COLLEGE BASKETBALL/ TIM KAWAKAMI : Irish Find Little Luck in First Big East Season

The school of Adrian Dantley, Austin Carr, Bill Laimbeer and all those titanic UCLA upsets entered the world of Big East basketball this season with cautious excitement--and open eyes.

Notre Dame knew what was coming: Allen Iverson flying on the break, Ray Allen cutting into passing lanes, Kerry Kittles zigzagging toward the rim. And some hard, hard losses.

The Irish, 15-12 in their last season as an independent, had the luck of ambling into this proud league just as the Big East, stocked with premier players, was riding a crest back to the top of the polls.

“The kids knew, their ears were up immediately,” said Coach John MacLeod, in his fifth season with the Irish after 18 years in the NBA. “They knew this was going to be tough and it was going to require a tremendous effort.”

Said Notre Dame freshman point guard Doug Gottlieb: “I didn’t quite feel we’d be the last-place team, but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”

It hasn’t been. Even after Wednesday night’s 86-83 victory over St. John’s at Madison Square Garden, the Irish have the worst conference record (2-8) in their first Big East season, their only other victory coming at home Jan. 20 against Rutgers, 79-67.

Along the way, Notre Dame (7-10 overall) lost an embarrassing game at home to UCLA, 83-58, the last scheduled meeting between the two old rivals.

Tossed into the mix with Connecticut and Georgetown and even the lesser teams such as Miami or Pittsburgh, Notre Dame’s lack of athleticism has turned into a rush of turnovers or scoreless stretches.

“It’s a little bit tougher than we thought it might be,” MacLeod said before Wednesday’s game. “We knew it was going to be very, very challenging. You just didn’t step into an established conference like this one and be a dominant player.

“But I think the biggest thing is the quickness that we’re facing--everybody in this league seems to have excellent speed and quickness. At times, we’ll make a soft pass that we could have gotten away with against some other teams, but against Big East teams, they’re stolen and turned into layups.”

Plus, the Irish have suffered a few injuries and have been hit hard by the discovery that freshman center Phil Hickey has a fear of flying. Hickey, a backup to Matt Gotsch, last flew with the team for its Jan. 2 game at Villanova, drove to two others, and he has missed games in Miami and Wednesday’s in New York.

But through the double-digit losses, Notre Dame has recently been climbing back from the depths.

On Jan. 15, at home, playing aggressively and moving the ball up the floor quickly, Notre Dame came within a minute of defeating Georgetown, finally losing, 74-69.

The next game, also at home, the Irish beat Rutgers, and followed that with an eight-point loss at Miami and a 69-59 loss at home to West Virginia.

“The Georgetown game was sort of a confidence booster,” MacLeod said. “We lost, but I think it showed, by golly, we could compete in this conference, that we weren’t going to be chased out of this league.”

MacLeod points to Gottlieb, who got his first start Dec. 9 against Loyola of Baltimore, as someone who plays Big East-style, fast-paced basketball. What Notre Dame needs in the coming years, MacLeod says, is players who can run with Gottlieb.

“He pushes the ball up the floor, has that intensity in his game that you love, hits open people, gets it up the floor quickly,” MacLeod said. “We need more speed in front of him so we can better utilize Doug’s ability to pitch it in. As we grow into this, we need more speed with big people to get out in front of Doug.”

Once Gottlieb got settled at the point, and began developing a rhythm with senior guard Ryan Hoover and sophomore forward Pat Garrity, Notre Dame stopped getting run over.

“I think Coach has really taken me under his wing,” Gottlieb said. “And now that I’m starting, and at a program where we’re really trying to build something special, I can’t ask for any better situation for a freshman point guard than I’ve got.

“I think we’re really on the same page as far as where we want this program to be. And he’s going to build it around myself and Pat Garrity.”

THE BIG PICTURE

MacLeod says it will be take at least two or three years to push Notre Dame to a spot where it can compete for a Big East title, but that it can only get better by playing the elite teams in the tough buildings.

But how long will MacLeod be in South Bend? There are always whispers about him departing Notre Dame, including a recent wave of rumors that he would return to Phoenix to coach the Suns after this season.

“I think in the coaching position to say, ‘Never, never, never’ is not healthy,” MacLeod said. “I am very happy at Notre Dame. And we are right in the middle of getting this thing turned around. And I am not looking to go anywhere, and I am not soliciting any jobs.”

NUMBERS GAME

UCLA’s decision to retire the jersey numbers of Walt Hazzard (No. 42), Sidney Wicks (35), Marques Johnson (54) and Ed O’Bannon (31) in a ceremony during halftime of tonight’s game against Oregon at Pauley Pavilion has raised some fascinating reactions.

Before tonight, only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor, (33) and Bill Walton (32) have had their numbers retired--because they were the only two players who had met the previous requirements: to have been three-time consensus All-Americans.

But, with this ceremony, UCLA has added a new road to retirement--be named a national player of the year, as all four of the new retirees were.

“It almost feels like a charity thing, you know?” said last season’s Wooden Award winner, O’Bannon, who, along with the others, will be at the ceremony tonight. “I never expected this.

“Those other five guys are the ones who set the tradition, who made the basketball program what it is. I don’t know if I really belong with those guys. But it’s a great honor.”

John Wooden, meanwhile, stood by his long-held opinion that once you start retiring numbers, it’s almost impossible to figure out a fair way to determine who gets immortalized, and who does not.

“I’ve just never been in favor of retiring numbers,” Wooden said this week. “You can make all the criteria you want and you can retire almost everybody’s number. I don’t go for that.

“If such a thing can be deserved, it’d be Alcindor and Walton. But I don’t think it would be anyone else. Now I think all four who are involved this time were all tremendous players. But how do you retire their numbers and not retire Keith Wilkes or Gail Goodrich? To me, that doesn’t make sense.”