COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENTS : EAST REGIONAL : Arkansas Looks Up to North Carolina

What he would love to do is scrape North Carolina’s Tar Heels from his cowboy boots. But of utmost concern to Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson in tonight’s NCAA East Regional is the strength and size of Carolina’s basketball players, the likes of which Richardson claims not to have seen since his old rawhide days.

“I’ve been to five cowboy shows, eight rodeos and two calf castrations and never seen anything like them,” he says.

Two of college basketball’s most successful coaches, casting themselves as country dude and city slicker, talked a good game Thursday as they prepared for the featured attraction of this regional. Richardson’s Razorbacks (22-8) will seek to keep top-seeded North Carolina (30-4) from delivering Dean Smith’s second national championship.

In tonight’s other East semifinal, Cincinnati (26-4) is a considerable favorite over Virginia (21-9).

North Carolina’s Smith got a kick out of Richardson’s description of him as “one of the game’s last real cowboys” and a genuine legend.

“He’s the cowboy,” Smith said. “He’s the one who wears the boots. I’ve ridden a horse once, but I’m from Topeka, Kan., and I’m a city boy. I didn’t grow up near Dodge City.”

So how about this legend business?

“I think it means I’m old,” Smith said.

Smith’s young guns worry Richardson most. One look at 7-foot, 270-pound Eric Montross in the middle of the Tar Heel lineup is enough to give the Razorback coach shivers. Every time he thinks about slapping a full-court press on the North Carolina players tonight, Richardson finds himself thinking about how large they are.

“They can throw right over us,” he said. “Montross is about 8 feet tall.”

And then there’s Kevin Salvadori, who is merely 7 feet; there are George Lynch, Pat Sullivan and Henrik Rodl, who all stand 6-8, and on the bench there is Matt Wenstrom, who goes 7-1. And there’s this high school kid out in the hallway, Richardson said, laughing, shaking his head, who must go at least 7 feet himself and probably will be part of next year’s North Carolina squad.

How to attack, then?

“You got me,” Richardson said. “Just try to bite ‘em on the elbow or the knee or someplace.”

Aw, he can do better than that. The Razorbacks are on a roll. They won their opening tournament game by 30 points over Holy Cross and then looked impressive in a six-point victory over St. John’s. And they again are playing the kind of ball they were playing when they started the season with 13 victories in 14 games, as well as later in a seven-point success over Kentucky.

Arkansas has some rodeo bulls of its own. There is a husky freshman, Corliss Williamson, who knows how to throw his 245 pounds around; and there is a smooth classmate, Scotty Thurman, who averages 18 points a game and can shoot from telescope range.

And then there is Corey Beck, a sophomore guard and the heart and soul of the Arkansas attack, who has so much skill that Richardson says: “You could play four Corey Becks and a cheerleader and do pretty good.”

What is undeniably true, though, is that the Arkansas players are, by and large, small. There is every chance that the “8-footer” Montross will pick on them the way he might not pick on someone his own size.

Said Razorback senior guard Darrell Hawkins: “If we put pressure on the perimeter, so that it’s not that easy to get inside, we should be OK. Otherwise, we’d better double-down quickly so that Montross can’t take those easy bank shots.

“If he does, we’re done.”

Richardson has faced worse odds. He has coached against Smith three times and has won twice.

The last time Arkansas and North Carolina met in a tournament game, the Tar Heels’ Lynch said: “I remember the three-point shot made a big difference. They started raining threes. We’d better be ready for 40 minutes of full-court, fast-break basketball.”