COLLEGE BASKETBALL / GENE WOJCIECHOWSKI : There’s a Storm Brewing Over Lopez at St. John’s

Mid-October. Third day of practice. St. John’s assistant coach Ron Rutledge is standing under the basket as freshman guard Felipe Lopez runs through a play. Rutledge, the guy responsible for signing America’s No. 1 recruit, is overwhelmed by the sight.

“George,” he says to Red Storm assistant George Felton, “I just can’t believe that he’s here.”

Actually, Lopez is everywhere. On the cover of Sports Illustrated. On ESPN. On the minds of every opposing coach who has to deal with his 19.6-point, 4.4-rebound, 2.6-steal averages.

Thanks partly to Lopez, St. John’s is 5-0 for the first time since 1990-91, the same season it advanced to the NCAA regional finals. Attendance is up. Interest is through the Alumni Hall roof. People are talking St. John’s hoops again.

And all because of Lopez, the 6-foot-5 shooting guard who starred at Rice High in New York, who led the team to a state championship, who earned MVP honors at Magic Johnson’s all-star game in Detroit and at the McDonald’s All-America competition, who reportedly could have signed a $400,000 deal to play in Spain this season and might be in the NBA by next season.

So things are hunky-dory at St. John’s, right? After all, the school’s address isn’t 8000 Utopia Parkway by accident, is it?

RED STORM RISING--PART II

Yes, well, not so fast. Quoting an anonymous St. John’s player, a recent Village Voice story suggested that Lopez’s instant fame has caused resentment among his teammates.

In other words, someone’s jealous.

“Let’s face it, (guard Derek) Brown and (swingman James) Scott are seniors who hoped to play in the NBA all their lives,” the player said in the story. “This was going to be their year to show their stuff to all the scouts. Then here comes a young kid who never played a game as yet, a freshman straight out of high school, and suddenly all we hear about is Felipe this and Felipe that. It’s not fair. We’re not even the St. John’s team any more. We’re just Felipe Lopez’s teammates.”

Reaction: Last season’s St. John’s team without Lopez was 12-17. St. John’s team with Lopez is undefeated. Next question.

Rutledge hasn’t read the Village Voice story, but he didn’t need to. Told of the verbal back-stabbing aimed at Lopez, Rutledge quickly dismissed it as fiction.

“From what I’ve observed, (Lopez and fellow prized recruit Zendon Hamilton) have been well received by their teammates and by the coaches and by the university,” he said. “I don’t sense any resentment to the attention they’ve received at this point. Everybody seems to be very comfortable with the marriage.”

If Lopez, 19, is worried about the story, he doesn’t show it. He says all the right things in interviews and does all the right things on the court. If it’s an act, Lopez has fooled a lot of people.

“The fact is that (Lopez and Hamilton) are such easy people to get along with,” Rutledge said. “They handle the notoriety without any ego problems. They realize it’s a team sport. They don’t want to take anything. They want to share.”

And this from Chris DeLorenzo, the St. John’s assistant sports information director who travels with the team and helps arrange Lopez’s interview schedule: “He’s a really good kid, a team player.”

VCR SCOUTING

Coaches continue to do a slow burn over the NCAA rule that prohibits them from scouting opponents in person.

Enacted with the blessings, if not the urging, of the powerful Presidents Commission, the measure was seen as another way to cut costs and at the same time, put a shorter leash on coaches.

True enough, money has been saved. Under most arrangements, a school now sends its next opponent four of its most recent game tapes. Compare the cost of mailing a tape overnight vs. sending a coach on the road and you can understand why the presidents loved the new rule.

Meanwhile, the coaches are wondering whatever happened to the wonderful world of legislative quid pro quo .

“I don’t like the rule,” Kansas Coach Roy Williams said. “The biggest reason I don’t like the rule is because as coaches we felt like we were giving up something that we wanted to do in the scouting rule, thinking we were going to get something back from the Presidents Commission. Needless to say, they took what we gave and gave us nothing back.

“We just keep giving, giving, giving and not getting anything back in return, so I have selfish motivations there.”

The coaches’ shopping list: an added scholarship, freshmen ineligibility, some room on standardized testing requirements. Instead, Williams said, the coaches are running out of patience and bargaining chips.

