orcester - You know what you must do to compete with these guys? Attach every rebound as if your afterlife depended on it. Guard the opposing rim like a pit bull. Put extra English on every shot. Concentrate. Claw. Scrap. Deny. Keep saying to yourself, "It's not the size of the man in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the man." Over and over. And again.

That's the only way you're going to keep up with the gutty University of Massachusetts basketball team. And then you have to hope that Destiny doesn't cheer for the other guy.

Yesterday against Syracuse in the NCAA East Regional second round, fate smiled on UMass. It enabled center Harper Williams to hit only his second 3-point basket of the year - a top-of-the-key trey with 30.2 seconds on the game clock and one second on the shot clock. That game the Minutemen a 4-point lead in overtime, and guard Jim McCoy, who committed a turnover and missed the potential winning shot in the last minute of regulation, hit two free throws to give UMass a thrilling 77-71 win over the Orangemen before a 13,514 at the Centrum.

The victory improves UMass to 30-4 on the year (tied for Duke for the most wins in Division 1), increases its winning streak to 14 straight and most importantly puts it in the Sweet 16. The Minutemen will meet Kentucky Thursday night in Philadelphia. The Wildcats gave UMass their first loss of the season in a 90-69 setback in Lexington.

Syracuse, which led, 45-37, with 16:52 to go in regulation but never led in overtime, closed its season at 22-10.

Leading, 72-71 with 35 seconds to go on the game clock and six seconds on the shot clock, UMass got possession after a scramble. Forward Will Herndon took the pass near the left hash mark, but apparently didn't realize how much time was left on the shot clock. Williams began screaming for the ball and Herndon obliged. Williams squared up at the left side of the 3-point arc and let the ball fly. Good!

"I was hoping it was off, but from the looks of it, it looked good coming out of his hands," said Syracuse forward Dave Johnson, who led the Orangemen with 25 points. "I watched it leave his hands and then I looked at the net, and that's where the ball fell."

"Time was running out and I had to shoot the ball," said Williams (18 points, 15 rebounds), whose only other 3-point basket this season was against Xavier Dec. 7. He was 0 for 3 entering this season.

"I didn't want to shoot the 3, but I knew I had to shoot so we could have a rebound or possibly a tip-in," he said. "I just knew I wasn't going to let my team lost by the shot clock. I knew it was good when it left my hands."

Williams, the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, began the night by missing his first seven shots and finished the first half with just 4 points, yet played tough defense on Syracuse center Conrad McRae, who finished with 6 in the first half. That typified UMass' effort in the first half, the Minutemen shot 36 percent before intermission and went through a six-minute stretch midway through the half when they missed 10 consecutive shots. But UMass trailed at the half, 32-30, by holding Syracuse to 36 percent from the floor and tying it in rebounds with 22.

Things looked bleakest with 16:52 left, when the Orangemen went up by 8. But the Minutemen battled back, attacking the boards for second- and third-chance buckets and tightening the defensive pressure, and they outscored the Orangemen, 15-5, over the next eight minutes to take a 52-50 lead with 9:17 left.

"Both teams went after it pretty hard," said Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who saw his team fall behind, 56-50, with 8:10 left as UMass upped its intensity and the crowd got louder. "We got beat on the boards, but we've had that problem all year long."

But Syracuse tied it with 19.6 seconds left on a 5-foot baseline turnaround by Johnson. That came after McCoy slipped on a jump shot with 36 seconds left. McCoy took the last shot in regulation for UMass, a double-pump that was partially blocked by Johnson and Syracuse forward Adrian Autry.

"I was trying to draw a foul [with 36 seconds left]," said McCoy. "Then I was thinking to myself about the loss and the long ride home on the buss - or that they might not let me on the bus."

But McCoy redeemed himself in overtime with 6 points, including two free throws with 4.8 seconds left to put the game out of reach.

Despite the win, UMass says it still doesn't believe it is respected. "I can guarantee you that in Philly people will say that Syracuse had an off day," said McCoy. But no matter; two rounds have gone by in the Big Dance, and many of the big names have fallen. But the gutty, scrappy bunch from Amherst is still dancing.

The Minutemen gather 'round the CBS cameras.

orcester - Harper Williams was in a place he hadn't spent a lot of time. The University of Massachusetts center was 23 feet away from the basket, above the key.

Then the murmur of the highly partisan Centrum crowd grew louder. The shot clock is running out, it was declaring. Everyone on the UMass bench was worried, too.

So Williams did what he had done only five times in the team's previous 32 games this season, and just eight times as a collegian. He heaved up a 3-pointer. From NBA range, too. With one second remaining on the shot clock and 29 seconds left in overtime in UMass' second-round game against Syracuse.

Yes!

The trey - Williams' second successful career 3-pointer - gave the Minutemen a 75-71 lead in its 77-71 dunking of the Big East representative. It also moved the Minutemen, who had never won an NCAA Tournament game before this season, into the Sweet 16.

