COLLEGE BASKETBALL / DAILY REPORT : Camby Made a Special Friend

As Harry Tambolleo, 23, wasted away in the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Amherst, Mass., in the final stages of a lifelong disease, he struck up a friendship with another patient.

The Tambolleo family says Harry will be there in spirit as that new friend, Marcus Camby, leads Massachusetts against Kentucky on Saturday.

“I’m going to be looking to see if I can see Harry drifting around,” said his father, Anthony Tambolleo, 54, a hair salon owner who intends to watch the game on television. “There will be more than five players. There will be six. And that sixth player will be Harry.”

After Camby collapsed before a game and came to the Medical Center for tests on Jan. 15, the next day, without fanfare, he went to visit Tambolleo, a 5-footer who had wilted away to 60 pounds following two kidney transplants.

“When Marcus walked in, he thought he saw God,” Tambolleo’s father said.

Tambolleo died Feb. 7.

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The Mississippi State team flew into Newark, N.J., Thursday and awaiting the players was their regular team bus. The team’s longtime driver, Everett Kennard, made the 15 1/2-hour drive from Starkville, Miss.

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Backboard-breaking Texas Tech forward Darvin Ham didn’t duplicate his feat from the tournament, but he did win the slam dunk competition in the eighth annual college slam dunk and three-point shooting championship in New York.

Steve Nash of Santa Clara won the men’s competition.