BASKETBALL : Robinson Is Turning Heads (Up)

The best basketball player at the Olympic Festival? So far, it might be Glenn Robinson, a 6-foot-9 forward from Roosevelt High in Gary, Ind.

Robinson, voted Mr. Basketball in Indiana, is averaging 8.7 rebounds and 16.7 points after leading his North team beat the West, 105-83, Monday.

Equally impressive is his jumping ability, which, he said, has yet to be measured.

“Without a doubt, (he is) one of the great leapers in the game today,” said Clem Haskins, the University of Minnesota coach who is in charge of the North team.

For Robinson, the Festival might represent his last chance to play competitive basketball until next summer, though his season could be extended by an invitation to join the USA Junior World Championship tryout. USA Junior Coach Lon Kruger arrived Monday in hopes of adding four to seven Festival players to his roster.

Even if he does get an invitation, though, indications are that he will not accept, on orders from Purdue Coach Gene Keady, who, ironically, is head coach of the U.S. Pan American Games team.

Robinson’s season will end abruptly. He will attend Purdue but is academically ineligible to play during his freshman season.

“So far, I’m trying to keep my head up high,” he said. “But I’m going to wish I was out there.”

North teammate Anthony Miller, who sat out his freshman year at Michigan State because of similar academic difficulties, offered a bit of advice.

“I’d just tell him to try to stay in shape and keep his grades up,” he said. “If you don’t, you can forget basketball. You get depressed. I know when I flunked out, I missed by two points. I got depressed for the first two terms. I couldn’t take it at first.”

If the future of U.S. women’s basketball is at the U.S. Olympic Festival, some coaches, starting with two of the most prominent in the country, can wait.

Andy Landers of Georgia and Jody Conradt of Texas are watching the action at Pauley Pavilion. They are wondering if America is in for a decline when the leading players who have won two consecutive Olympic gold medals begin to retire sometime after 1992. They aren’t the only ones.

“A lot of people are asking that themselves,” said Landers, also coach of the North team here. “It’s a good question. People are wondering what will happen. Are the people concerned? Concerned enough to think about it and ask the question.”

Said Conradt: “We talk about parity in the women’s game, and certainly there is parity. But it’s that we’ve gone down to a mediocre level together.”

The problem, they agree, is not one of talent, but of competitiveness. Perhaps expectations have gone up, or perhaps women’s basketball has become a victim of its success in that younger players now are showered with walk-on-water status during recruiting time, as the men are.

Landers longs for the days of seeing a player such as Teresa Edwards, who used to cut to the front of the line to repeat a drill during practice--but not only when a coach was looking, as so many players do today.

It’s part nostalgia, part concern for the women’s game, which has made such great strides.

“With privilege comes more responsibility,” Conradt said. “Maybe we have to go back and reaffirm that privilege.”

The last day in Los Angeles would be a good place to start.

“I see a lot of pretty play,” Landers said while watching a game. “You get behind-the-back passes and between-the-legs dribbles. But that’s got very little to do with competing. That’s got nothing to do with getting in someone’s face on defense. I’m just not seeing that hard-nosed competitor.”

Crowds for the women’s games dropped from disappointing to abysmal with the return of the work week.

P.S.: The next women’s Final Four will be held at the Sports Arena.

“I would certainly hope people respond better than this,” said Jane Albright, the South coach from Northern Illinois.

Officials expect crowds of only about 3,000 for today’s medal games.

Peggy Evans continued to be one of the most impressive women’s players with 14 points and 10 rebounds in 21 minutes to help the South beat the East, 71-70, Monday. But she had a head start. She plays at Tennessee.

“My freshman year, I had to practice against Daedra Charles every day,” Evans said of the Volunteers’ All-American forward. “I don’t know if there’s anybody here that tough.”

Evans, one of three Tennessee players in the Festival, has taken advantage of the opportunity to play small forward in addition to her familiar role as a power player by averaging 15 points in the first three games. The former Miss Basketball in Michigan averaged 8.6 points for the 1991 national champions, good enough to be make the Southeastern Conference all-freshman team.

“It makes it easy in the sense that I’m already used to working hard and playing people just as good,” Evans said. “But I still have to work hard. It’s not going to be an advantage unless I continue to work.”

While attendance for the first three days of basketball has been disappointing, the audience hasn’t been without its share of well-known viewers.

Bernie Bickerstaff, general manager of the Denver Nuggets; Rick Sund, vice president of basketball operations for the Dallas Mavericks; Jerry West, general manager of the Lakers; Scott Layden, Utah Jazz director of player personnel; and Ed Badger, scout for the Atlanta Hawks, are among the pro personnel who have visited Pauley Pavilion during the Festival.

“It’s a chance to associate faces with names,” Sund said. “You don’t look at them for now, you look at them for the future. You look at their bodies and see how they develop three years from now.”

Also in attendance were USC Coach George Raveling, Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun, Memphis State Coach Larry Finch, Arizona Coach Lute Olson, UC Irvine Coach Rod Baker, USA women’s assistant Olympic Coach Jim Foster, USA Basketball executive director Bill Wall and Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Raveling and Krzyzewski are members of several USA Basketball selection committees.

South Coach Wimp Sanderson of Alabama showed up wearing his beloved plaid. The weather being too warm for a jacket, Sanderson settled for a plaid shirt.

Of course, plaid can only do so much. Sanderson’s South team is 0-3.