With UMass holding the ball under its basket - the team was hoping to get it to Jim McCoy. But Syracuse, in a 2-3 zone, had him blanketed.

"So I yelled 'Hern, Hern, give me the ball'," recalled Williams, referring to forward William Herndon, who was dribbling. "I had to shoot it. If time ran out, we would have had a turnover. So I shot it, thinking we might be able to get a rebound or a tap if I missed."

Did Williams think it was going in? "Yes," said Williams, who finished with 18 points. "All my shots are good when they leave my hand."

"I think that's the play they diagrammed," said Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, with tongue firmly in cheek. "The last time [UMass] ended up not getting a shot," he said of McCoy's double-pump effort at the end of regulation. "I guess they got a good shot this time."

Williams, the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, said he made his only 3-pointer against Xavier in the seventh game of the season.

"He can remember it because it was his only one," deadpanned UMass coach John Calipari.

But it was a shot Williams practices all the time. "We have a shooting drill at the start of practice that goes six minutes," the Bridgeport, Conn., native said. "For the last minute, I shoot 3-pointers - in case I need it for an emergency."

orcester - University of Massachusetts basketball coach John Calipari hardly had time to celebrate the biggest win of his career before he had to answer questions about Rick Pitino again.

Calipari's UMass team will meet Pitino-coached Kentucky in the NCAA East Regional semifinal in Philadelphia Thursday night. The game not only marks the second time the two have met this season (Kentucky won the first 90-69), it pits UMass grad and former Providence coach Pitino against the man he helped get hired at this alma mater.

"A lot of people will play up that stuff, but [the teams] don't play the same," said Calipari. "You saw how he plays and how we play. It's going to be a tough matchup. We're playing a team who we've already played, but the thing is they're thinking the same thing."

UMass forward Tony Barbee said he was more than pleased to meet Kentucky again. "We've been looking forward all season to a rematch with Kentucky," he said. "Now all we have to do is prepare."

No. 1 with the 3
Three-point baskets at the close of a game are nothing new to UMass. Last year against Rhode Island, then senior guard Rafer Giles became a 1,000-point scorer when he drained a trey with one second left in overtime, giving UMass a 70-67 win. In the first round of last year's National Invitational Tournament against La Salle, Giles hit a 3-pointer with 1:00 left that proved to be the winner in a 93-90 triumph. And in the NIT quarter-finals against Siena, Barbee hit a trifecta at the buzzer to send the game into overtime. UMass went on to win, 82-80.

Talk spurned action
Calipari said that because of UMass' shaky play in the first half, his halftime talk was "very, very ugly. But I've got great kids on this team, and they responded." Will Herndon agreed. "We seemed to be out of sync in the first half, so coach told us to play UMass basketball, and that's what we did." . . . UMass is hoping to become the first Atlantic 10 team to advance to a Final Four. Temple and Rhode Island have both made the Sweet 16. Rutgers advanced to the Final Four, but did so in 1976, one year before the league was formed.

here was no television coverage of the first six minutes of yesterday's UMass-Syracuse game because of technical difficulties at CBS.

The telecast from the Centrum was seen from the outset only in New York City, which left CBS unaware of a problem with a satellite switcher until complaints from other parts of the East were received. The UCLA-Louisville game was automatically fed into the affected area, including Channel 7 here.

When the picture came on at 5:22 p.m., Syracuse was leading 8-6. With the full audience watching, the Minutemen went on a 13-5 run.

The miscue resulted from a typing error in the command to a computer. A similar incident occurred during the Georgetown-Florida State telecast. Otherwise, all 32 games were handled flawlessly from a technical standpoint.

"We planned an overtime to make up for the early part of the game missed in UMass territory," network vice president Len DeLuca joked last night.

orcester - John Calipari got what he asked for.

He said two days ago that what he needed to see at the Centrum yesterday were bankers with basketballs on their heads to provide the proper home court atmosphere against Syracuse.

"It was sometime in the middle of the second half," Calipari explained. "I hear a voice yelling, 'Cal! Cal!' I turn around and here are these two guys with basketballs on their heads and they're each wearing a sign that says 'I'm A Banker.'"

This was maybe an hour after the fact, long after Harper Williams had thrown in a 3-pointer that future generations will be told came from downtown Uxbridge, long after UMass had simply outfought the Big East champions on a day they were a lot longer on guts than finesse. John Calipari, whose entire life has been geared to just this kind of moment, was re-living the greatest triumph of his coaching career. The University of Massachusetts had just beaten Syracuse in overtime and that means John Calipari will be taking a team to an NCAA Regional before his 33rd birthday. Alexander The Great won some biggies, but even he never made it to the Sweet 16.

