WHAT TO LOOK FOR

* The draw: Arizona returns to Salt Lake City, site of 1993’s epic first-round defeat by Steve Nash and No. 15-seeded Santa Clara, with two freshman guards, a fly-swatting center who’s out with a bad back and a Walton who shoots 35.8%. Yet, Arizona proved last Thursday in its win over Stanford that athleticism and heart are not to be underestimated. Round 2 offers a potential matchup of former Long Beach State headmasters, Jerry Tarkanian and Lute Olson. The Albuquerque bracket offers No. 2 St. John’s, Big East tournament champion and a soap opera in hightops--what with the fistfights in the locker room and the daily ebb and flow of mercurial guard Erick Barkley’s many moods. None of this, however, seems to affect the Red Storm, which seems to feed off calamity.

* Best first-round game: Fresno State versus Wisconsin is an Aesop’s fable. It’s style versus guile, flash versus hash (corned beef) and points versus painstaking. Jerry Tarkanian’s Bulldogs, although not the Runnin’ Rebels of Las Vegas lore, play an up-tempo game. Fresno State averages 82 points and eight three-point baskets. Courtney Alexander, the Bulldogs’ superb guard, averages 25 points and leads the nation. Twenty-five? That’s seven fewer points than the 32 the entire Wisconsin team scored in last year’s first-round loss to Southwest Missouri State. Coach Dick Bennett’s team plays a vicious man-to-man defense and holds opponents to 56 points a game. If a couple of balls happen to go through the hoop on offense, hey, that’s a bonus.

* Sleeper: Louisiana State looked downright dangerous before a slip-up in the Southeastern Conference tournament relegated it to fourth-seeded status. LSU has defeated six teams in the NCAA field--Kentucky, Auburn, Oklahoma State, Arizona (by 26 points), Fresno State and Arkansas--and boasts one of the nation’s best frontcourt combos in swingman Stromile Swift and center Jabari Smith. Coach John Brady also has hired security to keep the riffraff out of the hallways, so you figure the guys will be focused.

* Upset in the making: Hey, it’s deja vu all over again. Gonzaga, which unseated No. 2-seeded Stanford and No. 6 Florida last year before losing to No. 1 Connecticut, the eventual national champion, finds itself in the same starting position: No. 10 in the West. Gonzaga’s first-round opponent, Louisville, is not quite crummy yet under Denny Crum, but a Conference USA team that could be primed for an early exit.

* Impact coach: Olson. He whines, we know, and handled the Loren Woods back injury with the openness of a KGB operative, but let’s look at the facts. Since Pac-10 play began, he has fielded his starting lineup of Jason Gardner, Gilbert Arenas, Michael Wright, Loren Woods and Richard Jefferson . . . once. Arizona played without Jefferson for most of the Pac-10 season and won, beat UCLA without Jefferson and Woods, then downed Stanford last week without Woods. This team had no business getting a top seed but got one anyway. Some of this had to be coaching.

* Impact player: Barkley. The St. John’s sophomore guard is an NCAA incident waiting to happen--his halftime scrape with teammate Bootsy Thornton at the Big East tournament nearly tore the team apart--and you get the sense he might walk off the court at any time in a huff. That is, if some NCAA honcho doesn’t come get him first. But the kid can play, and he’s going to prove it by declaring for the NBA draft shortly after this NCAA tournament business.

* The pick: You have to root for St. John’s, if only for a Final Four fireworks show in Indianapolis that might feature lectern-pounding indignation from Coach Mike Jarvis, NCAA gumshoes doggedly pursuing Barkley, and a player who may or may not trot out for pregame introductions.