Wildcats Almost Purr-fect

Two months after leaving a Pacific 10 Conference media whistle stop in which he cautioned not to expect too much from his young team, Arizona Coach Lute Olson returns to Los Angeles with a 10-2 record and a No. 6 national ranking.

A cut below UCLA and Stanford, Olson said, the Wildcats lead the conference with a 3-0 record and have defeated North Carolina, Utah, Texas and Stanford.

They’ll dig into USC tonight, then UCLA on Saturday.

Arizona won nine games without its lone returning starter, Miles Simon, who was academically ineligible.

The moral? Never bring a pad and pencil to Pac-10 media day.

“I still don’t know how good we are,” Olson contends. “I don’t think we’re as good as people have us rated right now, but yet I think people have to have us there because of the schedule we’ve played. Yet, this is not an overpowering team at all.”

Not at all. Except that the Wildcats lead the conference in scoring, averaging 86.8 points per game, and rebounding, and boast the conference’s leading scorer in junior forward Michael Dickerson, and the game’s next great point guard in freshman Mike Bibby.

Maybe Olson believed his rhetoric. He did lose the heart of last year’s 26-7 team--Reggie Geary, Ben Davis, Joe McLean, Corey Williams and Joe Blair.

And when Simon went down in an academic hail before the opener against North Carolina, one word popped into Olson’s head.

“Nightmare,” he says. “It was really a shock to us, when we looked down the teeth of that schedule: North Carolina, Utah, Texas, playing [New Mexico] at the Pit, playing Michigan back at Michigan. Frankly, it was a little bit harrowing for us, not knowing how all the young guys would respond when they got into a pressure situation. The answer to this point is that they’ve really responded well to pressure.”

Olson knew he had a great recruiting class, led by Bibby and junior college transfer Bennett Davison, but no coach really knows anything until he throws his players in front of the headlights.

If Arizona was going to freeze, it figured to be against North Carolina in the opener without Simon, who watched in street clothes.

Bibby, though, thought that might be a good time to let the world know he was for real. When the Wildcats headed to the locker room tied at the half, Olson loosened his tie.

“It helped that North Carolina didn’t have a very good first half,” Olson says, “and it was sort of like ‘Geez, we didn’t play very well and we’re tied with North Carolina.’ The second half, you could see the confidence growing as we took the lead into double figures.”

Bibby, in his first college game, scored 22 points.

Arizona’s only losses have been to then-No. 19 New Mexico and at then-No. 4 Michigan, in overtime.

In his 14th season at Arizona, Olson has made 12 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances. His 13th will be with a team observers think is his most close-knit.

The stars, Dickerson and Bibby, are unassuming, lead-by-performance types. Simon returned for the Arizona State game last weekend, was instrumental in the win and brings a toughness the team lacked.

Sophomore guard Jason Terry has blossomed from last year’s reserve role and leads the team with 39 steals. Davison is Rodman-like and maybe the quickest forward in the West.

Arizona is thin in the middle, thin meaning two 6-foot-11 guys--A.J. Bramlett and Donnell Harris--who need all-you-can-eat buffets to crack 200 pounds.

But it looks as though Olson was right. Arizona is a cut below the cream.

A cut below Kansas and Wake Forest.

CHAPEL HELL?

No one has renamed the building “Dean Doom,” but this wasn’t the sort of record-breaking season North Carolina had in mind.

Coronation has turned to examination for fabled Tar Heel Coach Dean Smith, closing in on Adolph Rupp’s record of 876 victories--Smith needed 16 to tie before Wednesday’s game against North Carolina State--while wondering if he’ll break it before the turn of the century.

Smith hates the Rupp talk, and he’ll be happy to know no one is discussing at the present.

More urgent was the team’s unfathomable 0-3 start in Atlantic Coast Conference play, worst in 44 years, at the beginning of the week.

Among Smith’s remarkable achievements--26 consecutive seasons of 21 victories or more, 61 NCAA tournament victories, 17 regular-season ACC titles--one of his most amazing streaks appears in peril.

The Tar Heels have not finished lower than third in the ACC regular-season standings in the last 32 seasons under Smith. North Carolina has finished first 17 times, second 10 times and third five times.

A quick ’97 biopsy: OK, the road loss at No. 2 Wake Forest was forgivable, perhaps even the defeat at Virginia without injured guard Vince Carter.

But what about blowing a 22-point lead to Maryland at home?

