COLLEGE BASKETBALL : Driesell Is Alive, Well and Coaching at James Madison

He is 57 years old, mostly bald, sometimes cranky, but Lefty Driesell is alive and well and wants you to know he is not somewhere out in the sticks.

The former coach at Davidson and Maryland, where he left under a cloud after the death of Len Bias and criticism over the graduation rate of his players, Driesell says James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., is a mighty fine place to be.

“I didn’t have to make any adjustments,” Driesell said. “I love it here. I like it here much better than I did in Maryland. It’s up in the mountains--the scenery, the people are real nice. I just like this area. . . . Now don’t make it sound so people will think I didn’t like Maryland.”

The Dukes of JMU wear purple and gold and play for Lefty, whose red, white, black and gold Maryland Terrapins are still down in College Park the second coach since Lefty left. The first was Bob Wade, forced to resign in the wake of an NCAA investigation. Now, Gary Williams is sitting in Cole Field House on the bench where Lefty sat in the building that Lefty ruled with the team that Lefty might have coached.

But Driesell said there’s no looking back. Adjustment? What adjustment?

“It’s no different for me,” he said. “I’m just trying to win ballgames and recruit.”

Driesell, a Virginian, said he looks no farther than James Madison University, named after the fourth President of the United States, also a Virginian inaugurated when he was the same age as Lefty is now. There will be no “next” job, in all probability, Driesell said.

“I don’t expect to move, but you never say never,” he said. “I wouldn’t ever apply for another job. If somebody came and offered me a whole bunch of money, I’d have to think about it, but I’m not really interested in money. At my age, somebody is not going to buy me if I didn’t want to go.”

And so, right in Ralph Sampson’s hometown, Lefty Driesell talks about what a fine academic school James Madison is, how close it is to Washington (nearly a two-hour drive), how many kids want to come there to school and how much media attention he gets.

“Plenty,” Driesell said.

“A lot of places I go, people say, ‘JMU, what does that stand for?’ and I say, ‘Well, you’ll find out,’ ” Driesell said. “I just think you got to get up in the top 10 and people know who you are. People didn’t know who Davidson was before I got there. If we get good clubs here, they’ll know. It’s just a matter of winning.”

James Madison is 5-3 this season.

Add Lefty: Driesell said he would like to play USC but that George Raveling turned him down. Raveling, an assistant for Driesell at Maryland for four years, said Driesell was right.

“My friends, I won’t play,” Raveling said. “I won’t play him and I won’t play John Thompson. I don’t like to schedule any friends because one of us has to lose.”

Raveling was an assistant coach on Thompson’s staff for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

Milestone: When UCLA played Notre Dame at South Bend, Ind., last Sunday, it was the 300th game of Jim Harrick’s college coaching career. After the Bruins’ 89-74 victory over American, Tuesday night, Harrick is 193-108.

Five is enough: This season, the Big East, Southeastern and Trans America Conferences are experimenting with a six-foul rule in conference games, but former UCLA coach John Wooden is not a big fan of the rule.

“I always thought it was important to learn to play defense without fouling,” Wooden said.

One isn’t enough: At Georgetown, 7-foot-2 Dikembe Mutombo of Zaire is a vital cog as a shot-swatting whiz. Soon, he may not be the only Mutombo on the block. Tshitenge Mutombo, 6-8, is attending a boarding school in Pennsylvania and is interested in playing beside his brother.

The holdup, according to the Sporting News, is that the standardized tests mandated by Proposition 48 are not in French, Tshitenge’s native language.

Locker room confidential: Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda gave winless Valparaiso a pregame pep talk before the Musketeers’ home game against Xavier last Saturday. Valparaiso lost by 32 points.

Upset: Sonoma State defeated Fresno State. The University of Illinois at Chicago defeated Michigan State. Western Illinois defeated DePaul. Coppin State defeated Maryland. Northern Illinois defeated DePaul.

So far, upsets have become rather commonplace, even whopping ones. Favored teams are beaten all the time, but what seems to be different this year is that many of the so-called creampuff teams have been beating the big guys.

Toledo defeated Houston. Wyoming was defeated by Sam Houston State. Tulsa defeated Oklahoma State. U.S. International defeated Drake.

Is this parity?

“I’ve got a better question,” Raveling said. “Are coaches starting to take a second look at the so-called cupcake games? What the point is, it’s getting more and more shaky. If you lose, how do you explain it to your alumni?”

Raveling scheduled tiny Prairie View A&M; of Prairie View, Tex., this season. Last week, it was announced that Prairie View won’t offer athletic scholarships next year and probably will drop out of the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

Even if Prairie View’s days of producing upsets have past, teams such as Coppin State and Sonoma State continue the tradition. Wooden said what’s happening this year is nothing out of the ordinary.

“We forget what’s happened in the past,” Wooden said. “We are probably seeing what we’ve had in years before. There were always a fair amount of upsets, but we’ve forgotten them.

“The great pitchers sometimes can’t get anyone out,” he said. “The great hitters sometimes go hitless. We must accept the fact that things performed by human beings aren’t always perfect.”