RING PULL

The ring is a mythical thing. So many chase one. So many sacrifice for one.

So few scratch a kitchen table with one.

Every morning while digging into bran flakes, Gilbert Arenas Sr. is reminded of Lute Olson’s ring and the impression it made.

Not on the table. On his son.

Olson made a home visit the night before Gilbert Arenas, prolific scorer and free spirit, was to make a recruiting trip to DePaul in 1999. Arenas had visited Kansas State. USC was hot on his trail. Arizona was a late-comer, interested only because a shooting guard Olson recruited spurned him at the last minute.

Arenas and his father listened to Olson talk about academics, the program, the campus, blah, blah, blah. Frankly, they were bored.

Olson noticed the drooping eyelids. He smacked the table with his 1997 NCAA championship ring.

“He was trying to wake us up,” Gilbert Sr. said. “Gil and I were reading each other’s mind--that’s what we wanted. That ring was sparkling. We decided to put DePaul on hold.”

Now Arenas, an Arizona sophomore, is pursuing a ring of his own. He was most valuable player of the Midwest Regional and scored 16 of Arizona’s first 21 points in Sunday’s regional final victory over Illinois.

Arenas is the Wildcat most likely to make a mark on the Final Four.

“I have a lot of confidence right now,” he said. “Everything is clicking.”

Olson likes what he sees too, but his compliments come grudgingly.

“I think Gilbert can be as good as Gilbert wants to be,” he said. “In that first half [against Illinois], offensively he was unbelievable.”

Arenas has displayed tremendous ability all along, beginning with his first few games as a freshman when he was named most valuable player of the Preseason National Invitation Tournament.

Yet Arenas has displayed tremendous immaturity all along, beginning with his first few months as a freshman when he formed a pyramid out of candy wrappers outside his dorm room and wandered the halls naked because a dorm mate took his towel.

The result is a roller-coaster ride that makes even a veteran coach of 28 seasons queasy.

“Gilbert is very sensitive, and yet if you’re not on him he wouldn’t pay attention to details,” Olson said. “There’s a fine line. But Gilbert has known all along that no matter how tough I’ve been on him, I do like him and care about him.”

If sometimes Arenas acts younger than most sophomores, it’s because he is. He was 17 when he entered college and turned 19 on Jan. 6. He started school at 4 because his father, a single parent, had no one to baby-sit during work hours.

That was one of the milder consequences of growing up without a mother or siblings. Arenas and his father lived out of a car for a short time in 1990 after moving to Southern California from Tampa, Fla.

Gilbert Sr. is an actor whose credits include “Miami Vice.” Work dried up in Florida and he and his 8-year-old drove cross-country to the mecca of struggling actors, arriving with $115 and nowhere to live. They spent two nights sleeping in their car in a Burbank park.

“A cop banged on my window, woke us up and told me to move on,” Gilbert Sr. said. “I was down to $25. I was thinking we weren’t going to make it.”

They slept in the gym at the Glendale YMCA for three nights before Gilbert Sr. landed a job charting inventory at a warehouse. The man doing the hiring was skeptical, but the small boy with the broad smile disarmed him.

“I brought Gil along and he had this brightness about him,” Gilbert Sr. said. “I think that’s why I got the job.”

Same thing happened when they leased an apartment. The landlady took an immediate liking to young Gilbert and offered to watch him while his father worked.

Slowly they dug out of the hole. Making ends meet was a constant struggle, but father and son know who their best friend is.

“When I was going through stuff, my dad was there to help me out,” Arenas said. “We’ve been through a lot together. He’s a friend and a dad. When I got older and we’d go to the gym to play, people thought we were brothers because he looks so young.”

Arenas established his own identity on the court early on. A youth coach, Robert Icart, urged him to seek top competition throughout Los Angeles. By the time Arenas was a sophomore at Grant High, he was the best talent in the San Fernando Valley.

He blossomed into a top college prospect, but a lackluster academic record made recruiters wary. Arenas played a few summer games with Sylmar High before his senior year and nearly transferred, but he returned to Grant and led the state with a 33.8 scoring average.

“He would get into mischief stuff, but he’s basically a good guy,” said Howard Levine, the Grant coach. “He’ll test authority once in a while like most kids his age, but he’ll listen.”

Not much has changed. Arenas is the team cut-up, but he carves up the opposition. He’s jittery and doesn’t sleep well. He jumps on his teammates’ beds and screams, “It’s game time.” Even when it’s midnight and the game is a day away.

Lately, opponents have sleepless nights. Arenas, 6 feet 3 1/2, is shooting 56% and averaging 19 points over his last 11 games. He makes three-pointers, drives the lane and plays the transition game equally well. His defense has been exceptional too.

The turnaround came after Olson jumped on him during practice in mid-January. The coach had just returned after taking 17 days off because his wife, Bobbi, had died of ovarian cancer. Olson was trying to get the team on track after an 8-5 start.

Arenas didn’t absorb all that. He was dismayed when Olson yelled at him and his pride was wounded. He was concealing a deep leg bruise and had a hard time hustling back on defense. But he never let on the extent of the injury.

Instead, he withdrew. He stopped talking to reporters and began to sulk. Arenas needed a friend to help sort it out. He called his dad.

“He didn’t understand the pressure Coach Olson was going through losing his wife,” Gilbert Sr. said. “Lute was grinding him real hard. I said, ‘You’ve got to tell the coaches you are hurt.’ He wanted to play through the injury.”

Olson extended an olive branch, telling Arenas that he was only trying to get the most out of him.

“I thought he was angry at me or something,” Arenas said. “But when he said that to me, I was like, OK, I know he’s not just getting on me, but he wanted me to improve.”

Arenas promptly went on a tear and was chosen Pacific 10 Conference player of the week after scoring 18 points in a victory over USC and 22 in a victory over UCLA. Since then, there has been little letup.

“We went through a lot of struggles and I appreciate everything now,” he said. “When I was growing up, I always wanted to be on this level of basketball. Me and my friends would pick out Final Four teams. This year they are all pulling for us.”

The appearance is that Arenas is growing up. Appearances deceive.

“Gilbert’s not more mature, I promise you that,” forward Richard Jefferson said. “I just think that he’s gotten more familiar with what Coach wants from him and more familiar with our system. He has just started to really shine and show what he’s capable of doing.”

NBA scouts love his upside. Arenas is deadly without the ball, moving with catlike stealth to an open spot where such slick-passing teammates as Jason Gardner or Luke Walton find him. His ability to get open for back-door layups is uncanny, yet he is just as dangerous on the perimeter.

Arenas does less talking about leaving early for the NBA than many of his teammates, but he is the hottest commodity. Scouts say he would be a probable first-round pick if available.

“I understand he is not doing well academically and that he might have to come out, but Arizona has a way of keeping guys eligible,” one scout said. “At his size, he’s not a sure top-20 guy. People are split on whether he could become a point guard.

“But if they win [the NCAA championship] and he plays great, this is a silly conversation.”

The ring. Its impression is unmistakable. Gilbert Sr. can attest to that.

“Coach Olson hit that table so hard, I thought a piece of diamond fell out,” he said. “I’m looking for it to this day.”

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SHE HASN’T PROSPERED

Jan Gangelhoff has had a rough two years after her confessions of academic cheating shook up Minnesota’s basketball program. A1