LIFE AFTER THE SHOT : Last Season, Keith Smart Gave Indiana the National Title; Now, He’s Expected to Give Something Else--Leadership

Ever since he made that sweet little 17-foot jump shot with four seconds left in the college basketball season, Keith Smart has heard no end of talk.

“Not a day goes by,” Smart says, shaking his head.

It was the year of the movie “Hoosiers” and the spring after the fall-release of the best-selling book, “A Season on the Brink,” that chronicled the tumult of playing under Bob Knight the season before. When Smart, a community college transfer who had averaged just 11 points during the season, hit that shot, giving Indiana a 74-73 victory over Syracuse and the 1987 NCAA championship--well, it was almost as good as another Indiana state title for the Milan High Indians.

Michael Jordan, who, like Smart, wore No. 23 when he made a similar shot that helped North Carolina win the 1982 championship, sent word: That shot will change your life.

How Smart knows it.

“With the shot, it’s like this,” Smart said. “When people mention the shot, they don’t do it for convenience. They all do it to say, ‘Can you do it again?’ ”

That would be quite a feat. There’s a sign at the Bloomington city limits these days that boasts, with Kiwanian civic pride, “Home of the NCAA champions.” If there’s a sign like that there this time next year, it will be the first time in 15 years--since the glory days of UCLA--that a team has repeated as national champion.

Indiana, in its past two attempts to repeat after national championships under Knight in 1976 and ‘81, has failed even to win the Big Ten championship.

This Indiana team, which returns three starters, seems to be as much in the heart of turmoil as ever. Saturday, after Knight received his third technical foul and was automatically ejected from an exhibition game against the Soviet national team, he yanked his team off the floor with him and forfeited the game.

But the more pressing issues involve other things. Don’t upset Knight and say the words “replace Alford,” but Indiana is searching right now not only for someone to pick up the scoring load of two-time All-American Steve Alford, but also someone to wear the mantle of leadership that he bore.

Smart would be a likely candidate for both jobs, but so far neither assignment is taking. By his own admission, he is struggling.

Knight, in part, blames it on the shot.

“When somebody plays as well or makes a particularly outstanding play like Smart did, sometimes it stays with him a while,” Knight said. “He spent from the end of March to early October listening to people talk about that shot. Now, he’s getting back to being the best he possibly can be.”

Or, in Knight’s more indelicate dismissal: “The shot? Hell, even I could make a 17-foot jumper.”

Smart, who was the ball-handling guard last season, is supposed to take on the role of shooting guard this season. It has not come easily. Alford’s absence has caused tremendous changes on the offense.

“Last year, if you didn’t know what to do, you would go and screen for Alford and you couldn’t be wrong.” Knight said.

Said Smart, in the words of a man who has been wrong: “I had no idea the guy (Alford) worked that hard to get open. I had no idea he had to work the old screens like that.”

The leadership role may be one that is far more complex. Every team talks about leadership, but in the sometimes pseudo-military Indiana program, it is of utmost importance. Alford spent four years under Knight. By the middle of his senior year, he may have been approaching what Knight wanted from him.

Smart, along with center Dean Garrett, is a rare type of Indiana player. They are community college transfers, long a sort that Knight avoided in favor of high school players. The first junior college transfer to play for Knight at Indiana was Courtney Witte, who joined the program in 1984. There have been a few others, but Smart and Garrett are the first to contribute so mightily, and the first to be called upon for the kind of leadership that usually takes years to develop.

“It’s so hard for me,” Smart said. “Here I am, I’ve just been at Indiana a couple of years. Now I’m in shock. . . . Myself and Dean (Garrett), we’ve gone from freshmen to seniors in one year’s time.”

Smart is not a young man suffering from a tremendous case of immodesty. He still wears his brown-and-yellow Garden City (Kan.) Community College jacket around campus. But he is a young man who has a personality that makes him naturally reluctant to lead, and who, because of his short time in the Indiana program, is unsure of just what that means.

“The ones that have been here for three years have everything exactly down,” Smart said. “I don’t. And I for one--and I know Dean, too--am not that vocal. It’s just not me. . . . I’m like, what do I say?”

Garrett, who averaged 11 points and almost 9 rebounds last year, is also struggling to fill the leadership void left by Alford and forward Daryl Thomas, who was the team’s second-leading scorer and rebounder.

