DATE: Saturday, March 29, 1997              TAG: 9703290630

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Tom Robinson, staff writer 

DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS                      LENGTH:   67 lines

ARIZONA'S SIMON SAYS HE PRIZES REJECTION LETTER FROM DEAN SMITH

There are a few ways to treat rejection letters. Destroy them, for spite. Paper the walls with them, for motivation. Ignore them, for sanity.

Or treasure them, forever.

``I still have the letter up on my bulletin board in my bedroom right now,'' Miles Simon, Arizona's ace shooting guard, said Friday. ``I got it in probably the spring of my junior year (in high school), and it just told me that he wished me the best in my college career. He was sure that it was going to be successful.''

The letter from coach Dean Smith informed Simon that North Carolina would not be offering him a basketball scholarship. It said Donald Williams and Dante Calabria were in the program and another shooter, even of Simon's potential, was not needed. Then it closed with a few hand-penned words from Smith and a signature.

That blew Simon away. Oh, he got over the disappointment soon enough when Arizona came calling. But the thought of a personal note from Smith, well, Simon thought that was great. Still does.

``North Carolina has almost always been my favorite school,'' said Simon, a junior who averages 17.6 points. ``When I was a kid, anytime I could buy a hat or shirt or whatever that said North Carolina, I was going to get it. And just having something from Dean Smith, a personalized signature . . . It's just something that I can treasure.''

Simon worshiped the Tar Heels from Fullerton, Calif., where he was twice Orange County's player of the year for Mater Dei High School. Today brings him face-to-face with them in the NCAA tournament semifinals, for the first time.

Simon, Darryl Strawberry's brother-in-law, missed Arizona's season-opening win over UNC (28-6) because he was academically ineligible. He returned in January and has been the Cats' meow in the tournament, averaging 19.5 points in four games, including 30 in the Southeast Regional final against Providence.

Smith well remembers passing on Simon and telling him why. Why? So he didn't over-recruit at shooting guard, Smith said. Turns out, Shammond Williams, whom nobody wanted out of high school, got the scholarship of Simon's dreams after a year of prep school.

``I have great respect for (Simon),'' Smith said. ``And I just wish he were ineligible like he was in November, for tomorrow's game only.''

Simon's redemption and Arizona's reactions - that is, the Wildcats (23-9) are super-quick - are two lively undercurrents to tonight's game. Simon sweated out an exam in early January, in Family Studies 401 if you must know, to regain his eligibility and adopt a novel basketball-isn't-everything attitude.

He rejoined a squad of so many fast hands and feet that it obliterated the school record for steals in a season in only 25 games. Arizona has picked the opposition's pocket 343 times, nearly 11 a game and way beyond the previous mark of 285 steals it needed 35 games to set in '93-94.

The Tar Heels? They've got 250 steals, about seven per. So they aren't as slippery as Arizona. Statistically, they still shoot better, defend better, rebound better and handle the ball better than the Wildcats.

All of which will be nothing to hang on the wall if Simon and Arizona bounce the Heels from the Final Four short of the national title for the ninth time in Smith's 11 tries. That's the kind of rejection Carolina and its spoiled extended family can live without. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS

In high school, Arizona's Miles Simon was told that North Carolina

didn't need another shooter. But Dean Smith's signature on the

letter eased the pain.

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