COLLEGE BASKETBALL / DAILY REPORT : Quick Decision for Stoudamire Not Guaranteed

There’s no guarantee Arizona’s appeal on restoring eligibility for player of the year candidate Damon Stoudamire will be decided before tournament play begins, an NCAA official said Monday.

Meanwhile, Stoudamire has retained a lawyer privately, Arizona Athletic Director Jim Livengood confirmed.

The All-American guard, whom the university declared ineligible with teammate Ben Davis last weekend because of alleged NCAA rules violations, refused to discuss his status.

“I’m not talking. Not this week,” Stoudamire said.

On Saturday, Stoudamire, Livengood and Arizona Coach Lute Olson said Stoudamire was innocent of any wrongdoing.

The university telefaxed separate appeals Monday concerning each player to the NCAA’s eligibility office, with tournament hopes of the Wildcats, a Final Four team last season, resting in the balance.

Livengood said he was confident of a decision before fifth-seeded Arizona (23-7) opens play in Thursday’s first game of the Midwest Regional against 12th-seeded Miami of Ohio in Dayton, Ohio.

But Carrie Doyle, NCAA director of eligibility in Overland Park, Kan., said “there is no guarantee” her staff will be able to reach its decision before the game.

A committee on eligibility would hear an appeal if the staff’s ruling is unfavorable to Arizona, Doyle said, but its chairman, from fellow Pac-10 school Arizona State, wouldn’t take part.

There is no further appeal within the NCAA.

The university declared the players ineligible pending appeal in the face of a potential two-year ban from NCAA tournament play.

Davis is accused of having violated an NCAA rule against gifts by taking shoes from a longtime friend, another college basketball player later declared ineligible in connection with accepting shoes from an agent.

Another NCAA rule bars a player or relative from accepting transportation from a sports agent. Stoudamire’s father, Willie, is accused of having taken an airline ticket from Steve Feldman of Newport Beach for a flight last month from Portland, Ore., where he lives, to Los Angeles, where Arizona was playing. Under the rule, Damon Stoudamire would be in violation even without knowing of any such ticket exchange.

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The father of Villanova basketball player Jonathan Haynes was arrested before Sunday’s Big East championship game after a handgun fell out of his pocket and discharged at Madison Square Garden in New York, police said.

Warren Haynes’ two-shot derringer went off about an hour before the game, police spokesman Sgt. Edward J. Orski said.

Haynes, 47, of Philadelphia, was waiting in a hallway to enter the arena at the time of the incident. He was grabbed by arena security guards, taken to a midtown Manhattan precinct and charged with criminal possession of a weapon, Orski said.

The elder Haynes missed seeing his son score five points in Villanova’s 94-78 upset of Connecticut.

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North Carolina didn’t know Monday whether it would enter the NCAA tournament with Rasheed Wallace, the star center who sprained his left ankle on Sunday.

“Day to day,” spokesman Matt Bowers responded when asked about Wallace’s condition. He said the sprain was mild.