SANTA CLARA — A hand-written sign in the men's locker room at Santa Clara's Toso Pavilion advises all who enter, "There are two places in this league: First place and no place."

Nobody has to tell basketball Coach Dick Davey where the Broncos would be without point guard Steve Nash, a junior who has led Santa Clara to its first West Coast Conference regular-season championship since 1970 and a No. 1 seeding in this weekend's WCC tournament at Santa Clara.

"We're not a great team without him," Davey said.

And without him the Broncos would be if Davey hadn't acted on a tip from a friend, ignored a comical videotape that was supposed to impress coaches with Nash's potential and tracked down the future WCC player of the year in his hometown of Victoria, Canada.

Despite a high school career in which he was named provincial player of the year in basketball and soccer and led his rugby team to a provincial championship, Nash had a hard time attracting college basketball coaches to his picturesque hometown at the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

A videotape produced by a friend's father didn't help much, only because it reinforced in some people's minds that Nash's competition in Canada was less than stellar.

At one point, as Nash is shown bobbing his head on a shot fake, his defender stumbles to the floor.

"When I walked by the room where (another assistant) was watching the tape, he was laughing," Davey said. "I said, 'What's wrong?' And he said, 'I got this tape of the Canadian kid. He makes people fall down.' "

Davey, though, was intrigued enough to request a second tape, which showed an entire game, and to follow up by going to Canada for a postseason tournament.

"And then, about two minutes into the game, he makes a play and I'm looking over my shoulder," Davey said. "And I'm hoping--praying--there are no big boys there (from higher-profile U.S. programs) because if there are, they're going to have some interest in the guy and I'm going to be out of luck. Sure enough, we were the only ones there, and it managed to work out pretty well."

Nash's high school coach sent letters to several U.S. colleges, including WCC members Gonzaga, Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount, but all ignored them.

"That wouldn't be unusual," said former Pepperdine coach Tom Asbury, now at Kansas State. "When you're at Pepperdine, you get, oh, 300 letters a year. And for a (6-foot-3) white guard from Canada, you're probably not going to do a lot of follow-up."