“Last year, when things were going bad, Keith and I didn’t really have to worry about hearing it,” said Garrett, who played at San Clemente High School and San Francisco City College before transferring to Indiana. “Other teammates did. Now, anytime anybody’s playing bad, we hear it.”

If only he had been at Indiana longer, Garrett said, it might be different.

“People get used to it. It helped that Steve (Alford) had been here that long. Keith and I haven’t been here any longer than anybody else. . . . Sometimes it doesn’t feel right trying to tell somebody what to do, like I’m so much more better. It does get scary because Coach is looking for us to be leaders. Steve was a born leader. But it’s something we’re not used to.”

The other returning starter, forward Rick Calloway is a true junior, and apparently still free from expectations of leadership.

A more likely--and less reluctant--candidate for the leadership role would be Joe Hillman, the former Glendale Hoover High star who--partly in deference to his intelligence and dark-haired, clean-cut good looks--had long been expected by many to take Alford’s spot in the lineup. Hillman, a redshirt junior, has been at Indiana four years. When able this year, he has played as the ball-handling guard. But a lower back problem that could be as simple as a muscle strain or as serious as a disk problem has limited his practicing and playing time.

“I’ve been around, and I know what’s going on,” Hillman said. “I know what Coach expects, and handling the ball I can set a lot of things up. It’s kind of my personality to lead. I don’t mind getting on guys at times.”

Knight remains unsatisfied.

“We really don’t have a leader,” he said. “Hillman is the best we have.”

Meanwhile, when someone asks a simple question about the Hoosier prospects at offside guard, Knight responded with this: “We need help on the offside, the underside, the backside, the reverse-side and the inverted side. I think we need help on all sides.”

The difficulty in all this is discerning whether there are serious concerns here, or if this is just the normal churn and turmoil of another preseason under Bob Knight. Remember, these guys aren’t supposed to think they’re worth the tape on their ankles.

Hillman, more than Smart and Garrett, thinks some of it is routine.

“I think we’re a little confused and frustrated, but it was the same way last year,” Hillman said. “It’s going to take a while. . . . We are a little worried, just because we’re not playing as well as we can play.”

For expert information, you can head down to the lunch counter at Southern Sporting Goods, an establishment near the heart of Bloomington where you can chew the fat, plus get your second cup of coffee free. If you happen to be shopping for a basketball, there are dozens upon dozens to choose from. Need a football? Friend, they’ve got six in the whole place.

The store is also one of Bloomington’s accepted sources for basketball wisdom. Problem is, this year they’re talking football. Those other Hoosiers have had their best season since 1967, and were in contention for the Rose Bowl until the 10th game of the season. An 8-3 mark has earned them a trip to the Peach Bowl.

But how will the real Hoosiers be, without Alford?

The authorities speak succinctly.

“Be better,” one says. “Be more balanced,” offers another.

Basketball, amazingly, won’t hold their interest. Back to that Peach Bowl trip. Whose wife is going. What the best route to Atlanta might be.

It’s enough to make you think that this is just the shift and shuffle of another preseason--or that football has addled their minds.

Probably, there’s nothing going on that should seriously trouble Hoosier fans the world over. Chances are there won’t be a repeat national championship, but that’s nothing new. The Big Ten, which appears to be easily the best conference in the country this year with five legitimate national title contenders in Indiana, Michigan, Purdue, Illinois and Iowa, will be challenge enough.

The Hoosier lore, though, appears to be in good shape. This year, two freshmen join the Indiana team who are so steeped in Hoosier tradition that somebody out there ought to get the movie rights right away.

Jay Edwards and Lyndon Jones led Marion High in Marion, Ind., to the championship of the famed single-division, every-team-plays, statewide high school tournament last year. And for the two years previous. The pair led Marion High to three consecutive Indiana state championships, and last year they were given the highest honor a Hoosier lad can earn: Mr. Basketball. Co-Mr. Basketballs, actually. In the state all-star game, Edwards wore No. 1E, Jones No. 1J.

Both are playing so well--Edwards led all scorers with 35 in an intrasquad game last week--that one, or both, conceiveably could start.

Edwards, who wore No. 12 in high school, has abandoned that number at Indiana. It was the number that Alford wore.

“I want to make my own path,” Edwards said.

He’ll have to, as will the rest of the Hoosiers.