COLLEGE BASKETBALL / GENE WOJCIECHOWSKI : Arkansas Starting to Put the Pieces Back Together

With another week until his next game, Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson has had lots of time to figure out how the Razorbacks could get waxed by Massachusetts in the season opener and then win their next six.

The homespun version:

“By the time we had gotten to that game, the smoke had been blown . . . so much that we didn’t know what to do,” Richardson said earlier this week. “That game got our attention.”

Since then, fourth-ranked Arkansas has beaten Georgetown, Jackson State, Missouri, Centenary, Southern Methodist and Murray State--not exactly Murderer’s Row, but not Washington Bible College, either.

Still, Richardson has some problems to solve if the Razorbacks want to visit Seattle for the Final Four in April. The short list:

--Somebody--Richardson is blaming agents and NBA scouts--told senior guard Alex Dillard over the summer that he needed to shoot more off the dribble. So Dillard junked his deadly set jumper and started forcing shots on the run.

The whole thing has been a disaster, enough so that Richardson recently told Dillard to quit the Meadowlark Lemon stuff and start popping the jump shot. Dillard, who figured it’s tough to reach the NBA when you spend your senior season on the bench, got the message.

--Disappointed with Corliss Williamson’s performances, Richardson ordered the Final Four MVP out of the weight room. The 6-foot-7, 245-pound junior was beginning to look like Karl Malone, but without the bulked-up numbers on the court.

His stats: 15 points, seven rebounds vs. UMass, 22 and 16 vs. Georgetown, 20 and four vs. Jackson State, nine and nine vs. Missouri, nine and five vs. Centenary, 21 and four vs. SMU and 13 and seven vs. Murray State.

“There’s been a big difference, a big difference,” said Richardson of the pre- and post-weight room Williamson. “Corliss had a cast (on his shooting wrist) for 90 days during the summer, and he didn’t play basketball. He worked out with weights, but it limited his motion. I told him, ‘I don’t want you like Hercules. I want you to be strong, but I’d rather you be more flexible.”

Since prohibiting him from heavy lifting, Richardson said Williamson “has looked a lot better.”

--For the first time in his career, star forward Scotty Thurman is out because of an injury. He sprained his ankle Dec. 6 against Centenary and sat out two games but is expected back for the Dec. 21 game against Florida A&M.;

Without Thurman, Richardson hasn’t been able to experiment with his bench and refine his substitution patterns.

“And our bench was the reason we won the national championship,” Richardson said.

--Arkansas’ lone scholarship signee, Brooklyn point guard Kareem Reid, just missed on his SAT scores and didn’t qualify. Rather than lose a year’s eligibility, Reid is enrolled as a part-time student at Arkansas. He took the test again last Saturday but misses out on daily lessons from the underrated Corey Beck, a senior and one of the best in the nation.

--Expectations.

The consensus choice to repeat as NCAA champions, the Razorbacks have discovered what it’s like to get everyone’s best shot.

“We’re not used to that,” Richardson said. “We’re used to doing the shooting. Now they’re shooting at you.”

Richardson will live. So will the Razorbacks, who should inch their way back atop the polls before long. Thurman is on his way back. Williamson is more interested in rebounds than reverse curls. Dillard is shooting jumpers. And as an added bonus, guard Clint McDaniel has come out of nowhere and nearly doubled his scoring average of a season ago, from 8.1 to 16.1.

TALE OF THE TAR HEEL

Because he is a nice guy--and because his playing time would have been reduced to near zilch--North Carolina senior forward Pat Sullivan “voluntarily” red-shirted last season. Sullivan missed the Tar Heel gag-athon against Boston College in the NCAA tournament, but was it worth it?

Sullivan returned to school this fall, a starting position his for the taking, and then suffered back spasms several days before North Carolina’s opener against Texas Nov. 26. By the first week in December, he couldn’t bend over to tie his shoes.

Last Thursday, doctors removed two bulging disks from Sullivan’s lower back. If all goes well--and there’s no reason to think it will, given his rotten luck--Sullivan may be back in uniform by mid-February. Otherwise, the top-ranked Tar Heels are thinking of petitioning the NCAA for a sixth year of eligibility.

Meanwhile, substitute-happy Coach Dean Smith is reduced to an eight-player rotation, including sixth-man Pearce Landry, a former walk-on who attends North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar, one of the university’s most prestigious academic awards. Landry, a senior guard, spent the previous seasons on the junior varsity team.

For now, the undefeated Tar Heels are fine. Landry actually made a big shot against Villanova and played well against Cincinnati. Sullivan’s replacement, 6-4 Dante Calabria, has done OK as a guard trying to imitate a forward. Best of all, Smith can’t constantly tinker with his lineup, which means the best players get the most playing time, unlike last season when Jerry Stackhouse had to wait until the halfway point to become a starter.

North Carolina has it easy until January, when the Atlantic Coast Conference schedule begins. If the starters stay injury-free, the Tar Heels can stay No. 1. But one more injury and you’ll have a whole new meaning for Carolina blue.

