NOTES : Journalist Knight: Soft Schedule Gave UNLV Hard Lesson

Doing daily observations for an Indianapolis paper, Bob Knight offered an opinion on why Nevada Las Vegas got knocked off.

“Duke deserves a lot of credit for beating Las Vegas--which, by the way, wasn’t prepared for a game like this because of its schedule,” the Indiana coach wrote. “They haven’t played anybody like Duke this year, a team which won’t take any of their stuff.”

What stuff, he didn’t specify.

Voted all-tournament were Bobby Hurley, non-starter Bill McCaffrey and most valuable player Christian Laettner of Duke, Mark Randall of Kansas and Anderson Hunt, who had 29 points in UNLV’s loss to Duke.

Santa Ana’s Alonzo Jamison did not have a night to remember for Kansas. The junior from Valley High missed nine of his 10 shots, pulled down only four rebounds in 29 minutes and committed four fouls.

Pasadena’s Kirk Wagner of Kansas got into the game for only three minutes but had as many baskets as Jamison, hitting the only shot he took.

Dick Vitale undoubtedly will be hearing more about his reaction on ESPN to a series of Vitale “impersonators” that included a black teenager. “Al Jolson, baby! Al Jolson!” Vitale yelled.

Seven teams this season defeated the national champions--Arizona, Arkansas, Georgetown, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia and Wake Forest, all of which made the NCAA tournament’s 64-team field.

UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian stayed for the title game, although his team flew home. He and senior Larry Johnson will be in Los Angeles for Wednesday’s presentation of the John Wooden player-of-the-year award.

Having appeared in the film about Indiana’s high school tournament, “Hoosiers,” actor Dennis Hopper was back in Indianapolis as a spectator for the college tournament. Hopper was pulling for Kansas, being from Dodge City.

The losing coach, Roy Williams, said afterward he felt like a winner.

“With all the bad things about sports you read about, I’m glad to have been a part of such a good thing,” Williams said. “The way I figure it, the only person in America who is luckier than Roy Williams tonight is Mike Krzyzewski.”

The finals will return to Indianapolis in 1997. Next year’s host is Minneapolis, followed by New Orleans in 1993, Charlotte, N.C., in 1994, Seattle in 1995 and the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J., in 1996.

Duke became the third member of the Atlantic Coast Conference to win a national championship, joining three-time champion North Carolina and two-time champion North Carolina State.

Duke won the title after making the Final Four four consecutive times and five times in six years.

Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski is only the second coach in NCAA history to make four consecutive trips to the Final Four. But he’s got a long way to go to tie the record of nine in a row set by UCLA’s John Wooden from 1967-75.

Wooden, who won a record 10 NCAA championships before he retired, returned to the Final Four as a spectator for the first time since 1984.

“I just didn’t feel right being there without my late wife, who had been with me all those other times,” Wooden said. “But, now it’s in my home state and it was an opportunity to visit old friends.”

The 80-year-old Wooden, a former Indiana high school and Purdue star, began his career as a high school coach in his home state.

Christian Laettner became the 11th player in Duke history to score 1,700 points in a career with a first-half basket and became the tournament’s leading scorer in the process.

Laettner finished with 18 points, reaching double figures for the 37th time in 39 games this season and bringing his career total to 1,709. He also had 10 rebounds in recording his 17th double-double of the season.

Laettner, a junior center voted the outstanding player in the Final Four, had 46 points in two Final Four games and 125 in six tournament games.

He also passed Art Heyman and moved into eighth place on the school’s rebounding list by pulling down four in the first half. He’ll start his senior year with 874.

Laettner had one steal in the first half, tying Johnny Dawkins for sixth place on the school’s all-time list with 168, and will tie Danny Ferry for fifth with his first steal next season.

Kansas fans may have rubbed their eyes in disbelief when Mark Randall made the first three-point basket of his college career in the first half.

The 6-foot-9 senior had attempted only three in 34 games this season and only five in 131 career games.

Kansas, which shot 52% over its first 34 games, shot only 41.5% against the Blue Devils.

The announced crowd of 47,100 included Vice President Dan Quayle, who was never introduced. But his presence could not be missed by those around him--a large contingent of Secret Service agents was quite visible.