One by one, the men's basketball coaches stepped to the podium and offered tales of woe as they talked about the upcoming season at the Presidents' Athletic Conference preseason gathering yesterday at Mellon Arena.

The litany begged one question: "Doesn't somebody have to win the league championship?"

The race appears to be wide open because the conference is looking for players to replace the standouts from last season, when Westminster captured the regular-season title and fourth-seed Grove City won the postseason tournament. The only returnee from the All-PAC first team is Thiel's Joe Herrmann, a 6-foot-5 senior forward who led the league in scoring (18.6 points per game), rebounding (9.1 per game) and blocked shots (1.64 per game).

The PAC's No. 2 through No. 7 scorers are gone.

The most intriguing team in the PAC is Saint Vincent, but the Bearcats are a provisional member because they still are in transition from being an NAIA program that provided athletic scholarships to a Division III program that doesn't allow them. Saint Vincent and Geneva, which also is a provisional member, will play a full schedule against PAC teams, but their games won't count in the standings.

In one of the closest preseason polls of conference coaches, sports information directors and the media in recent memory, four teams received strong support to win it all: Grove City was picked to finish first, followed by Bethany, Westminster and Washington & Jefferson.

The winner of the PAC tournament will receive an automatic bid to the national playoffs for the first time in more than a decade. Westminster went last season with an at-large bid.

"It's anybody's league," Grove City coach Steve Lamie said. "Every night will be a challenge for us and every team in the league."

The Wolverines are the team to beat on the basis of returnees 6-1 Shawn Carr (11.0 ppg, 5.7 rpg), 6-1 Ryan Gerber (10.5 ppg) and 6-2 Ryan Gibson (11.9 ppg). Carr set a school record with 65 3-pointers last season and the team made a school-record 216 3-pointers.

"We'll be relying on our outside game," Lamie said, "and that's something that can come and go."

Bethany will pin its hopes on 6-0 Brody Jackson (14.0 ppg) and 5-8 Marcus Adams (7.6 ppg, 4.2 rpg, 4.1 assists per game) and the return of 6-6 Ryan Besancon (10.4 ppg, 5.8 rpg), who is out indefinitely with a knee injury that occurred in the first minute of the first official practice.

Westminster lost the bulk of its scoring from last season when the Titans averaged a conference-high 86.9 points in coach Larry Ondako's high-octane offense. The lone returning starter is 6-2 Craig Hannon (12.7 ppg).

"The numbers don't jibe," Ondako said. "Someone may see that we have one starter back and say, 'Boy, we're in trouble.' But we've got three or four guys that easily could have started for us."

Ondako was referring to 6-4 Chauncey Whitlow (9.4 ppg, 3.0 rpg), 5-10 Dave Richards (3.3 ppg) and 6-4 Ryne Murray (12.8 ppg, 8.1 rpg), who sat out the final 14 games for academic reasons. The Titans will be hurt by the loss of 6-8 Steve Bielich, who is out for the season with a recurring knee injury.

W&J will look inside more to 6-8 Josip Lucic-Jozak and 6-4 Wahab Owolabi because guards Jon Koch and Brandon Studer, the school's first and fourth all-time scorers, respectively, are no longer around; Thiel will go as far as Herrmann and guard Brandon Mirizio can take the Tomcats; Waynesburg will rely on 6-5 Josh Parisi (6.9 ppg, 4.7 rpg) and 5-11 Jered Gamble (6.5 ppg); Thomas More's marquee player is forward Brad Buckner (9.1 ppg, 5.4 rpg), who has dropped 20 pounds.

Saint Vincent, whose leading returning scorer is 6-3 Billy Bains (11.6 ppg), will be strengthened by 6-2 Joey Butler, a transfer from Division I Mount St. Mary's who started two years ago and left the team early last season, and 6-3 Ian McCollough, a starter two years ago who sat out last season with a knee injury; Geneva's top returnees are 6-7 Greg McDivitt (12.2 ppg, 6.4 rpg), 6-0 Justin Nardi (5.5 ppg, 4.5 apg) and 5-9 Bryan Hill (9.6 ppg).