DATE: Friday, March 14, 1997                TAG: 9703140846

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.               LENGTH:   69 lines

LONG ISLAND U. BROUGHT THE SCHOOLYARD TO NCAAS - FOR A DAY

They are gone, but they won't be forgotten real fast by anyone who saw Charles Jones and the Long Island Blackbirds - if they're not firin', they're expirin' - flame out against Villanova on Thursday.

The first-round East Region matchup in the NCAA tournament wound up fourth-seeded Villanova 101, 13th-seeded Long Island 91, and it was every bit as captivating, in a train-wreck sort of way, as you would expect from such an offensive orgy.

``That was as much a schoolyard game as you're ever gonna see in the NCAA tournament,'' growled Villanova's gravel-voiced coach Steve Lappas, obviously relieved to be rid of the pesky Blackbirds, whose cocky chirping before, during and after the game torqued off Lappas and his Wildcats.

``That's the kind of game you just want to get out of. Now we can get back to a more normal type of basketball, like California (Villanova's second-round foe) is gonna play.''

Real basketball, in other words.

Running, pressing Long Island, the highest-scoring college team in the land, launched a numbing 95 shots as it fell just short of its 92-point average.

The Blackbirds, for whom getting back on defense is a foreign concept, heave it up like nobody has since Paul Westhead's freakish Loyola-Marymount teams of nearly a decade ago.

They do this because they have been warned, more than once by their coach Ray Haskins, that if they pass up an open shot, they'll be sitting next to him.

In a hurry.

Not a problem for Jones. A 6-foot-3 junior guard who flunked out of Rutgers a couple of years ago, Jones soared past his nation's-best average of 30 a game with a 37-point effort that was fueled by 37 shots; shots whose total was one short of the East Region record Bob Cousy set in 1950; shots that came literally from all angles and depths on the court.

Three dribbles past half-court? Bombs away. Falling out of bounds on the baseline, 18 feet away? Give it a try.

``There are definitely (such things as) bad shots,'' Jones acknowledged, ``but if a guy's gonna give me the shot, I'm gonna take it.

``Shooters win the war. I came here shooting, so why am I gonna stop 'cause we're playing Villanova?''

Once, Jones patted himself on the back after hitting one of his seven 3-pointers. He talked trash to his teammates - ``Gimme the (expletive) ball, man'' he mouthed at one point - and to Villanova's bench, stuff which an offended Lappas refused to repeat to the media.

In short, Jones has no shame, which you'll learn when he's in the NBA in a year or two unless some coach slams the door on his trigger finger.

And the Blackbirds, whose campus is in Brooklyn and who are almost exclusively a New York-North Jersey squad, brought no shortage of street-tough atty-tood to Winston-Salem.

``I think we definitely proved we can play with these teams,'' said Jones, whose team won the Northeast Conference with a 21-8 record. ``I think they're a good team, but give us two more big guys and it's a whole different game.''

Actually, let Long Island replay about seven minutes and maybe Villanova, a talented, veteran team with a recent history of underachievement, is nursing another early tournament exit.

The Blackbirds, who got 21 points from former pariah Richie Parker - the freshman who was involved in a well-documented sexual assault while in high school - held a 43-40 lead with 2:22 to play in the first half. From there till the 15-minute mark of the second half, Villanova outscored them 30-2 for a 70-45 lead.

Nevertheless, Long Island was within 12 with two minutes left and scrapped until the clock mercifully ran out. Mercifully, that is, for the non-voyeurs among us who prefer some rhyme and reason to their hoops.

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