“I’ve got a pretty good collection of ties, myself personally,” Williams said. “I think that’s about the only thing we have left. I think we’ve given in every area that you can possibly give. We keep getting hit right between the eyes. Unless they like my collection of ties, I don’t know if I’ve got much left that I can give them anymore.”

Rhetoric aside, the worst part of the rule has to do with scouting snafus. Kansas State Coach Tom Asbury wouldn’t name names, but he said his staff recently received an opponent tape of such low quality “that we couldn’t even see the (uniform) numbers.”

Asbury is like most coaches. Given his druthers, he’d rather scout a team in person. You get a feel for a player’s size, his quickness, his intensity. . . . all the intangibles that don’t necessarily appear on a videotape filmed from a single halfcourt camera.

“I don’t particularly like the rule,” Asbury said. “But that’s not the first rule we’re not crazy about.”

Get used to it, fellas. It won’t be the last.

THE REST

If you’re keeping count--and they are at St. John’s and Georgetown-- Lopez is trailing slightly in the Big East Conference freshman of the year November- December balloting. You know about Lopez’s numbers, but before Wednesday night’s game against Providence, Georgetown point guard Allen Iverson was averaging 22.7 points, 5.3 assists and 2.7 rebounds. Lopez does lead the league in the all-important interview category. Lopez is available on Thursdays, but Iverson isn’t available until the beginning of second semester--standard Coach John Thompson operating procedure for freshmen. . . . New Iowa State Coach Tim Floyd has found life in the Big Eight Conference a bit more intense than at the University of New Orleans. Marathon Oil beat the Cyclones in an exhibition game, which didn’t go over very well in Ames. And then there are the recruiting problems. Because of the timing of his hiring, Sept. 9 was the first time Floyd and his staff could visit prospects. By then, Iowa State was dead. “(Other recruiters) were more or less high-fiving with the youngsters and we were having to explain who we were,” Floyd said.

Three weeks into the season and already there have been three No. 1 teams--Arkansas, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Last season there were six changes atop the polls. So what does it mean? At the moment, not much. The Razorbacks, No. 1 ranking or not, still remain the favorite to repeat. “Last year I felt like and said that from December on, I thought the two teams that had the most players and who could withstand problems easier than anyone else were Arkansas and North Carolina,” said Kansas’ Williams. “I didn’t have any doubt in my mind about that. This year I think Arkansas is clearly a team that can stand more problems, injuries and things like that than anybody else.”

Ralph Willard, who left Western Kentucky to rebuild Pittsburgh’s program, is having all sorts of fun. The Panthers played last Saturday’s game against Buffalo with five scholarship players. That’s because point guard Andre Aldridge, a former walk-on who inherited the starting job after star Jerry McCullough tore up his knee this summer, was suspended for one game. Then guard Garrick Thomas was given a one-game suspension for violating an NCAA rule. Pitt was back up to seven scholarship players for Tuesday’s game against St. John’s, but the Panthers still lost. Some good news: Senior forward Chris Gant, who has a stress fracture in his foot, will return in the next week or two.

Spanning the globe in search of a center, George Washington Coach Mike Jarvis has found another foreigner to replace Yinka Dare, the Nigerian who surprised the Colonials by ditching the team for the NBA after his sophomore season. This time Alexander Koul of Belarus is in the pivot and playing beyond expectations. The 7-1, 265-pounder is averaging 13 points, five rebounds and shooting 69.8% from the field. He had 13 points in his debut, which just happened to be the same night the Colonials upset Syracuse. Last Friday, he made 13 of 14 shots against South Carolina State. The Colonials are 5-2, but the best news has nothing to do with their record. According to Jarvis, Koul isn’t expected to pull a Dare-like shocker and leave early.

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Top 10

As selected by staff writer Gene Wojciechowski

No. Team Record 1. North Carolina 4-0 2. UCLA 2-0 3. Kansas 4-0 4. Arkansas 4-1 5. Arizona 4-1 6. Massachusetts 2-1 7. Duke 4-1 8. Arizona State 4-1 9. Kentucky 3-1 10. Connecticut 4-0

Waiting list: Maryland (5-1), Florida (3-1), Cincinnati (3-1), Minnesota (5-0), Wisconsin (4-0)