Small Colleges / Alan Drooz : Cal Poly Pomona, UC Davis Rated Among Top 4 in Women's Tennis

Even so, Midwest and Southwest teams are favored. Top-seeded is Southern Illinois Edwardsville, with Abilene Christian second. Two California teams follow--Cal Poly Pomona is third and UC Davis fourth.

The third Western team, Cal State Bakersfield, drew Abilene Christian in the first round. The rest of the field includes Pace College of New York, Florida Atlantic and Florida International.

Sunday's first-round matchups are Southern Illinois (17-2) vs. Florida Atlantic (19-5); Abilene Christian (15-2) vs. Bakersfield (14-8); Pomona (17-9) vs. Florida International (13-4) and UC Davis (13-2) vs. Pace (10-6).

If the West doesn't have the top team, it has the top-ranked singles player in sophomore Edna Olivarez of Cal State Los Angeles. She has a 34-3 record.

Other local singles entries are Xenia Anastasiadou, Mary Holycross, Chris Ryan and Debbie Jung of Pomona, Wendy Elliott of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Mary Beth Huewe and Deidre Wilson of Bakersfield, and Kelly Grattan of Cal State Northridge.

Team play will be held Sunday through Tuesday, then individual singles and doubles will start Wednesday.

Southland doubles entries are Anastasiadou-Ryan of Pomona, Elliott and Amy Lansford of San Luis Obispo, Allison Kincaid-Nicole Gillis of Northridge, Huewe-Wilson of Bakersfield, and Holycross-Jung of Pomona.

The men's nationals will be held the next week at Northridge.

Baseball showdowns: The Golden State Athletic Conference baseball race has come down to the final games Thursday and Friday, with Azusa Pacific and Westmont College tied at 11-6. Azusa Pacific will play a three-game series against Cal Lutheran, and Westmont will play Southern California College.

If they tie, Azusa Pacific will play host to the NAIA District III playoffs by virtue of winning the season series. Azusa Pacific is hitting a team-record .341 and leads the conference in most offensive categories. Westmont leads in most pitching departments.

In the California Collegiate Athletic Assn., Cal State Dominguez Hills (16-6) holds a two-game lead over Cal Poly Pomona (14-8) and is 2 1/2 games ahead of Cal State Northridge (14-9) with two weeks to go. Pomona will play at Dominguez Hills at 2:30 p.m. today, and those teams will play one another three times in the final weekend.

Dominguez Hills will play five of its final eight games against Pomona and Northridge. The Toros have lost 9 of 11 to Pomona over the last three seasons. Pomona and Northridge play one another one more time.

CCAA teams learned that the NCAA may invite more than two Western teams to the Division II regional for the first time since 1982. CS Sacramento is the other California team in the playoff picture.

Biola University's basketball team, one of the most successful NAIA programs over the last decade, will play a week's worth of games in Japan, starting Saturday in Osaka. The team was invited by the Japan Amateur Basketball Assn. at the recommendation of Pete Newell and Cal State Dominguez Hills Coach Dave Yanai, who act as advisers to the Japanese national team.

Biola is scheduled to play a Japanese all-star college team at Sagana Gym and Kobe Central Gym in Osaka, then will take the bullet train to Tokyo and play in the Olympic Stadium.

Biola was one of several Southland schools that played the Japanese national team on a U.S. tour in 1985.

Cal State Bakersfield filled two coaching vacancies in its men's athletic program last week, naming Pat Douglass basketball coach and Simon Tobin soccer coach.

Douglass, 37, has spent the last six seasons as coach at Eastern Montana, where his teams made four postseason appearances and won the Division II Western regional this season. He was voted Division II coach of the year.

Douglass, who has been a head coach for 14 years, was 119-57 at Eastern Montana. He graduated from University of the Pacific in 1972 and was a graduate assistant to Coach Stan Morrison there.

Douglass and former Bakersfield coach Bobby Dye are the only West coaches in the last 10 years to take teams to the Division II Final Four. Douglass replaces Jim Parks, who resigned after four seasons.

Tobin, 26, a London native, has been coaching Bakersfield area soccer clubs and select teams since last fall after coming to the United States in 1984 to work at a soccer camp.