he Little General is going to the big screen.

In 1993 he played understudy to a superstar named Jamal Mashburn in a UK dash to the Final Four. Nowadays, Travis Ford is sharing the spotlight with stars of a different sort.Movie stars.

Starting tomorrow, the ex-UK point guard makes his feature film debut alongside Kadeem Hardison and Marlon Wayans in Touchstone Pictures' The Sixth Man.

"They figured it'd be easier to teach a basketball player to act than to teach an actor to play basketball," Ford said.

"I guess they were right. They auditioned actors, and once they took them out on the court, it was a little bit different," he said.

The filmmakers had established that they wanted a basketball player to fill out their roster of actors, but Ford's getting the role was essentially a fluke.

Executives at Touchstone called Ford's basketball agent, Michael Higgins, to inquire about finding some extras for the film's basketball scenes.

Almost as an afterthought, Ford said, they told Higgins, "By the way, we're looking for a small white guy to play in this leading role ..."

That leading role was Danny O'Grady, the point guard for the University of Washington Huskies. The Sixth Man centers on Kenny and Antoine Tyler.

In the film Antoine (Hardison), the older of the two brothers, dies shortly before the NCAA Tournament.

His ghost returns, visible only to Kenny (Wayans), in an attempt to lead the Huskies to a title.

"(Danny has) what I guess you would call a small man's complex," Ford said of Danny.

"He's a fiery little guy who likes to argue, isn't afraid to stand up to anybody."

Time to kill

Aside from his hair color (dyed "so red it looks blonde onscreen," Ford said), the role isn't much of a stretch for Ford, the consummate floor leader during his time at UK.

In fact, it might seem filmmaking would be a breeze to Ford, who's been through the ringer of Rick Pitino's notoriously tough practices.

Not so.

The shooting schedule included three locale shifts - the shoot began in Los Angeles, moved to Seattle for three weeks, then wrapped with two months in Vancouver, British Columbia - and woefully long days.

"We filmed for 50 days, and you maybe film two or three minutes of the movie a day," Ford said.

"And that's working 12 to 15 hours a day almost every day."

Those 12 to 15 hours include plenty of down-time, said Ford, who summed up the process of filmmaking as "hurry up and wait."

But the end result, Ford said, is well worth the wait.

"I think what will make people like the movie, hopefully, is that it's got some great special effects and that it's not just a basketball movie," Ford said.

"At the premiere (in L.A.) it had its moments where everybody was laughing and its moments where everybody was crying, literally."

That's the vibe the crew was looking for. Director Randall Miller said in a statement that the goal of The Sixth Man is for audiences to "come away feeling like they really got to know these people."

"When all is said and done," producer David Hoberman said, "our wish is that we have made a movie not just about basketball and ghosts, but instead (one that) dramatizes a young man's coming of age and the difficulty of letting go of someone you love."

Among the stars

It's probably for the best that Touchstone wasn't looking to produce a film just about hoops.

To hear Ford tell it, The Sixth Man's stars weren't exactly the Ron Mercers of the film set.

"They didn't have a whole lot of basketball experience, let's just put it that way," Ford said of Hardison and Wayans. "But they turned out OK. The camera can do some amazing things."

Perhaps most amazing of all is that Ford can now count among his friends Hardison, the former star of "A Different World," and Wayans, lately of "In Living Color."

"I've gotten to know them - I talk to them almost every day," Ford said. "We had a big party at the premiere and we all hung out. I've actually gotten to know Daymon (Wayans) extremely well and been over to his house a bunch of times."

Though the connections he made in Hollywood led him to move to Tinseltown for nearly half a year during post-production on The Sixth Man, don't look for Ford's return to the big screen anytime soon.

"I don't think I can live in L.A. again," said Ford, who will attend the Final Four this weekend. "I like Kentucky, and I missed it while I was gone. I love to be here this time of year for March Madness.

"If the right thing comes along and I do another film, great. If not, I can look back and say it was a great experience."