COLLEGE BASKETBALL : TEAM-BY-TEAM LOOK AT THE NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : EAST REGIONAL

1. NORTH CAROLINA (27-6)

* Player to watch: Tar Heel officials still can’t believe that guard Derrick Phelps didn’t make the Atlantic Coast Conference’s first team. He averages a modest 9.4 points, but he is the emotional leader and the team’s best defensive player.

* Little-known fact: This is only the third time since 1962 that the Tar Heels didn’t have a first-team player on the all-conference list.

* Outlook: People forget that North Carolina lost seven of the 14 players on last season’s championship team (five graduated, two redshirted). Also forgotten is that the Tar Heels had to win four close games to win the NCAA title. It also helped that Michigan’s Chris Webber called a timeout he didn’t have. Coach Dean Smith has the most roster talent of any team in the country, but he doesn’t always have the best team chemistry. Freshman center Rasheed Wallace is getting more playing time, which is good, and guard Donald Williams has shown flashes of his old self. But the Tar Heels don’t always play with the necessary intensity or togetherness needed to win a championship. A Final Four visit? Probably. An NCAA title. No way.

2. CONNECTICUT (27-4)

* Player to watch: Junior forward Donyell Marshall will be in the NBA next season. The Big East Conference player of the year is averaging 25.5 points and 3.4 blocks. He was also named the league’s defensive player of the year. Nicknamed “Yell” by Coach Jim Calhoun (because Marshall rarely raises his voice, or something like that), Marshall dominated opponents during all-star play last summer and hasn’t stopped since.

* Little-known fact: The Huskies, who have no scholarship seniors on the roster, won the Big East regular-season title outright for the first time since the 1989-90 season.

* Outlook: Calhoun has a star in Marshall and the impressive Doron Sheffer at point guard. Sheffer, from Israel, is unflappable, which is a big plus in the postseason. The Huskies have lots of quality backups and the whole team plays defense. Connecticut, which has never reached the Final Four, came close in 1990 (Duke’s Christian Laettner beat the Huskies in the regional final). A sure Final Eight team this time around.

3. FLORIDA (25-7)

* Player to watch: Junior guard Dan Cross has been one of the surprise players of the season. Florida Coach Lon Krueger says Cross has gotten better each game and his numbers reflect it. Cross, who averages 15.9 points, shoots nearly 49% from the three-point line and 86.1% from the free-throw line, is the main reason why Florida won the SEC Eastern Division.

* Little-known fact: Just think how good Florida would have been had heralded Kansas transfer Ben Davis not been dismissed from the team during the off-season.

* Outlook: Never underestimate Krueger, the SEC coach of the year, and this very solid team. With Cross and Craig Brown in the backcourt, Florida has one of the better tandems in the country. The Gators didn’t finish in front of Kentucky in the standings by accident. They’re capable of winning at least two tournament games.

4. TEMPLE (22-7)

* Player to watch: Two here: guard Eddie Jones, the Atlantic 10 Conference player of the year, and guard Aaron McKie, who won conference player-of-the-year honors last season. Jones averages 19.2 points and 6.9 rebounds, while McKie, who scored 33 points against Massachusetts in the conference tournament final, averages 18.7 points and 7.1 rebounds.

* Little-known fact: Temple is the seventh-winningest team in Division I history with 1,415 victories. The top seven: North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, St. John’s, Duke, Oregon State and Temple.

* Outlook: Despite stumbling a bit down the stretch, this is still a very good team, one that could reach the Final Eight. To get there, the Owls need McKie and Jones to do what they always do--score a lot and hit the boards--and guard Rick Brunson to do what he used to, that is, start hitting the three-pointer (he was one for 12 against Massachusetts last week). It also would help if the Owls could establish the semblance of an inside game. Temple Coach John Chaney says it is “one-and-done time.” The Owls usually shine in the postseason and this year should be no different. Five of their seven losses came against Atlantic 10 opponents who were familiar with their matchup zone. Temple went 8-2 against nonconference opponents, including victories against Louisville, Kansas, Alabama Birmingham, Villanova and Cincinnati.

5. INDIANA (19-8)

* Player to watch: Senior guard Damon Bailey is probably the choice, edging forward Alan Henderson. Bailey is third in the Big Ten Conference in scoring (21.5), as well as fourth in free-throw and three-point percentage. He has had a career year.

