Gaels

There is one very hard and very fast rule of Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference life. You don't try to match La Salle basket-for-basket. It just doesn't work. Iona tried it last night at the Mulcahy Center before a screaming, season- best crowd of 3,081. The Gaels were running and gunning and tossing shots up from all angles. It was fun, but it was also fruitless as the Explorers won by the deceivingly close count of 88-79. La Salle blitzed the Gaels with one of its famous runs in the first half and sacked them with a flurry of three-pointers in the second half.

When a strapping Long Islander named Jeff Ruland was being recruited by college basketball superpowers such as Kentucky and Indiana, he kept coming back to something that the coach of Iona, a small Catholic college north of New York, told him. " 'Come dare to dream,' " Ruland recalled that coach, Jim Valvano, telling him. Ruland took Valvano's advice to heart and signed with Iona in 1977. He has continued to follow that philosophy during an NBA career that featured two stints with the 76ers, while getting his college degree, and on to this week in leading the Gaels into the NCAA tournament.

The aggressive man-to-man, the 2-2-1 zone and every other defense Villanova tossed at visiting St. Mary's of California yesterday worked to perfection. Before the game was over, Villanova would show St. Mary's two other defensive traps, and the Gaels, looking shaky and confused much of the game, coughed up 27 turnovers on their way to an 89-78 loss at duPont Pavilion. St. Mary's, which entered the game 5-0, had committed an average of 18.4 turnovers in previous games. Against Villanova's pressure, the Gaels had 18 in the first half alone.

Iona coach Jeff Ruland had a chance to relive a great night from a long time ago. Courtney Fields scored 18 points and Iona beat No. 22 North Carolina, 65-56, last night in the opening round of the Holiday Festival in New York, the Gaels' first win over a ranked team in almost 23 years. The last time it happened also was at Madison Square Garden, on Feb. 21, 1980, when Ruland led the Gaels to a 77-60 victory over No. 2 Louisville. "I don't like to live in the past, but I showed them this ring," Ruland said of a memento then-Iona coach Jim Valvano gave the players after that win. Iona (5-3)

Villanova coach Steve Lappas shattered a chalkboard by throwing a metal folding chair. His anger was justified. The Wildcats suffered a stunning, 65-64 loss in overtime yesterday to St. Mary's. For the uninformed, St. Mary's became the last team in the West Coast Conference to win a game this year. The win came on the last shot of the game. The win brought St. Mary's students streaming onto the floor and Villanova players slumping into the locker room. With one second left in overtime, Darrell Daniel, a spindly junior who is 6-foot-1 and 153 pounds, had the ball in his hands and Jonathan Haynes, Villanova's 6-3, 180-pound guard, in his face.

To say that Iona head coach Gary Brokaw had been displeased by his team's 74-59 loss at St. Peter's on Saturday would be a slight understatement. The mild-mannered Brokaw, quite frankly, had been furious. "I wasn't pleased at all with the effort last week," Brokaw said. "And I wanted to make sure that it would never happen to an Iona basketball team again. " Coincidentally, after that loss, one of Brokaw's assistants had come up with a recording of a song called "Hard Work.

Nakiea Miller's second-half domination left him so exhausted that he had nothing in reserve to celebrate Iona's third NCAA Tournament berth in four years. As his Gaels' teammates jumped around the court, enjoying their second straight Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title, Miller collapsed from dizziness and had to be revived with smelling salts. Miller, the tournament's MVP, matched a career high with 24 points, leading Iona over Canisius, 74-67, last night in Buffalo, N.Y. "I was just so exhausted.

Only four of the original members of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, which played its first season in 1981-82, remain. Two of them, Iona and St. Peter's, will play for the 10th MAAC championship tonight (ESPN, 7:30), just as they did in the first season. St. Peter's, which never has been to the NCAA Tournament, beat La Salle, 57-50, in the first semifinal last night. Iona sent almost all of 10,808 spectators in the Knickerbocker Arena home unhappy by beating Siena, 95-90, in overtime in the nightcap.

As if in slow motion, the 35-foot shot from Siena's Tom Huerter hung in the air, hit the front of the rim, the back of the rim and dropped through the net as the buzzer sounded to end regulation time, sending a Knickerbocker Arena crowd of 10,808 into ecstasy. But Iona, which led for all but 23 seconds of the second half - only to see Huerter's shot create an 81-81 tie and send last night's Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament semifinal game into overtime - still had Sean Green on its side.

Mike Bramowski threw two touchdown passes and ran for two more TDs as La Salle beat Iona, 29-22, yesterday. Bramowski finished 11 for 35 for 155 yards for the Explorers, who are 2-1 overall and 1-1 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. He scored the go-ahead touchdown on an 8-yard run with 11 minutes, 8 seconds remaining in the game. La Salle now has won two in a row on the road for the first time since bringing back varsity football four years ago. Ralph Saldiveri, who carried 33 times for 204 yards, scored two touchdowns for Iona (1-1, 1-1)

ISAIAH CANAAN scored 32 points and No. 10 Murray State remained unbeaten with an 81-73 win over visiting Southeast Missouri State last night. Jewuan Long added 13 points for Murray State (22-0, 10-0), which is off to the best start by an Ohio Valley Conference team since Western Kentucky opened 21-0 in 1953-54. Marcus Brister had 17 points and eight rebounds for the Redhawks (12-10, 7-3). The lead changed hands three times in the first half, and Murray State trailed the Redhawks, 39-33, at the break.

