COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S FINAL FOUR : Clawing Their Way Back Up : Arizona’s Wildcats Have Something to Prove This Year After Two Seasons of Failure in the NCAA Tournament

What do we need to know about the Arizona Wildcats in the Final Four?

Is the best thing about Arizona the warm feelings between the coach and reporters?

“I’m happy we’re going to Charlotte,” Coach Lute Olson said. “I’m not happy some of those people are going with us. I’m bitter.”

Is the best thing about Arizona the way the players respect each other’s words and thoughts?

“Listening to Reggie Geary talk is like 24-hour talk radio on fuzz,” Joseph Blair said.

Is the best thing about Arizona a highly developed sense of humility?

“When we’re on our game, no one can stay with us,” Geary said.

Is the best thing about Arizona that the players know why it is so very important to be punctual?

“I wake up an hour before I need to so I can iron my clothes,” said Damon Stoudamire, known to his teammates as “Iron Man.”

And so it goes for Arizona, consistently colorful, suddenly talkative and finally in the Final Four again, the place where they can practice their we-don’t-get-any-respect speech before a much larger audience.

It’s been six years and two consecutive first-round NCAA tournament defeats since Olson’s Wildcats last appeared in a Final Four and some of Arizona’s critics in Tucson have taken aim and scored big hits.

Now it’s payback time for Arizona (29-5) with a Final Four semifinal Saturday against Arkansas. When Arizona dusted off Missouri to win the West Regional title Saturday at the Sports Arena, 92-72, both Stoudamire and Khalid Reeves, his running mate in the backcourt, addressed the subject of retribution.

“I hope this does stop our doubters, but who knows?” Stoudamire said. “This might not do anything for our rep, but it doesn’t make any difference because come next Saturday, there will be only four teams (playing) in Charlotte and we’re one of them.”

Since they have to play Arkansas, they also may be the first team to leave Charlotte, but it’s probably best not to underestimate the Wildcats.

It’s not difficult to see it is done, though.

Arizona has three guards, two forwards and no center. It has a guard who doesn’t score and a forward who gets out-rebounded by the guy standing next to him who is two inches smaller and weighs 56 pounds less.

It is a team that has more tattoos than players who help coming off the bench. All five starters have played between 930 minutes and 1,126 minutes and no one off the bench has played more than 450.

In Arizona’s 20-point blowout of Missouri, not one substitute played more than seven minutes.

Even if the Wildcats are one player in foul trouble away from disaster, it’s important to note that the things they do right are devastatingly effective.

To begin with, Stoudamire and Reeves clearly are the best 1-2 punch of any backcourt among the Final Four. Against Missouri, they combined for 63 of Arizona’s 92 points and played all but two minutes.

They score consistently, but differently. Stoudamire is a spot-up jump-shooter and Reeves is much more effective off the dribble.

The rest are strictly complementary players offensively, especially the 6-foot-10, 257-pound Blair, who looks sturdy, and the 6-8, 200-pound Ray Owes, who looks thin, a one-iron with hair.

Owes said appearances are deceiving.

“People look at me and think I’m weak,” he said. “I guess I like to surprise them.”

A nice surprise would have been for Owes to make a shot against Missouri, which he failed to do in 10 attempts. But scoring is not his job on the court.

Third guard Geary leads the defense, in which Owes and Blair also do the grunt work, while Stoudamire and Reeves go for steals. Apparently it’s an equitable division of labor because Arizona has been shutting teams down.

Loyola of Maryland had 55 points and Virginia had 58 against Arizona in the first two tournament games, Louisville got 70 and lost by 12, then Missouri got 72, lost by 20 and basically blamed itself afterward.

Geary was skeptical.

“That’s four games in a row where the other team has been off,” he said. “Gee, it couldn’t be our defense, could it? Naw, couldn’t be.”

Geary, who took Missouri’s Melvin Booker out of the game, said there is a reason Arizona is successful defensively.

“We’ve got a lot of guys who can fly around and do things,” he said.

They have also got a lot of guys who can flap their mouths pretty well. Although this isn’t all that unusual in the college game these days, it does seem odd in that Olson isn’t exactly Dick Vitale with a whistle.

Olson jealously protects his blandness. When the Associated Press reported that Olson had cursed Cal Coach Todd Bozeman during a game, Olson called AP headquarters in New York to deny the report, then went on nearly every sports-talk radio station that had a signal to do the same.

The players are a different matter. From Stoudamire to Geary to Blair, the Wildcats like to talk nearly as much as they like, well, to fly around and do things.

The pecking order, as far as the mouth work goes, seems to be Geary, Blair and Stoudamire, with Geary and Blair far out front. And Geary says it isn’t even close with Blair.

“I’m still king of the talk,” he said.

Blair said it might be time to make a change at the top.

“He’s the type of player who is always talking--I mean always, “ he said. “And to everybody. To me, it’s, ‘J.B., get the ball. J.B., get the rebound.’ Then he’ll throw you the ball and say, ‘J.B., dunk it.’ Unreal. Like I don’t know how to dunk.

“I know I get sick of it. I can imagine how the other team feels.”

In any event, no matter who says what or how anybody in that pesky media brigade feels, the Wildcats are in the Final Four. Tattoos, attitudes and all, it’s Arizona’s time to take the entire act to Charlotte.

It’s a formidable lineup--Olson with his white hair, Blair with his three tattoos, Reeves with his glide move, Geary with his ongoing conversations and Stoudamire with his freshly ironed socks and sharply creased T-shirts.

“Last year it seemed like we didn’t even go to the tournament, we were out so quick,” Blair said. “This is our chance.”