COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : MEN’S MIDWEST REGIONAL : Watch Out: Richardson Is Grumpy

Uh, oh. Arkansas is feeling persecuted again, and you know what that means. Lots of Nolan Richardson lectures. Lots of indignation. Lots of victories.

The last time the Razorbacks suffered one of these complexes, they won a national championship. Richardson complained that he didn’t get enough respect and his team didn’t get enough credit--except for having the longest shorts in Division I basketball.

It was all junior college psychology class stuff, but it worked. Sufficiently stoked, Arkansas scowled its way to last season’s NCAA title.

Now the second-seeded Razorbacks are struggling--if that’s possible for a team with a 29-6 record--to regain their swine swagger of 1994. They face sixth-seeded Memphis (24-9) in tonight’s semifinals of the Midwest Regional at Kemper Arena, but needed a one-point victory in the first round and a two-point overtime victory in the second round to get here.

Top-seeded Kansas (25-5), playing only 40 minutes away from its Lawrence campus, faces fourth-seeded Virginia (24-8) in the second game.

But don’t mention any of the Razorback troubles to Richardson, who gets testy whenever Arkansas near-misses are brought up.

“Some of us are confused with the 1960s,” Richardson said Thursday. “I don’t want to take anything away from UCLA’s (championships), but it’s over. Those days are over. They’ve been over so long.

“You’re talking about a program that only needed four games to win the national championship. It takes four games just to get to the Final Four today. You’re talking about a program that only played basically out on the West Coast, that had to beat two other teams to get to the Final Four. Those days are over. We played teams all over the country.”

Arkansas has the most victories of any team left in the tournament. It has played one more game, 35, than it did in all of 1993-94. The Razorbacks also have taken every opponent’s best shot, survived injuries and a killer schedule, and managed to reach the Sweet 16, becoming only the third defending champion to do so in the last 10 years.

“If other coaches had won as many games as we’ve won by one point, (reporters) would be writing stories . . . about how smart, and how clever, and how intelligent and how all these things are happening,” Richardson said. “When they talk about us? (Lowering his voice in a sportscaster’s baritone,) ‘Oh, well, they’re lucky. Uh, they’re living on the edge.’

“Hey, wait a minute now. You have to be good to be lucky. That’s what I told our kids, ‘You’ve got to be good to be lucky. Now, dammit, we’re through having luck with us--let’s be good.’ ”

But these aren’t the same Razorbacks of a season ago, when they didn’t lose a game at home . . . when they won their first two NCAA tournament games by 15 and 12 points . . . when they attacked all the time.

This year’s team got beat by 18 at home by Alabama, lost on the road to lightly regarded Mississippi and Auburn, and blew a 19-point lead over Kentucky in an overtime loss in the Southeastern Conference tournament championship game. And to get this far in the NCAA tournament, the Razorbacks needed a last-second free throw to beat 15th-seeded Texas Southern and a last-second brain cramp by Syracuse’s Lawrence Moten to squeeze past the Orangemen in overtime.

“It’s been very difficult the whole season,” power forward Corliss Williamson said. “I think we’re a better team because we’ve been through it.”

Blessed, is more like it. If guard Corey Beck doesn’t convert that free throw against Texas Southern, or Moten doesn’t do his Chris Webber imitation and call a timeout when Syracuse has none, the Razorbacks are gone and Richardson is on some golf course, working on his wedge game.

“Why, I tell my team every day, ‘Win by one. Win by one,’ ” Richardson said. “They took me at my word. I screwed up.”

Kansas Coach Roy Williams, who has been battling bronchitis, as well as suggestions that Kansas lucked out with its seeding and regional location, would take any sort of victory these days.

The same goes for Virginia Coach Jeff Jones, who has just about had it with the Kansas-gets-an-unfair-advantage theme.

“I think too much is being made about Kansas playing here,” he said. “I know everybody won’t be cheering for Kansas. We sold our allotment of tickets.”

Rooting sections won’t mean a thing for the Cavaliers, though, if they can’t find a way to deal with Kansas’ front-line rotation of 7-foot-2 Greg Ostertag, 6-11 Scot Pollard and 6-11 freshman Raef LaFrentz. Virginia matches up fairly well in the backcourt--Curtis Staples and Harold Deane vs. the Jayhawks’ Jacque Vaughn and Jerod Haase--but the Cavaliers are on the smallish side up front, where center Junior Burrough is the tallest of the starters at 6-8.

“We’re not going to go out there and be intimidated,” said Burrough, who averages a team-leading 18 points and 8.3 rebounds. “In four years here, I’ve never really matched up with someone my size anyway.”