* Little-known fact: The Hoosiers wins lots of games because of their ability to get to the foul line. In past years, Indiana made more free throws than its opponents have attempted. Not this season. Also, entering the final few days of the regular season, the Hoosiers’ number of free-throw attempts and made free throws was markedly higher in victories than in losses (31 attempts, 23.7 made in victories vs. 20.3 attempts, 13.9 made in defeats).

* Outlook: Bailey has a hip-pointer, guard Pat Graham has a bad foot, forward Brian Evans wears a brace on his shoulder. The Hoosiers stumbled into the postseason and have lost games because of injuries and just plain lousy defense. The lag time between season’s end and tournament’s beginning will help the Hoosiers a lot. A Sweet 16 appearance isn’t impossible, but a Final Eight game might be.

6. NEBRASKA (20-9)

* Player to watch: None other than the Polish Rifle, senior forward Eric Piatkowski, who averages 21.6 points. When Piatkowski is on, the Cornhuskers are capable of challenging any team. They nearly beat Missouri at season’s end, partly because of Piatkowski.

* Little-known fact: Sophomore guard Erick Strickland, Nebraska’s best defensive player and its first option off the bench, is one of the Florida Marlins’ top minor-league prospects.

* Outlook: The Cornhuskers love to shoot the three-pointer. When they hit it, they’re a formidable team. When they don’t (they were two of 26 against Missouri this season), they almost always lose.

7. ALABAMA BIRMINGHAM (22-7)

* Player to watch: When 6-9 senior center Clarence Thrash is hitting his soft left-handed baby hook, the Blazers are nearly impossible to beat. Thrash is one of the more underrated low-post players in the country.

* Little-known fact: Coach Gene Bartow has taken two teams to the Final Four: UCLA and Memphis State. Bartow has said that at times, the Blazers have played Final Four-caliber defense.

* Outlook: A streaky team, which means they could win a few or get knocked out in the first round, which is what happened to the Blazers at the Great Midwest Conference tournament. We figure they’re gone after the first round.

8. WASHINGTON STATE (20-10)

* Player to watch: Sophomore forward Mark Hendrickson, a member of last year’s Pacific 10 Conference all-freshman team, sat out a lot this season because of injuries. Now he is back in the lineup and with him, the Cougars have something of an inside game to complement the backcourt of Eddie Hill and Tony Harris.

* Little-known fact: With Saturday’s victory against California, Coach Kelvin Sampson surpassed the .500 career mark at Washington State. His record: 103-102 during seven seasons.

* Outlook: After the Cougars worked so hard for so many seasons to reach the NCAA tournament, you wonder if there might a letdown. We doubt it. Washington State is a good team, especially since it can balance the perimeter firepower of Hill and Harris with the inside play of Hendrickson and 6-9 Tony Ferguson. A victory or two wouldn’t surprise us.

9. BOSTON COLLEGE (20-10)

* Player to watch: Bill Curley, the blue-collar player personified. The senior center averages 20.3 points and 8.9 rebounds and has established himself as a hard-working, fundamentally sound inside player with the ability to occasionally hit the outside jumper. In each of his four years at Boston College, Curley has led the team in scoring and rebounding.

* Little-known fact: Point guard Howard Eisley was a high school teammate of Michigan’s Jalen Rose and Minnesota’s Voshon Lenard. Boston College didn’t know about Eisley until someone sent a videotape of him to Coach Jim O’Brien. Now Eisley is the league’s leading three-point shooter and he’s never missed a start.

* Outlook: As far as Curley can carry the Eagles, which might be one victory. Not much of a bench, but Boston College plays an unorthodox style that could cause teams problems. The Eagles’ other problem: they get pushed around by physical teams.

10. GEORGE WASHINGTON (17-11)

* Player to watch: Sophomore center Yinka Dare can be a dominating inside force at times, an invisible man on others. During the last week of the regular season, Dare averaged 20 points and 18 rebounds. Then George Washington played Temple, which barely has an inside game, and Dare missed all four of his shots and had only seven rebounds.

* Little-known fact: This is only Dare’s third season of playing organized basketball. He came to the Colonials from Kabba, Nigeria.

