COLLEGE BASKETBALL ‘87--88 : PROPOSITION 48 : Playing for the First Time as Sophomores, They’re Not Only Older but Wiser

A new breed of freshmen will be playing college basketball this season. They’re sophomores.

Proposition 48, which set minimum academic requirements for incoming freshmen athletes, put 90 Division I basketball prospects strictly in the classroom last season, barred from practicing or playing for the programs that are paying their way through school.

This year, many are back, a year older and, presumably, a year wiser.

USC’s Anthony Pendleton is one. The 6-4 guard was a high school All-American at Northwestern High School in Flint, Mich., in 1986. Another is Pepperdine’s Lafayette Dorsey, a 6-4 guard from Dorsey High School.

Cincinnati has five. Michigan has two of the best. And many of the top programs in the country, including preseason No. 1 Syracuse and Notre Dame, will be relying on Proposition 48 players to step in and help.

Michigan Coach Bill Frieder expects to get a big boost from Rumeal Robinson and Terry Mills, two reasons for his team’s being No. 9 in a preseason poll, but Frieder still thinks about what could have been last season.

“If anybody has a gripe about this thing, it should be me,” said Frieder of Proposition 48.

“I lost two of the greatest players in the country. With Rumeal Robinson, it was one thing . . . but we were really, really shocked when Terry Mills didn’t qualify,” he said. “The fact that they didn’t play may have cost me four, five, maybe six victories last season.”

Frieder figures to get those wins back this time around, although he thinks it will take Mills and Robinson a while to make up for lost time.

“I have no doubt they’re behind, basketball-wise, especially on the defensive end of things,” he said. “But they’re better off academically, socially they’ve benefited and, if they work hard enough, they’ll catch up on the floor soon enough.

“And in the long run, I’m convinced it will turn out to be a good situation,” he added. “Because all these kids--the ones who had to sit, and even the ones who didn’t--will need the learning for a much longer time than they’ll be able to play basketball.”

They may have been the best-known members of that group--Mills was selected to the All-American teams of several national publications in 1986 and was rated the No. 1 high school player in the country by one, and Robinson was similarly honored--but they likely won’t be the only new faces crowding into the spotlight traditionally reserved for freshmen.

Illinois, for instance, will be taking the wraps off Nelison Anderson, Illinois’ Mr. Basketball of 1986, and Ervin Small, Anderson’s teammate at Chicago Public League powerhouse Simeon High.

Ohio State has Randy Doss, whose brilliant career at Chicago’s Leo High made him one of the most coveted athletes of the 1986 prep class.

In the Big East, look for prep All-American Earl Duncan to make a splash at Syracuse--even though the Orangemen, runners-up last year to Indiana, have playmaker Sherman Douglas and gunner Matt Roe in the backcourt.

Cincinnati unveils five Proposition 48 casualties, most notably Louis Banks and Levertis Robinson; Southern Mississippi, last season’s National Invitation Tournament winner, adds 6-10 Roger Boyd; Memphis State goes into battle this season bolstered by the services of three-point sharpshooter Cheyenne Gibson, and West Virginia will introduce Chris Brooks, a 6-6 fireplug in the Charles Barkley mold.

Notre Dame will make a splash in the Proposition 48 poll, giving superb playmaking guard David Rivers another finisher in 6-9 forward Keith Robinson.

“I don’t doubt that sitting out helped me get adjusted, but I wouldn’t want to go through it again,” said Robinson, whose grade-point average at Grover Cleveland High in Buffalo, N.Y--3.0--and game stats--30 points and 22 rebounds per contest--first caught Irish Coach Digger Phelps’ notice.

Robinson’s freshman campaign was short-circuited by his poor performance on both of the standardized college-admission tests administered to high school seniors.

Where Proposition 48 differs from previous attempts to lift academic standards for incoming freshmen is in its concentration on a core curriculum of English, math and science courses, and its coupling of grade-point average with minimum scoring levels on either the Scholastic Aptitude Test or the American College Test.

“I waited too long to prepare for the test,” Robinson said. “We knew Proposition 48 was in the pipe, but maybe we didn’t believe it would still be around.

“I was one of five freshmen who came here last season,” Robinson continued. “I don’t have any doubts my offensive skills stayed even with the others--I know that from pickup games I played in.

“I also used the opportunity to become a lot stronger. Between eating more and weightlifting, I’m up from about 190 pounds to 215,” he said.

“But learning the plays has been tough, and having no (game) experience will show,” Robinson said. “Worse, no matter how much time I put into it, I figure the other guys still have a little bit of a lead.”

For that very reason, Phelps, long an avid supporter of tougher academic standards, is arguing for modifications of Prop 48.

“The kids already lose a year of eligibility, why shouldn’t they be able to practice?” he asked.

“Any high school player coming into college has defensive difficulties until maybe his junior year. He begins to understand the concepts of both team and individual play, and the others are clearly ahead of Keith in that regard.

“Our first game is against Indiana at Bloomington (Ind.) and I can easily envision a scenario where he gets three quick fouls--in the first half . . . early in the first half . . . in the first 10 minutes.”