College Basketball

COMING OF AGE

Arizona's frontline rotation of 6'11" Sean Rooks, 6'11" Brian Williams and 7-foot Ed Stokes has been dubbed the Tucson Skyline, but LSU sophomore center Shaquille O'Neal flattened the landscape considerably last Saturday. In leading the Tigers to a 92-82 victory over No. 2 Arizona in Baton Rouge, the 7'1" O'Neal laid claim to the title of the nation's best big man.

O'Neal, who is only 18 years old, shook off a pulled stomach muscle and foul trouble to take command of the game down the stretch, scoring 16 points in the final six minutes. He finished with 29 points, 14 rebounds, six blocks and five steals while playing only 28 minutes. "I wanted to dominate the game," O'Neal said. "That's the next step for me. I want to be one of those dominating centers."

O'Neal is getting the best possible tutoring toward that goal. He worked out with Bill Walton for four days before Thanksgiving (at LSU's expense), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar flew in to watch O'Neal on Saturday and worked out with him after the game. Walton has been especially helpful in teaching O'Neal how to play with foul trouble. O'Neal fouled out of nine games last season, but he hasn't been disqualified in any of LSU's five games this year, though he has had four fouls in three of them.

O'Neal's emergence has undoubtedly been aided by the early departures of last season's leading scorer for LSU, Chris Jackson, who went to the NBA, and of 7-footer Stanley Roberts, who left the Tigers to play in Europe. There is no question that O'Neal is now the focus of the Tigers' offense, and he has proved himself worthy of the spotlight. Through last weekend, he has averaged 25 points, 14.8 rebounds and 4.8 blocked shots.

"When the big fella plays like that," said LSU coach Dale Brown, "I suddenly become an awfully smart coach."

CAT FIGHT

Maybe coach Roy Williams of Kansas and coach Rick Pitino of Kentucky should stop trying to bury the hatchet over the hard feelings stirred up by the Jayhawks' 150-95 drubbing of the Wildcats a year ago. Every time they do, they seem to reopen the wounds. No doubt Kentucky's 88-71 victory over Kansas last Saturday made the Wildcats feel a little better, but it was clear that there was still bad blood between Williams and Pitino.

Let's review: In Kansas's rout last year, Pitino was upset because Williams left starting forward Mark Randall in the game with less than four minutes remaining and the Jayhawks ahead by more than 40 points. Pitino later phoned Williams to voice his displeasure, and the issue might have ended there if Williams hadn't 1) told the media about Pitino's call, and 2) informed the press that he had researched Pitino's coaching history and found, among other things, that in Kentucky's 111-75 rout of Tennessee Tech last season, Pitino's leading scorer, Derrick Miller, had logged more total minutes than Randall had against the Wildcats. Williams said that he brought this up only to show how easy it is to appear to be running up the score.

"The idea of a personal call is to patch things up on a personal level and not to report them back to the media," Pitino said. "And I do not appreciate someone looking things up like that. He does not have to look up anybody else's box score, anybody else's history. He does not have to look up my NBA Knicks scores. He just has to concentrate on coaching Kansas.... Let's forget about this nonsense."