This was a late afternoon and early evening contest in which supposed neutrals from Kentucky began to cheer for UMass as if Dan Issel or Rex Chapman had just slipped on a Minuteman uniform; in which Calipari needed to get verbally down and dirty at halftime in order to rouse his team; in which the UMass team proved how well it has been coached by doing things without being told to; in which every rebound and loose ball was the occasion of hand-to-hand combat; in which the vanquished actually distinguished themselves in the heart department at least as much as the winners; and in which, yes, grown men who may or may not actually have been bankers nevertheless were enthusiastic enough to put basketballs on their heads.

It was, in other words, what the NCAA tournament is supposed to be.

"There was a point," recalled senior guard Jim McCoy, "when I went to the line with us up by a point and we needed the two free throws. I remember thinking, 'Man, this is what the NCAA Tournament is, to make the big plays, to make the big free throws.' I was thinking this could be my last game for UMass, and I didn't want that to happen."

McCoy bricked a pair in the first half, but in the ulcer-breeding moments he swished everything he threw up there, knocking in eight vital foul shots, two late in regulation and six straight in the OT. "All season long," Calipari said, "when we've absolutely had to make free throws, we've made them."

As for Harper Williams and what Syracuse mentor Jim Boeheim will undoubtedly remember as The 3-Pointer From Hell, simply accept that this sort of thing in endemic to the collegiate postseason. If you saw BYU's Kevin Nixon hit the 55-foot buzzer-beater to win the WAC tourney or you saw Georgia Tech's James Forrest swish an absolute heave with no time left to knock USC out of the tournament, then what Harper Williams did was merely Chapter Three in the ongoing 1992 college basketball novel. You don't know when and where these fictional things are going to take place, but there is never any reason to doubt something bizarre will happen.

So here was Williams, a 6-foot-7-inch center wish a slashing and savage inside game, receiving the basketball with UMass leading by a point (72-71) and the 45-second clock about to expire. The sequence had begun with an inbounds pass, and it looked as if UMass' William Herndon was going to be stuck with the basketball. "I yelled real loud, 'Hern! Hern! Give me the ball!'" said Williams, who had drifted to the top of the key, just beyond the arc.

Williams had made one 3-pointer all season. "Off the dribble against Xavier," he said. "Very nice." But he likes to shoot facing up and Johnny Dawkins could have southpawed one up any smoother.

"Time was running out," he said. "I had to shoot the ball. That way we could get a rebound or a tip. I didn't want a turnover. I didn't want the team to lose on the shot clock."

"I was hoping it would be off, but it looked good," sighed Syracuse standout David Johnson. "He had good form. I was looking a the bottom of the net, and that's where the ball fell. That was our luck today."

The Williams mortar swished cleanly with 29.2 seconds to go, giving UMass a 4-point lead. This baby was non-refundable.

Now it's on to Philadelphia and Thursday night's rematch with Kentucky. Not that any of this comes as a surprise to the UMass True Believers, kids like Scott Newman, Michael Tow, Michael Fetterer, Chuck Austin and Jeff Crofts, who had toted in a banner reading "Unquestionably Making An entrance to the Sweet Sixteen," and whose faith was again rewarded by the best team Our State U. has ever had.

The giddiness continues. We assume the bankers know the route to Philadelphia.

Syracuse (71)
                       fg     ft   reb
               min    m-a    m-a   o-t   a   f   pts
Johnson         45   9-18   8-10  2-10   1   3    26
Hopkins         31    3-4    2-2   1-3   1   5     8
McRae           42   7-12    0-0   3-5   0   4    14
Autry           40   0-11    1-2  2-10  10   3     1
Moten           42   7-16    4-4   2-5   1   3    19
Edwards         20    1-4    0-0   0-1   1   1     3
Siock            3    0-0    0-0   0-2   0   1     0
McCorkle         2    0-0    0-0   0-0   0   0     0
               ---  -----  ----- -----  --  --   ---
Totals         225  27-65  15-18 10-36  14  20    71

Massachusetts (77)
                       fg     ft   reb
               min    m-a    m-a   o-t   a   f   pts
Barbee          34    3-9    2-2   1-4   2   4     8
Herndon         43    3-8    1-3   4-7   3   4     7
H. Williams     37   6-18    5-6  6-15   3   2    18
Brown           42   4-13    0-0   1-6   9   2    10
McCoy           44   8-16   8-10   2-5   3   1    24
Roe             19    4-5    2-4   4-7   1   3    10
Malloy           1    0-0    0-0   0-0   1   0     0
M. Williams      3    0-1    0-0   1-1   0   0     0
K. Robinson      2    0-0    0-0   0-0   1   0     0
               ---  -----  ----- -----  --  --   ---
Totals         225  28-70  18-25 19-45  22  16    77

A - 13, 514

__________________________________________
Syracuse           32   32     7    -   71
Massachusetts      30   34    13    -   77
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