COLLEGE BASKETBALL: COACHES AND TEAMS MAKING THEIR MARKS THIS SEASON : Calhoun’s Team Conn.-Founded All the Experts

Jim Calhoun, his New England accent as thick as a bowl of clam chowder, never tires of telling how his Connecticut team defied logic and preseason predictions this year, to say nothing of a Big East schedule that includes such perennial basketball bullies as Syracuse and Georgetown.

Calhoun wants America to know that it didn’t happen by accident, but by something as fickle and corny as teamwork. And OK, a little luck.

It happened because Tate George, the only senior starter on the team, decided he wasn’t going to go his entire career at Connecticut without appearing in at least one NCAA tournament. So during the off-season he shot 500 jumpers a day and later helped organize thrice-weekly workouts with his teammates that began at 6:30 a.m.

It happened because sophomore Chris Smith, the one legitimate star on this team, nearly doubled his scoring average of a season ago.

And it happened because Calhoun, who may have done the best coaching job of his career, also knew a thing or two about international relations, convincing Israel’s basketball treasure, Nadav Henefeld, to venture from the Middle East to the Big East and, of course, to the campus at Storrs, Conn.

“I don’t think we’re Cinderella,” Calhoun said. “I think we maximize what we do well and hide what we don’t. We have good components. The pieces fit together. We seem to have some answers to problems presented on the court.”

Or cawt , as Calhoun pronounces it.

“Bet you couldn’t tell I’m from Boston,” he said.

Picked by conference coaches to finish eighth, Connecticut ended the regular season tied for first place with Syracuse, which probably still can’t believe it has to share a Big East title with the Huskies. And when play begins Thursday in the conference tournament at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Connecticut will be there sporting all sorts of impressive numbers, including a 25-5 record, an 11-4 Big East mark, a No. 8 national ranking and the testimonial of one John Thompson, Georgetown coach and closet sentimentalist.

Shortly before the Hoyas’ game against Connecticut at Capital Centre in Landover, Md., Thompson lumbered toward Calhoun. In a brief, heartfelt exchange, Thompson told the Connecticut coach how much he had admired the work done with the Huskies this season. Then, despite beating Connecticut by 20 points that evening, Thompson delivered a postgame sermon to the media that once again praised Calhoun and the Huskies.

“I think his team, in all the years I’ve been in the Big East, is the biggest surprise to me,” Thompson said. “People like to run around and talk about surprises, but I think Calhoun has done as good a job as I’ve ever seen in the Big East--consistently at the level he’s done it at.

“Last year, everybody talked about Seton Hall being a surprise (advancing to the final of the NCAA tournament). I thought Seton Hall was going to be a very good team, and everybody misread them. I did not think Connecticut would be as good as they are this year. The man has done one hell of a job with that team, regardless of what happens from here on in.”

Thompson spoke the truth. No team in the 11-year history of the Big East has been picked eighth in the preseason poll and finished first. No team in the conference ever finished seventh one season, as the Huskies did in 1988-89, and went on to win or share a title the next season. In fact, no seventh-place Big East team had ever done better than fifth the following season until Connecticut arrived and changed the shape of the bell curve.

If Calhoun is upset about the preseason snub by his peers, he doesn’t show it. If anything, he agreed with their choices.

“I thought we were picked eighth because seventh and ninth were occupied,” he said. “It was probably a very justifiable pick.”

Consider the reasons: Cliff Robinson, the Huskies’ 6-foot-11 scoring machine, had joined the NBA. Connecticut’s leading three-point shooter was gone, too. Worse yet, the returning team featured no double-figure scorer and only one senior starter.

“But we had a lot of guys coming back, too,” George said. “People don’t know how hard you work during the summer. They just see how you ended the season.”

For Connecticut, last season ended in the NIT, rather than in the NCAA tournament. An earlier two-point loss to Providence and a three-point loss to Seton Hall had sealed the Huskies’ fate with the NCAA selection committee. Providence was the final Big East entry, thus extending Connecticut’s record as being the only team in the conference’s history never to appear in the tournament.

It was shortly after this 18-13 disappointment that George started pumping 500 shots a day. Smith went to the Olympic Festival in Oklahoma City to improve his game. And Calhoun flew to Tel Aviv, in hopes of signing the 6-7 1/2 Henefeld, a low-post player on the Israeli national team whose soft touch and court skills were more suited to off-guard or small forward in the United States.

