COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S FINAL FOUR : NOTES : Whither Webber? Sophomore Weighs All of the Factors

Kentucky forward Jamal Mashburn is leaving school a year early for the NBA. So is Memphis State swingman Anfernee Hardaway. And that’s only the short list.

Now then, what about Michigan forward Chris Webber?

Webber isn’t saying--not yet, at least--but the recent criticism directed at the Wolverines will be factored into his decision.

“I think it definitely has affected that,” he said. “I don’t want to lie. It definitely has affected me both ways.”

Webber-watchers say that the Michigan-bashing could convince him to leave Ann Arbor after his sophomore season or cause him to return--if only to prove the critics wrong. A Wolverine national championship could also hasten his departure.

“Chris Webber hasn’t had fun in this basketball tournament playing basketball,” Webber said. “When . . . you come to the sideline during the game and the coach tells you, ‘Chris, you’ve got to smile. You got to have fun.’ . . . When Coach (Steve) Fisher told me that, I realized that I had let the pressures get to me so much. You read everything, you think about everything, you hear. So you get on the court and you say, ‘If I get a dunk, I’m not going to get emotional. I don’t care if it picks my team up. I don’t care if it gets our crowd going. I don’t care if it gets our bench going.’ And that’s been hurting our team.

“When you see Chris Webber playing, one thing that you see is aggressiveness and youthfulness. I’ve lost that in this tournament. Hopefully (today) you’ll see it out there.”

Don’t read too much into Webber’s comments. He continues to send mixed signals.

“The more and more I think about (the criticism), it is a big issue, but I think it just comes with the territory,” Webber said. “When you start making character judgments and things like that, you don’t appreciate it. But college life gives you so much exposure. . . . Those articles aren’t fair, but some people might say it’s not fair for us to get a scholarship just because of our athletic ability.

“I appreciate college basketball so much, I guess I accept all of the downsides and the downfalls of the sport. In the meantime . . . all the things that college has given me, overweigh that so much that it’s not that big of a deal anymore.”

While walking down Bourbon Street on Thursday night, Kansas center Greg Ostertag heard the cheers of well-wishers. One problem: They thought he was someone else.

“Hey, Montross!” the fans yelled, mistaking the 7-foot-2, 270-pound Jayhawk for North Carolina center Eric Montross.

It was an honest mistake: Same haircut, same approximate size--Montross is 7 feet, 270 pounds--and same look.

“I just kept walking and smiling,” Ostertag said.

Ostertag wasn’t the only one suffering from a case of mistaken identity.

Said Montross of his strolls down the New Orleans streets: “Guys have been yelling, ‘Oster-tross’ and ‘Mon-trog.”’

Before accepting Dean Smith’s offer to join the North Carolina staff in 1978, Kansas Coach Roy Williams earned $16,000 at Owen High. As a Tar Heel assistant, his pay dropped to $2,500.

In desperate need of supplemental income, Williams sold basketball calendars.

“The calendars are what saved me,” he said.

During that first summer at North Carolina, Williams drove 9,000 miles in nine weeks and sold 10,000 calendars for a net profit of $2,400. The next summer, he drove 5,000 miles in five weeks and sold 53,000 calendars.

“I had a problem,” he said. “I had a family that needed to eat.”

The Kansas-North Carolina Connection continued: Only three coaches have beaten their alma mater in a Final Four game--Williams in 1991; UCLA’s John Wooden in 1969, when the Bruins defeated Purdue, and LaSalle’s Ken Loeffler in 1952, when the Explorers defeated Penn State. . . . Clipper Coach Larry Brown played at North Carolina and was later a member of Smith’s staff. In 1988, he coached Kansas to a national championship. . . . Kansas assistant coach Matt Doherty was a starter on the only Smith-led team that won a national championship, in 1982. . . . Williams was an assistant on that same Tar Heel team and remembered crying because he was so happy for Smith. Asked on Friday what he thought about the cavernous Superdome, Williams said: “ . . . In 1982, I thought it was the greatest place in the world.”

Asked if the college three-point line was too close to the basket, Webber first said no. Then he remembered Kentucky point guard Travis Ford.

“Move it back to half court for him,” Webber said.

Ford, most valuable player of the Southeast Regional, is shooting 53.5% from the three-point line (99 of 185) and averaging 13.7 points. Last season, an injured, overweight Ford averaged 3.5 points as a backup.

“This summer, I said that if this team is going to be successful, I have to be part of it,” Ford said. “I knew the chances we had. I knew we had a chance to get to the Final Four.”

So he lost weight, worked on his ballhandling and shot lots of three- pointers. An average daily workout still includes 200 to 300 three-pointers. So confident is Ford of his outside shooting, he gets upset if he doesn’t make 60 or 70 perimeter shots during a Kentucky drill.

The son of a former high school coach, Ford was able to dribble a ball between his legs when he was 2. But rather than shoot baskets at an early age--and develop bad basketball habits--Ford would lie on his back and practice his shooting form.