* Outlook: The Colonials were the second-best defensive team in the Atlantic 10 and they have four players who can make the three-point shot--a must come tournament time. What they don’t have is a legitimate power forward who can help take some of the pressure off Dare. Marcus Ford, a 6-7 guard, has been moved to that position, but at 215 pounds, the wear and tear is beginning to show. Nonetheless, Mike Jarvis knows how to coach in the NCAAs (the Colonials advanced to the West Regional semifinals last season and nearly upset Michigan) and Dare isn’t likely to have another goose-egg effort. A team to be reckoned with.

11. PENNSYLVANIA (24-2)

* Player to watch: Junior guard Jerome Allen averages 14 points and leads the Quakers with 117 assists. Last season, he became the first sophomore in Ivy League history to win conference player-of-the-year honors.

* Little-known fact: Penn advanced to the Final Four in 1979.

* Outlook: The Quakers only lost to Massachusetts by four points in the first round of last year’s tournament. Penn isn’t a big team--its tallest starter is 6-8--but it can run and knows how to make the perimeter shot. Much more athletic than you might expect from an Ivy League team.

12. OHIO (25-7)

* Player to watch: Sophomore Gary Trent, a 6-7 forward who clinched the NCAA bid for the Bobcats, is the best player in the Mid-American Conference. He scored 22 points in the MAC tournament championship game against Miami of Ohio and also collected 12 rebounds. He averaged 25.7 points and 10.8 rebounds.

* Little-known fact: For the first time in Trent’s two-year college career, his father was able to see him play on television. Dexter Trent is a prisoner at the Ashland (Ky.) Federal Correctional Institution, where he is expected to be released in May after serving eight years on drug charges.

* Outlook: We wouldn’t want to play them in the first round. Trent is a special player and the Bobcats have experience and size on their side.

13. DREXEL (25-4)

* Player to watch: Sophomore Malik Rose is among thee nation’s leaders in rebounds (12.6 per game) and averages 14.3 points. The 6-7, 250-pound Rose was the North Atlantic Conference tournament most valuable player and earned All-NAC honors for the second consecutive season.

* Little-known fact: Drexel was the only Philadelphia school to heavily recruit Rose, a Philly native. Villanova and Temple all but ignored him. Since then, Rose has established himself as one of the country’s most relentless rebounding forwards.

* Outlook: Unfortunately for Drexel, Rose is the Dragons’ tallest starter. With All-NAC selection Brian Holden (16.6 points per game) in the backcourt, Drexel has a good perimeter attack, but will it be enough to earn a first-round upset? Doubtful.

14. JAMES MADISON (20-9)

* Player to watch: Only 6-7, Clayton Ritter takes turns at center and forward. A first-team all-conference selection, Ritter averages 18 points, 7.6 rebounds and shoots 62.8% from the field.

* Little-known fact: This is the first time James Madison has played in the NCAA tournament since 1983, when Lou Campanelli was the coach. This is also the first time in eight years Lefty Driesell has coached an NCAA tournament team. Driesell is one of only 11 coaches to take three schools to the tournament.

* Outlook: The Dukes could win a first-round game, but only if they keep shooting well. Ranked close to the top 10 in field-goal percentage, James Madison has little margin for error, especially with its smallish lineup that is outrebounded by an average of 2.3.

15. RIDER (21-8)

* Player to watch: Forward Charles Smith, the first freshman to win the Northeast Conference tournament most-valuable-player award. Among Division I freshmen, Smith was fourth in scoring (17.0) and 14th in rebounding (7.2).

* Little-known fact: Senior guard Mark Wilcox scored his 1,000th collegiate point Feb. 3, 1994. On Feb. 3, 1990, Wilcox scored his 1,000th point as a high school player.

* Outlook: Rider lost, 96-52, in a first-round game against Kentucky last season. You get the picture. Rider’s tallest starter is 6-7. The Broncs run the court well, but that won’t be nearly enough.

16. LIBERTY (18-11)

* Player to watch: Peter Aluma, a 6-10 freshman center from Lagos, Nigeria, entered the recent Big South Conference tournament with a 6.5 scoring average and a modest consecutive-shots-made streak. By the time the tournament ended, Aluma had made 28 of 32 shots over a six-game span. Along the way, he set a school record with 15 consecutive made shots.

* Little-known fact: Founded by Jerry Falwell, Liberty is making its first NCAA tournament appearance since joining Division I in 1988.

* Outlook: Aluma, who comes off the bench, joins 6-9 forward Jason Dixon to form a solid frontline. The Flames also have point guard Matt Hildebrand, a first-team all-conference selection. Too bad it won’t matter. One game and out.