COLLEGE BASKETBALL : NCAA MEN’S FINAL FOUR : Just No Figuring Rasheed : Wallace Dominates but Also Perplexes for the Tar Heels

North Carolina players don’t quite know what to make of their star center, Rasheed Wallace, but they certainly would never leave the hotel without him.

There are locker-room pools as to which Wallace jumps center at tip-off: the 6-foot-10 possible NBA lottery pick with the feathery touch, or another Dennis Rodman.

Of playing alongside the sophomore Wallace, senior forward Pat Sullivan says, “Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s great. Sometimes, something just snaps in his head and you can’t talk to the kid. You just have to leave him alone, let him calm down. Other times, he brings so much excitement and enthusiasm, he’s great to play with. It’s such a pure thing. We don’t know which Rasheed will show up.”

Wallace brings a lot to the table. He and fellow super-sophomore Jerry Stackhouse are generally conceded to be the best Tar Heel tandem since James Worthy and Michael Jordan wheeled down Tobacco Road.

Wallace leads his team in rebounding, blocked shots, personal fouls, technicals, errant elbows and referee-baiting and ranks as the Tar Heel most likely to incite a melee.

Last Saturday, in the Southeast Regional final at Birmingham, Ala., Wallace’s well-placed elbow into the face of Kentucky’s Andre Riddick appeared to give the Tar Heels the emotional lift they needed.

With 16:06 left in the half and North Carolina trailing, 8-2, Wallace came down with a rebound, elbows high, and turned into the face of Riddick, who took it personally. Riddick got two hands around Wallace’s throat before the two were separated.

Sure, Wallace went to the bench to cool off, but he took two Wildcats with him--Riddick and Walter McCarty, who got a technical foul for no apparent reason.

Before you knew it, the Tar Heels made up the difference on Kentucky, took a three-point lead into halftime and never trailed again en route to a 74-61 victory. That earned the Tar Heels a trip to the Final Four and a Saturday semifinal matchup against defending national champion Arkansas.

“That’s just the way he plays,” teammate Dante Calabria said afterward. “You can’t try to change it. I don’t think you can. He’s going to bring you positive things and some negative things too. That’s the theory of balance, I guess.”

While Wallace may seem an anomaly in Coach Dean Smith’s automated, self-deprecating system of team play, Wallace and coach appear to coexist peacefully.

“When Coach Smith recruited me, he knew the type of player I was,” Wallace says. “I was very excitable, very emotional. If he didn’t like that, then he wouldn’t have recruited me.”

And did Smith ever recruit Wallace! The day after the Tar Heels won the 1993 national championship, Smith skipped the victory celebration back home and flew directly from New Orleans to Philadelphia to make a final home visit to Wallace.

Wallace had already made up his mind.

The bubbly, unpredictable, outsider from Simon Gratz High went south not for any great love of teal or tradition but, he insists, specifically to aggravate Atlantic Coast Conference rival Duke.

“I never liked Duke,” Wallace says. “I don’t know why. Just never did. Guess they were always a heavy favorite and I liked to go with the underdog.”

So, Wallace chose Dean Smith and the winningest program in college basketball history.

You learn with Wallace to go with the flow and not allow logic to dictate.

Smith was more interested in intangibles--Wallace’s long, loping strides and quickness. And, of course, those pencil-sharp elbows.

“You don’t realize he does those things in practice all the time,” Smith says of Rasheed’s elbow incident against Kentucky. “Sometimes our guys talk to him about it. What you see is what he is. But I think he’s shown great poise compared to last year.”

Still, there are rough edges, and no doubt NBA scouts are taking notes. He averages 16.8 points and 8.1 rebounds a game, but Wallace also leads with 81 fouls. And he is responsible for four of the team’s six technical fouls.

Because he is in foul trouble so often, he averages fewer minutes a game than any other Tar Heel starter.

Wallace, a likable player and noted team prankster, says he is trying to channel his emotions.

“I’m not sure how I became that way,” he says. “But I’ve always been that way. Every team has to have at least one emotional player on the squad, or it wouldn’t feel like a real squad. That lifts the squad up whenever it’s down. That’s what I try to do.”

No one is sure of Wallace’s immediate plans after the Final Four, although some have speculated that he will chuck his junior and senior seasons and declare for the NBA draft.

One ESPN writer-reporter claimed Wallace has already decided to leave. Wallace would note that the writer is a Duke graduate.

“I don’t think of it as a distraction,” Wallace says of the NBA talk. “I don’t think of it at all. I only think about the next ballgame we have. We don’t make plans for anything.”

It is clear that Wallace has unfinished business at North Carolina. Last season, the Tar Heels were eliminated in the second round by Boston College, 75-72.

Wallace had a chance to tie the game with a last-second three-point shot from the corner, but missed.

“I went around for weeks saying, ‘I let my team down. I let my teammates down,’ ” Wallace says. “I know, playing in schoolyards, and summer leagues, that I can hit the three. When it left my hand it felt good. All I could envision was good things happening, everybody jumping up and down, us going into overtime. It hit the back of the rim. I put a little too much arc on it and, once it came out, they got the rebound. That’s when everybody’s hopes went south.”

“For a good month afterward, Chapel Hill was gloomy.”