Henefeld, who had visited the Connecticut campus for only four hours during a previous recruiting trip, eventually accepted a scholarship from the Huskies. But he couldn’t practice with the team until his Scholastic Aptitude Test results were received and approved by the NCAA.

Henefeld took the test on Oct. 14. Connecticut began practice on Oct. 15. At 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 1, Henefeld was granted permission to join the team. Later that night, after a brief orientation drill, Calhoun inserted Henefeld into the lineup against Marathon Oil, a traveling exhibition team. Afterward, Henefeld was asked about the experience.

“This is very interesting, to play before you practice,” he said.

Henefeld improved. He finished this season averaging 12.0 points and 5.9 rebounds a game. He also recorded 120 steals, a total surpassed by only one other Division I player this season. Thus the nickname: “Gaza Strips.” His teammates, though, unsure how to pronounce his first name (it’s NAH-dove), started calling him, “the Dove.” It stuck.

Now there are a half-dozen interview requests for Henefeld each day--and not just from the American media. As perhaps Israel’s leading sports celebrity, Henefeld is being followed closely in that country. That would explain why at least one Israeli television crew will be on press row when Connecticut plays Seton Hall Friday at noon in the quarterfinals.

Then again, the Huskies are used to attention, however far-flung it might be.

Thirty-nine newspaper, radio and television reporters followed Connecticut to Boston College last week. Against Georgetown, four local stations reported live from the game. Ten newspapers accompanied the Huskies to the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage.

It’s no wonder Connecticut officials fondly refer to the area media as “The Horde.”

“People in other parts of the country might not comprehend that,” said Tim Tolokan, Connecticut’s sports information director. “But we’re the No. 1 sports story in this state.”

Some story. The Huskies began their Big East schedule by losing their first two games. Then they proceeded to win 12 of their next 14 conference games. By season’s end, Connecticut had beaten every Big East team at least once, including St. John’s, which had drubbed the Huskies by 31 points earlier in the year.

“When we lost to St. John’s as bad as we did, a lot of teams would have had a couple days off, figuring they needed time to forget about it,” George said. “We had our regular 2 1/2-hour practice. It was like we didn’t even play the night before.”

Said Calhoun: “We have a tremendous sense of chemistry and we’re unaffected by outside pressure.”

Maybe so, but they’re also eighth in the conference in field-goal percentage, seventh in free-throw percentage, seventh in three-point percentage and sixth in rebounding.

And this is the No. 8 team in the country?

Connecticut survives despite such numbers because it averages about 17 more scoring opportunities a game than its opponents.

“And you know the saying,” Calhoun said, “ ‘Even a blind squirrel can find an acorn once in a while.’ ”

Already there are rumors that Calhoun might be wooed away by a high-profile program in need of a good coach and some integrity--did someone say North Carolina State? This is Calhoun’s fourth year at Connecticut and he has taken the Huskies from a 9-19 record in 1986-87, the year he had to start a walk-on from the baseball team, to an NIT championship the next season, to a 25-5 record and a soon-to-be-issued NCAA tournament bid in 1990. And at Thursday’s news conference in New York, Calhoun is expected to receive the Big East’s coach-of-the-year award.

But will he stay put?

So popular is Calhoun in Connecticut that he said he can’t visit a restaurant and eat a meal without interruption from well-meaning fans. He has become a state hero, and with such stature comes a price, mainly his privacy.

“Every single year, what I try to do is sit down and evaluate myself and my situation,” he said. “Connecticut is a terrific job. I’m not sure the vision was 25-5, though. The vision was to make us a mainstream Big East team.”

That accomplished, Calhoun carefully fends off talk of his possible departure.

“I’m happy here,” he said. “I don’t have plans to leave here. But I want to make sure I feel very comfortable here.”

A Big East tournament championship would help. So would a strong showing in the NCAA tournament, which is what George has in mind. After all, he didn’t shoot those off-season jumpers for nothing.

“Inside the league, they respect us because we come out every night and play hard,” George said. “But outside the league, people think we’re still the new team on the block. Hopefully, we’ll raise some hell in the tournament.”

As if they haven’t done enough already.