Green Is Back Instead of Taking Greenbacks : College basketball: Georgia guard passed up a good reason to turn pro and is making it pay off.

Litterial Green, Georgia’s highly regarded senior guard, thought about leaving school to make himself available for the NBA draft, after his father suffered a heart attack 13 months ago.

“I was kind of afraid,” Green said. “I wanted him to see me play at the next level.”

After talking with his father last spring, he decided he could wait and returned to Georgia.

“Son, you’re going to be playing ball long after I’m gone,” his father told him. “This is your decision. Don’t do it for anybody but Litterial. I’m going to be all right.”

Eight months later, Green’s father had fully recovered.

Green is prospering, too, as the Bulldogs prepare to meet UCLA tonight at 7:30 at Pauley Pavilion.

Other than USC’s Harold Miner, UCLA probably won’t face a better guard this season than Green, who moved past Dominique Wilkins into third place on Georgia’s all-time scoring list last month.

He needs 50 points to reach the top of that list, ahead of Vern Fleming and the leader, former All-American Alec Kessler.

Green is no gunner, either. He will soon replace Fleming as the Bulldogs’ all-time assist leader.

His coach, Hugh Durham, calls the 6-foot-1 Green “as talented as any guard in the country.”

Said Louisiana State Coach Dale Brown: “He’s one of the premium guards in the country and yet he has not really been given a great deal of attention.

“I think he is destined to be an NBA player. He’s highly competitive, tremendously quick, very strong, very aggressive.

“He’s probably one of those guys like Tim Hardaway, who didn’t get that much attention (at Texas El Paso) and then, all of a sudden, he’s a star (in the NBA).”

A native of Moss Point, Miss., Green has spent much of his career in the shadow of former Louisiana State All-American Chris Jackson, his friend and high school rival from Gulfport, which is about 20 minutes from Moss Point.

Both were high school All-Americans, but Jackson was the state player of the year when he and Green were seniors.

Then, while Jackson averaged 30.2 points as a freshman at LSU and 27.8 as a sophomore to rank among the national scoring leaders, Green played more of a complementary role at Georgia.

After averaging almost 40 points as a high school senior, he averaged 15.5 points and 4.3 assists as a college freshman, 17.5 points and 4.3 assists as a sophomore.

“When I was a freshman, I felt envious (of Jackson),” Green said. “But, basically, it was immaturity on my part. Not many guys can go out there and score (30) points a night. But I was saying, ‘I could, I could, if I was in that system.’

“But that’s baloney. You have to give him credit. You have to give anybody credit who did a job like Chris Jackson did. He lit it up.”

But in four games against his boyhood rival, Green outscored Jackson. When they were sophomores, Jackson scored 23 and 26 points against Georgia, Green 32 and 29 against LSU. In the two games, Green made 23 of 34 shots.

After the season, Jackson left LSU and was taken by the Denver Nuggets in the NBA draft.

“It felt strange,” Green said. “We’d been playing against each other since seventh grade. To see him leave before me, I got kind of jealous at one point, (thinking), ‘Man, I want to go.’ But my stock wasn’t near as high as his.”

Last season, Green averaged 20.6 points to finish third in the Southeastern Conference scoring race.

This season, he is averaging 21.3 points and 4.6 assists as Georgia’s only senior starter.

“He reminds me of John Bagley (of the Boston Celtics),” said Marty Blake, director of scouting for the NBA. “The kid knows how to play.

“He has some point characteristics. He’s a tough kid. He can bring the ball up the court. He’ll probably be a better pro because he’ll be playing with better players. He won’t have to do all the things he has to do (at Georgia).”

Green is proud of his versatility, which he said has developed through maturity.

“I came in as a bull-headed freshman, thinking I knew everything,” he said. “I really didn’t know anything.

“I’ve learned to do the little things. When I first came in, I was one-dimensional. Score, score, score--that’s all I’d think about. But there’s more to the game than scoring. There are a lot of intangibles to help your team win--defense, distributing the ball, making the right decisions.”