HIGH SCHOOL PHENOM, COLLEGE BUST?

Joey Beard went to Duke a season ago with the kind of credentials that make recruiters hyperventilate: McDonald’s All-American . . . Virginia player of the year . . . accustomed to winning . . . 6-9 and growing . . . only the second player in his high school’s history to start as a freshman--Grant Hill was the first.

So naturally everyone on Tobacco Road assumed Beard would follow in the footsteps of such Blue Devils as Danny Ferry and Christian Laettner. Beard had the big-time reputation. He had one of the best coaches in the business. He had the aura of Duke at his disposal.

Yes, well, Beard followed in the footsteps, all right, but they weren’t the sneaker prints of Ferry or Laettner. Instead, try Crawford Palmer, who left the Blue Devils a few years ago for Dartmouth. Or Billy McCaffrey, who ditched Duke for Vanderbilt.

For only the fourth time in Mike Krzyzewski’s 15 seasons at Duke, a Blue Devil player has quit the team and announced his plans to transfer. No official announcement has been made, but in all likelihood Beard will attend Boston University, where former Virginia assistant Dennis Wolff is beginning his first year as the Terriers’ head coach.

Wolff recruited Beard for the Cavaliers, loved his game and probably can’t wait until next season’s second semester, when Beard will be eligible to play. Meanwhile, everyone wonders how the can’t-miss-kid missed--and badly too.

Krzyzewski and his staff don’t often miscalculate, but in this case Beard simply couldn’t make the transition from high school star to the high-level demands of the Atlantic Coast Conference and Duke’s national schedule. Beard averaged only 1.3 points and four minutes of playing time as a freshman.

This year was supposed to be different. With Hill and Antonio Lang gone, Beard was expected to see his minutes zoom and maybe his scoring average do the same. Instead, Beard got mononucleosis, missed preseason practice and never dressed for a game.

The Blue Devils say privately that it was a good move for everybody. Beard gets to play for a coach he knows, at a school that can use him, in a league (North Atlantic Conference) that won’t overwhelm him. Duke gets an extra scholarship and no messy infighting.

THE REST

The Big East Conference’s leading rebounder didn’t play organized basketball last season. The same goes for the league’s leading scorer, who spent last year in jail. Both play for Georgetown and are the main reasons Coach John Thompson no longer looks as if he wants to cry in his white shoulder towel. Jerome Williams, a 6-9 junior forward, is averaging 13 rebounds, and freshman Allen Iverson is scoring 22.4 points a game.

Joseph Blair, Arizona’s 6-9 power forward, was back in uniform Monday after having been suspended by Coach Lute Olson for academic problems. And depending on his grades, prized transfer Ben Davis could make his Wildcat debut in Saturday’s game against Texas El Paso. Davis is academically ineligible until his first-semester grades are acceptable and posted by the school’s registrar office. The news isn’t so good for Olson, who strained his lower back last week lifting weights. He stood the entire game against Houston last Thursday, didn’t attend Sunday’s practice, vowed to be on the sideline for Monday’s game against LaSalle, but was a no-show.

Big East honks weren’t kidding when they said the league would feature lots of new stars. Of the conference’s 10 members, only one senior leads his team in scoring, Providence’s Eric Williams.

Since rejoining the team after being AWOL for one day, Indiana freshman guard Michael Herman has played only one minute in the last four games. Herman bolted after missing a potential game-winning shot against Notre Dame on Nov. 29. The Hoosiers lost in overtime, prompting Herman to return to hometown Chicago because: a) He felt responsible for the defeat, or b) He felt he was being blamed for the loss. Herman, who was left in Bloomington for last week’s games against Evansville and Kentucky, dressed but didn’t play against Morehead State and a got a minute’s worth of playing time against Miami of Ohio, hasn’t offered a public explanation.

You can expect the same code-of-silence stuff from Coach Bob Knight, who is trying to overcome a 4-4 start. Apparently star forward Alan Henderson is driving Knight crazy with his inconsistent play. One bright spot: freshman guard Neil Reed. Moved into the starting lineup after the Hoosiers’ dismal trip to the Maui Classic, he has played 196 minutes and committed only five turnovers. He is averaging 13.5 points and about five assists. Kansas visits Indiana on Saturday.

Speaking of codes of silence, Evansville Coach Jim Crews, a former Indiana player and Knight assistant, has ordered his team not to talk to reporters because he is mad at local writer Tom Collins. After the Aces’ 84-63 loss to Indiana on Dec. 3, Collins, who covers the team for the Evansville Courier, wrote that the game was nothing more than “a good workout for the Hoosiers.” Crews, whose skin apparently is as thin as a water balloon, announced the gag order a few days later.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Top 10

As selected by staff writer Gene Wojciechowski

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

Waiting list: Minnesota (6-1), Arizona State (4-1), Florida (4-1), Wisconsin (5-1), Georgia Tech (6-0).