where an investigative report on foreign basketball players appeared in the Dayton Daily News yesterday.
Hawai‘i guard Predrag Savovic, the team’s leading scorer who is from Yugoslavia, was one of the players briefly mentioned in the lengthy article.
"It doesn’t bother me," Hawai‘i coach Riley Wallace said. "We know everybody on our team is in good standing (with the NCAA), especially after what we went through with Haim (Shimonovich)."
Savovic and Shimonovich are two of the seven foreign players for Hawai‘i, which will face Syracuse in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday. The Dayton Daily News report stated that Savovic played for a professional team in Yugoslavia but did not receive any payment, which he said is true.
"I did nothing wrong," he said. "Everybody knows I played for that team back home. I have nothing to hide."
Further, Savovic was originally recruited by Alabama-Birmingham before transferring to Hawai‘i in 1999, meaning he passed NCAA clearance at both schools.
Shimonovich, a freshman, had to sit out the first 22 games of this season because he played in a professional league in Israel, but also did not receive payment.
The Dayton Daily News story accused several foreign players of playing in pro leagues prior to attending American colleges, while others were "placed" in selected schools through agents.
When asked if the local media in Dayton could become a distraction because of Hawai‘i’s abundance of foreign players, Wallace said, "I won’t let it be. They can talk about basketball and nothing else."
 Ostler OK: Senior center Troy Ostler has been diagnosed with a mild sprain of his left ankle, and is expected to start Friday’s NCAA Tournament game.
Ostler, who is second on the team with 15.3 points per game and first with 6.0 rebounds per game, suffered the injury in the first half of the Rainbows’ 78-72 overtime victory over Tulsa in Saturday’s championship game of the WAC Tournament. He returned briefly in the second half, but was ineffective.
"I’ll be OK," he said. "When I first went down, I thought it was something major, so I’m kind of glad it’s going to be all right by game time."
He sprained the same ankle in December and was forced to miss all or parts of six games.
In the zone: Moments after discovering that Hawai‘i was paired against Syracuse yesterday, Rainbow coach Riley Wallace received a helpful phone call from one of his former assistants, Jamie Dixon.
Dixon is now a coach at Pittsburgh, which competes in the Big East with the Orangemen. The Panthers upset Syracuse last week in the Big East Tournament.
Dixon informed Wallace that Syracuse has been playing a two-three zone defense all season.
"I kind of like the idea of seeing a zone for 40 minutes," Wallace said. "(Syracuse) plays a good one, but we’re a hot shooting team right now."
Still, the Syracuse defense may be tough to handle. The Orangemen went 24-8 this season while allowing 66.8 points per game on .405 field-goal shooting.
Four Syracuse players average double-figure points: Preston Shumpert (19.5), Damone Brown (16.7), DeShaun Williams (12.3) and Allen Griffin (10.8).
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