DATE: Wednesday, April 2, 1997              TAG: 9704020722

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY FRANK VEHORN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS                      LENGTH:   73 lines

THE QUICK & THE DEAD: ARIZONA'S SPEED KILLED KENTUCKY

On Sunday while all the Kentucky players were saying how no one could handle their press, coach Rick Pitino suggested maybe he would zone Arizona in the NCAA championship game.

No one took Pitino seriously, and the remark even drew a round of chuckles.

Even when Kentucky opened the game Monday night with loose zone, no one took Pitino seriously.

It was a gag, a way to toy with Arizona's young minds before Kentucky went to work with its fullcourt buzz saw.

````We knew they were just fooling around, and they were going to come at us hard with the press,'' Arizona's Miles Simon said.

But Pitino wasn't fooling.

His mind told him not to use the fullcourt press, but his heart told him to stick with what had got him to the Big Dance.

So Kentucky went to its pressure after the first television timeout.

Pitino should have listened to his mind.

``If I had any druthers tonight,'' Pitino conceded after Arizona's surprising 84-79 victory, ``I wouldn't have pressed at all.

``I didn't want to press much because of (Arizona's) confidence and I felt that pressing wasn't the way necessarily to go.''

Arizona, which became the first team to defeat three No. 1 seeds en route to the title, had claimed it had too much speed to be bothered by Kentucky's press.

``We are not scared of it,'' Simon had said.

When Pitino looked into the enemies eyes, he realized, too, there was no fear.

Kentucky was dragging a bit after a tough game on Saturday night when its press did wear down and wipe out Minnesota.

But even with fresh legs, Kentucky might have had a problem trying to keep up with Arizona.

It was that quickness that carried Arizona over everyone's favorite Kansas in the Southeast semifinals, the same quickness that had made North Carolina look flat-footed in the national semifinals.

It was a quickness, too, that former UCLA coach John Wooden, who still knows a thing or two about winning NCAA titles, recognized.

After Arizona's stunning victory over Kansas, Wooden wrote a note of congratulations to Arizona coach Lute Olson.

``Give me quickness,'' Wooden said. ``It beats size every time.''

``We are a team of quicks,'' agreed Olson, who got a championship on his fourth visit to the Final Four.

The quickest of all was Simon and he was a problem the Wildcats could not solve the entire evening.

He and freshman guard Mike Bibby whipped the ball quickly downcourt through Kentucky's press and then it seemed Kentucky was gasping and reaching to prevent Simon from continuing to score.

He scored 30 points, 14 from the free throw line, and was named most valuable player of the tournament.

``He (Simon) was just an extraordinary player tonight,'' Pitino said.

``He has a lot of fakes and a lot of moves. He gives you that head dip. You know what he is going to do from seeing it on tape film, but he's so good it is still difficult to stop.''

Simon said Kentucky's press had an effect on him in the first half, although Arizona was in control most of the way.

``They wore me down. I raised my hand for a sub three times,'' Simon said.

``In the second half, I had to suck it up and keep going.''

Arizona kept going, all right, and punished Kentucky, too - four Wildcats fouled out and three times the game had to be halted to have blood wiped from wounds.

``This is no fluke,'' Pitino said after his team fell short of the repeat crown. ``Arizona is a great team that got better and better.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by ASSOCIATED PRESS

``We are not scared of it,'' Arizona's Miles Simon said before the

game of Kentucky's much-feared press. He proved it by scoring 30

points.

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