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. - The pace was exhausting, but neither team gave in. In the end, Iona senior point guard Scott Machado took over and led the Gaels to Wednesday's 104-99 double-overtime win over St. Joseph's at the Hynes Center. Machado scored nine of his 33 points in the second overtime as the Gaels won their home opener and improved to 3-1. St. Joseph's is 3-2. The Hawks were led by Carl Jones, who had 25 points. Ronald Roberts came off the bench to score 20, 6-foot-9 sophomore C.J. Aiken added 19 points, and Langston Galloway had 17 for the Hawks.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. ? Jay Wright pretty much said it all season, that his Villanova Wildcats weren't quite as good as people thought when they were 20-1, and not as bad as people thought when they struggled late in the season. After the season ended yesterday at the Dunkin' Donuts Center in a 75-68 upset loss to St. Mary's (Calif.) in the second round of the NCAA tournament, Scottie Reynolds was asked if he had agreed with his coach. "Us seniors take what coach Wright says and apply it to ourselves," Reynolds said after suffering through a second straight miserable shooting performance from the field.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The St. Mary's College basketball players gathered a year ago for the announcement of the NCAA tournament bracket and, well, you never know, but of course they would get an invitation. The Gaels were 25-6 and had just lost the championship game of the West Coast Conference to No. 12 Gonzaga, the conference rival that had made itself into a perennial national player. So, the St. Mary's coaches, players and students settled into their seats and waited. They're still waiting.

It took a while, but Villanova coach Jay Wright, who likes to call each basketball game a learning experience, has found out his team is better with one of its first-year big men on the floor. Wright played freshman Mouphtaou Yarou and redshirt freshman Maurice Sutton for a total of 43 minutes yesterday in the narrow 73-70 victory over Robert Morris. It's accurate to say that without them, the Wildcats would be back on the Main Line today putting their uniforms away. The 6-foot-10 Yarou established season highs for minutes (26)

Mickey McConnell scored 26 points, Ben Allen added 20 and Saint Mary's upset No. 18 Gonzaga with an 81-62 victory last night in the West Coast Conference Tournament title game in Las Vegas. Omar Samhan had nine points and seven rebounds for the Gaels (26-5), who earned the sixth NCAA tournament berth in the small Bay Area school's history with a remarkable shooting performance against the top-seeded Zags (26-6), the 10-time regular-season WCC champions. McConnell and Allen hit four three-pointers apiece, propelling the Gaels to a first-half lead before an electric 18-7 run down the second-half stretch.

For St. Joseph's, size mattered on both ends of the floor against St. Mary's of California last night at Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse. The Hawks were without their big man, the injured 6-foot-9 Ahmad Nivins, while the Gaels surrounded Omar Samhan, a 6-11, 265-pound redshirt freshman, with several linebacker-type bodies. In the end, though, a few smaller, lankier guys made enough key plays to send the Hawks (6-4) to a 55-51 win in a grind-it-out game. With the score 49-49, junior forward Rob Ferguson scored the go-ahead basket with a set play called by coach Phil Martelli during a time-out, and freshman guard Jawan Carter scooted down the lane for a layup to stretch the lead to four points.

J.P. Batista's tip-in gave No. 4 Gonzaga the lead late, and Loyola Marymount's Chris Ayer missed a layup at the buzzer to give the Bulldogs a 68-67 victory last night in the West Coast Conference Tournament final in Spokane, Wash. The Zags (27-3) earned their eighth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament, but they would have made it even had they lost. Loyola Marymount (12-18) was trying to win its way in and had a great chance to pull the upset. Trailing by one, the Lions inbounded the ball with 10.6 seconds left, and the Gonzaga defense bottled up Brandon Worthy in the corner.

If there is an X factor at St. Joseph's, it is Rob Ferguson, a 6-foot-8 sophomore with a feathery touch. At times, though, Ferguson needs to have a flame lit beneath him to get him going. Coach Phil Martelli lit that flame before Wednesday night's game against St. Mary's at McKeon Pavilion in Moraga, Calif., and Ferguson responded with a career-high 20 points to help the Hawks (5-3) to a 70-66 win that broke the Gaels' four-game winning streak. Ferguson shot 7 for 9 in the first half, scoring 16 points, as the Hawks took a 43-30 lead at the break.

Almost nothing went right in the second half of St. Joseph's visit to St. Mary's College except the result: a 70-66 Hawks win. The Hawks overcame a frigid shooting slump from the floor, overly generous defense and uncharacteristically poor free-throw shooting last night to hold on for their first win in more than 3 weeks. St. Joe's (6-4) had played only twice since a Dec. 6 win over Kansas, losing to Ohio State and Bucknell. Taking advantage of soft inside defense from the Gaels (5-5)