Georgia Tech Cure: Date With Top Team

A game against No. 1 North Carolina is just what Georgia Tech needs after a road loss to Duke.

The 18th-ranked Yellow Jackets have won four straight against topranked teams. The streak started in 1992-93 with a win over Duke and the Blue Devils went down again as No. 1 the next season. North Carolina was the victim the next two times, in the 1993 Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, and last season when the Yellow Jackets won by 20.

Georgia Tech has won three of four games, including one over No. 8 Maryland, since forward James Forrest broke his hand in an auto accident. Travis Best has stepped up in Forrest’s absence, averaging 27.8 points in the four games.

Forrest is to have the hand X-rayed again Friday, and if everything is OK, a soft cast will be put on and he could be playing in another week.

Wild week

The Atlantic 10 is in its 19th season, and the league never had a week like this past one.

Last Saturday, President Clinton attended George Washington’s win over then-No. 1 Massachusetts and later visited the locker room and was given credit for defensive strategy by Colonials coach Mike Jarvis.

On Tuesday night, Rutgers students disrupted the game between the Scarlet Knights and No. 4 Massachusetts to protest racially insensitive remarks made by school president Francis Lawrence. The game was suspended at halftime and the protest made national headlines.

The big week was capped Thursday when Virginia Tech, Dayton and La Salle officially joined the league, which will be split into sixteam divisions next season.

First-year commissioner Linda Bruno, who made the decision to suspend the UMass-Rutgers game, was asked Thursday to rate the week’s events.

“Clinton was a nine and (the expansion) is a 10,” Bruno said. “The student protest isn’t on a scale of what you want to deal with.”

Unfinished business

The end of the UMass-Rutgers game will be completed March 2 at the Palestra in Philadelphia.

Rutgers coach Bob Wenzel was not happy with losing the homecourt advantage, even if it was only for 20 minutes.

“I still don’t know why we’re not playing it here,” he said. “It started here. It should be finished here.”

The game could also be finished with a much different look for Massachusetts.

Center Marcus Camby, sidelined with a strained left hamstring, should be ready to return just about when the game is completed, and the 6-foot-11 sophomore center would be allowed to play even though he didn’t make the original trip to Rutgers.

If he does play, the Minutemen will be assessed a technical foul since Camby was not listed in the official scorer’s book, the same penalty as if a player reported with an incorrect uniform number.

Accentuate the positive

It’s campaign time in college basketball. Over the next few weeks every positive statistic about the country’s top players will be used to try to improve position in the jockeying for player of the year honors.

Oklahoma State’s Eddie Sutton plugged Bryant Reeves right after the senior center had 33 points and 20 rebounds in the 24th-ranked Cowboys’ win over Kansas on the day the Jayhawks moved into the No. 2 spot in the poll.

“It’s not as easy to score this year as it has been in past years because people are double- and tripleteaming him most of the time,” Sutton said. “His efficiency is probably as good as anybody in the country.”

Here’s the positive stat as promised: entering this weekend, Reeves had scored 1.7 points per field-goal attempt.

A classic

It may be a little too soon to start thinking about next season, but a great early season tournament was announced last week.

The inaugural Franklin National Bank Classic will be played Dec. 2-3 at USAir Arena in Landover, Md., with a field of UMass, Maryland, Florida and George Washington.

The tournament is expected to raise at least $500,000 for various children’s groups in the Washington, D.C. area. No TV deal has been announced, but there will be one. “The television people will have a large say as to which teams play who,” tournament director Bob Zurfluh said.

Deep six

The Southwestern Athletic Conference will have only six of its teams competing in its postseason tournament to be held March 9-12 at Baton Rouge, La.

Alabama State, fourth in the league with a 5-3 record, has had its entire athletic program placed in a “restrictive membership” status by the NCAA after it failed to meet minimum requirements for sports participation.

Alcorn State, seventh in the league with a 3-6 mark, was asessed penalties by the NCAA in December for lack of institutional control and unethical conduct by a former men’s head basketball coach.

The last Metro

The Metro Conference, which will be no more after most of its members merge with the Great Midwest next season, announced its 20th anniversary team.

Four were unanimous selections: Dell Curry of Virginia Tech, Darrell Griffith and Pervis Ellison of Louisville and Clarence Weatherspoon of Southern Mississippi. Keith Lee of Memphis State was one vote shy of being a unanimous pick. Griffith was selected MVP by the 20-member panel of media members and school officials.