Frankly, the guard play is shaky, with freshman Ed Cota running the point, and the Tar Heels rank last defensively in the ACC, giving up 70.7 points per game.

Diagnosis: No school has been hit harder by NBA defections the last two years. The Tar Heels still have not recovered from the loss of Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace, who turned pro after their sophomore seasons. Last year, junior guard Jeff McGinnis jumped.

In a perfect world, Smith should be starting Stackhouse, Wallace, Antawn Jamison up front, McGinnis and Vince Carter in the backcourt, with a bench as deep as Loch Ness.

Oh, and you could have mailed Smith his third national title.

To his credit, Smith does not complain about the early departures, saying, “You can’t say it’s a real huge problem to the vast majority of schools.”

Remember, it was Smith who suggested that Michael Jordan run along to the NBA after his junior year.

“I bet the Stanford golf team won’t be quite as good this year without Tiger Woods,” Smith says. “Those things happen. Individuals should do what’s best for them.”

OUT WITH THE OLE MISS, IN WITH NEW

The new rankings are out! The new rankings are out!

That, in a bombshell, was the reaction the morning history was made in Oxford, Miss.

Here’s how it read in the press release: “At 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 11, this week’s Associated Press Top 25 college basketball poll was released, and for the first time ever, the University of Mississippi was listed among the top teams in the nation.”

Not as dramatic as “One small step for man . . . ,” but maybe the biggest news to hit Oxford that had nothing to do with William Faulkner.

It was quite a weekend for the Rebels, who capped an epic victory over national champion Kentucky with their first top-25 ranking--No. 20 in the AP poll--in the program’s 88-year history.

“It’s been very, very hectic,” fifth-year Coach Rob Evans said. “But a nice hectic.”

Coaches in the Southeastern Conference saw this coming. Evans, a disciple of Lou Henson and Eddie Sutton, built the program on defense and waited for the offense to catch up.

Well, the offense just arrived in a limo.

You won’t recognize any of the names.

“We don’t have any guys all the magazines and people like that say are in the top 100,” Evans says. “But I’ve been in coaching almost 30 years, and a lot of times I see those magazines, and I don’t understand what people are looking for. I decide if they’re the top 100.”

Ole Miss was 11-3 at the beginning of the week because of defense and balanced scoring. The Rebels start four sophomores and a junior, none taller than 6-9. Four starters average double figures, led by junior forward Ansu Sesay at 13.4 points per game. Junior guard Joezon Darby chips in 12.5 points off the bench.

You think Ole Miss is going away?

There are no seniors on the roster.

LOOSE ENDS

The Leventhal NBA Draft Report lists four UCLA Bruins among the top 60 prospective picks for this year’s draft: Junior forward J.R. Henderson ranks highest at 15th, followed by sophomore center Jelani McCoy (20th) junior guard Toby Bailey (24th) and senior forward Charles O’Bannon (34th). Buyer beware: Leventhal’s report was published before UCLA’s 48-point loss to Stanford. Senior forward Rodrick Rhodes is the only USC player on the last, ranking at No. 51. Leventhal’s top five picks are 1--Tim Duncan, Wake Forest; 2--Ron Mercer, Kentucky; 3--Tim Thomas, Villanova; 4--Alexander Koul, George Washington, and 5--Keith Van Horn, Utah.

Is UC Irvine, at 0-11, the worst team in Division I, as some have suggested? Not even close, according to the latest RPI rankings, used to help select and seed teams for the NCAA tournament. The Anteaters rate No. 270 out of 305 teams. Irvine, in fact, isn’t even the lowest-rated team in Southern California. And the loser is? Pepperdine at No. 272. Southeastern Louisiana is No. 305.

Boo hoo: Former Louisiana State freshman forward Lester Earl, booted off the team Jan. 4 for breaking team rules, says now he was pressured into going to Louisiana State by his family. Earl, from Baton Rouge, wanted to go to Kansas all along.

In case you were wondering: No. 11 Maryland, off to its best ACC start in 22 seasons, was picked to finish eighth in the conference’s preseason poll.

It’s tough to argue when Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino says Kansas and Wake Forest are the class of Division I. “I think there are two great teams out there and a lot of us aspiring to be great,” Pitino says.

Brick award: Last week, La Salle missed 46 of 57 shots in a 56-50 loss to Massachusetts, establishing the worst single-game field-goal percentage (.193) in Atlantic 10 Conference history. Congratulations.