MORAGA, Calif. - To get to Saint Mary's College, you need a GPS and a lot of luck. It's due east of Oakland down a winding road through a canyon of Redwood trees that are maybe a bit taller than Omar Samhan.

He's the 6-foot-11 center on a basketball team from a program with a great deal of history but beyond California receives almost no recognition. As for Moraga, it's a bedroom community named after Joaquin Moraga, the rancher deeded the area in 1835 by the government of Mexico.

When St. Mary's advanced to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament, where it plays Baylor tonight in Houston, an Associated Press writer described Moraga as "north of Oakland.''

That man needed his own GPS, as well as a crash course in geography.

St. Mary's, however, needs very little. After the Thursday night losses by Cornell and Washington, St. Mary's, a No. 10, is the only double-digit seed remaining.

Also the only team of any rank with a center (Samhan) of Egyptian descent, five Australians (it's the trip from San Francisco to Moraga that's the tough part) and a media guide that lists the distance to the nearest In-N-Out Burger (18 miles, at San Ramon).

San Ramon, that's Samhan's home town, one with a considerable Arab and Muslim Population. Someone taking note of his lineage nicknamed Omar, "The Sphinx,'' but that only would be appropriate if the ancient statue were equipped with moving lips.

If there's anything Samhan, who scored 32 last weekend against Villanova, does better than play basketball it's talk. He's a one-man quote machine as well as a one-man point machine.

College hoops gets lost in the Bay Area, even at Cal and Stanford. The six pro teams draw the attention and the fans. St. Mary's did get an article in Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle but it was below a top-of-the page column on the Warriors, alongside two pieces on the 49ers and above a story about the Giants.

St. Mary's is a Christian Brothers school of fewer than 3,000 undergraduates but boasts an alumni list that includes a baseball Hall of Famer (Harry Hooper), a great football player (the late "Squirmin' Herman Wedemeyer who eventually became a star in the TV show filmed in his home state, "Hawaii Five-0'),' retired pitcher Tom Candiotti and former NBA ace Tom Meschery.

The Gaels were a football power of another era, the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s, beating Cal and USC and knocking off the great Fordham team in 1930. But small Catholic schools couldn't afford to compete on the gridiron by the 1960s, and one by one they dropped the sport.

A year ago. St. Mary's, more a mid-minor than a mid-major, was not chosen for the tournament, creating a great deal of disenchantment on campus. This time, however, it won the West Coast Conference tournament, and since then has won the hearts of those who prize the underdog.

"The doubters help motivate me,'' said Samhan of those who say he couldn't make it in the Big East or even the Pac-10. "I cut out a lot of that stuff I read or paste it above my bed. It's funny. The higher we make it, the more people come up with new things.

"Like, we were going to lose (in the) first round, but now we're in the Sweet 16, and they say we got lucky and can't do it again. ... I heard one guy on ESPN the other day talk about Omar Samhan won't be able to score against Baylor's bigs, and I said to myself, ‘Thank you. God put this guy in my life.' Even if we win the national championship, people will say it was a weak field this year.''

Rick Majerus, who now coaches Saint Louis University and did coach Utah to the 1998 national title game, used to rhapsodize about St., Mary's. He called it the perfect job as he got older. A man who never put down permanent roots, Majerus had it all figured out, including where he would live, at the Lafayette Park Hotel a few miles from campus.

"And you could still compete in big-time basketball,'' Majerus pointed out.

Randy Bennett has the job that Majerus said he would have wanted, and Bennett is competing. He's not very well known, even after nine seasons as the Gaels' coach. But he has St. Mary's where even Kansas couldn't go, into the second week of the tournament.

And Omar Samhan is relishing every moment.

"I think the paint in the key is sexy,'' said Samhan. "To be in the key and to be a traditional big man, I think that's awesome. I hate it when big guys are out there shooting. I'm where a big man should be.''

And St. Mary's, from hidden Moraga, is where very few people believed it would be, if you don't include the Egyptian-American center and five Australians.