College Basketball Notes : Arizona’s Elliott Is Star Material, but the Networks Aren’t Buying

In the world of hoop hysteria, the only thing Arizona All-American Sean Elliott has on La Salle University’s Lionel Simmons is television exposure, or so says La Salle Coach Speedy Morris. On any given weekend, you can find the graceful Elliott flitting across your television screen. Simmons, you almost have to travel to Philadelphia to find.

As far as Morris is concerned, television is Elliott’s only edge.

“Lionel is better than Sean Elliott and I think Sean Elliott is great,” Morris said. “Look at his overall stats. He’s a total player.”

Simmons’ stats underscore his qualifications for player of the year honors. Eastman Kodak recently notified La Salle that they had added the 6-foot-6 small forward to their list of candidates.

Simmons can score (27.8 points a game, third in the nation) and rebound (12.1 rebounds a game, fifth in the nation). He can find the open man (45 assists in 17 games). He can play defense (28 steals, 25 blocked shots).

And when opposing defenses pinch inside, he can take his game to the perimeter. Against a sagging Fairfield defense earlier this month, he popped 5 of 7 three-point shots, quieting perhaps the only criticism of NBA scouts, that he doesn’t score enough from outside. (He’s 14 for 30 from three-point range this year.)

If Elliott is a household name across the country, Simmons is definitely making inroads into the public consciousness. Averaging 23.3 points and 11.4 rebounds last season, he won the Geasey Award in Philadelphia as the Big Five player of the year; he was also player of the year in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Along the way, he stopped in Chapel Hill, N.C., long enough to set the Dean Dome scoring record with 37 points against North Carolina.

Simmons makes La Salle the dominant force in the Metro Atlantic. Monday’s 89-64 rout of Iona was the 23rd straight conference win for the Explorers (14-3, 6-0), and therein lies the rub. Beating Iona by 25 won’t get you on national television. That’s why Morris has waged his crusade for respect with an ambitious schedule.

“Our non-conference schedule the last three years has been as good as anyone,” he said. “We’ve played North Carolina, DePaul, Georgia, South Carolina, a lot of real good teams. Next year we hope to get a network game. They (the networks) want to go for the high-profile conferences. We’ve had our share of ESPN games.”

The good news for Morris is that Simmons, only a junior, wants to stay in college and get his degree. His major is criminal justice and his background is in the projects of South Philadelphia, where his mother still lives. And Morris seems to have an ally in Simmons’ mother. “There’s two people I know that are never going to tell him how great he is, his mom and me,” Morris said last week.

Marty Blake, the NBA superscout, is reluctant to talk about Simmons because he’s an underclassman, but he offered this assessment: “He’s not ready physically to play now, but next year he’ll be very high in the draft. He’s one of the better small forward prospects.”

He very well could be the best. He has scored in double figures in 68 straight games for the Explorers and in 81 of his 84 career games. He is on a pace that will wipe out Michael Brooks’ school record of 2,628 career points. At Southern High, where he was Philadelphia’s schoolboy player of the year, they have retired his number.

Overshadowed by the better-known programs at Villanova and Temple, La Salle nevertheless has begun to wage an All-America campaign for Simmons. There are plans to produce some All-America postcards shortly, and somewhere down the road, La Salle hopes, there will be some network TV appearances.

His team has lost three straight games and slipped from the No. 1 ranking in the country to No. 8, but don’t tell Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski the Blue Devils are in a slump.

“I don’t really consider this a slump,” Krzyzewski said during the ACC’s teleconference call the other day. “I think this was inevitable in the development of the team. I think if Danny (Ferry) is healthy, we definitely still could get beat by North Carolina and Wake Forest. When people lose, I think it’s a matter of development. We go to extremes in analyzing teams and say they’re either on a roll or they’re in a slump. We’re a little down, but it’s mostly because of health.”

Krzyzewski brushed off the drop to No. 8 this way: “I didn’t know what we were. I haven’t looked at the polls.”

Notes

No sooner had unbeaten Illinois ascended to No. 1 than the Illini were reeling with the loss of 6-4 guard Kendall Gill, who broke the fifth metatarsal bone in his left foot Sunday against Georgia Tech and will be out for seven to eight weeks. Gill was averaging 15 points a game and spearheaded Illinois’ pressing defenses. One more ominous note for Coach Lou Henson: The last time Illinois was ranked No. 1 in the country was 37 years ago, and it was a short-lived reign. The team lost four days later and surrendered the top spot. Sure enough, the Illini lost its next game to Minnesota ... When Indiana nicked Michigan, 71-70, Monday night to take over first place in the Big Ten, Hoosier Coach Bob Knight couldn’t resist the opportunity to knock Bill Frieder’s weak non-conference schedule. “We had the snot knocked out of us early,” Knight said. “We know what it means to lose big against good teams. But getting beat by a good team tells us what we need to do to beat those teams. That’s really important.” ... Wyoming Coach Benny Dees obviously didn’t think a lot of the officiating job in his 71-58 loss to Nebraska Monday. He gave the referees the choke sign in the second half and was hit with three consecutive technical fouls and ejected. Nebraska’s Beau Reid was 10 for 10 at the foul line in the second half, six coming after the technicals.