NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Waves Take On Maryland, Bias

Maryland’s basketball team has a very definite Bias, and stopping him will be the unenviable task of Pepperdine Coach Jim Harrick and his Waves, who will play the Terrapins and All-American Len Bias at 2 p.m. today in the first round of the NCAA tournament at the Long Beach Arena.

Harrick said he has had bad dreams about Bias, who finished third, behind Walter Berry of St. John’s and Johnny Dawkins of Duke, in balloting for the John Wooden Award, given to college basketball’s top player.

The Pepperdine coach said: “My dreams mostly show me Len Bias, over and over again. He is tough and a great, great player. We’ve got to try and contain him a little bit, or we’re in trouble.”

The Waves have had nothing but trouble with Atlantic Coast Conference teams, although this will be their first game against Maryland, which finished 6-8 in the ACC and 18-13 overall.

Pepperdine, the West Coast Athletic Conference champion and possessor of a 25-4 overall mark this season, has a 0-5 record over the years against ACC teams. The Waves have lost twice to North Carolina State and once each to Duke, Clemson and Georgia Tech.

According to Harrick, Maryland, which lost its first six conference games but downed North Carolina in the ACC tournament last week before losing by two points to finalist Georgia Tech, is a hot and cold team. “And they’re hot right now,” he said. “That’s what scares the living daylights out of you.”

If the Terrapins sometimes are cold, Bias, the 6-foot 8-inch, 215-pound ACC player of the year, never seems less than torrid. He has twice led the ACC in scoring, this season with an average of 22.9 points a game and last season with an 18.9-point average.

The senior forward from Landover, Md., has scored in double figures in 106 of 129 games, including 82 of the last 83, and is Maryland’s career scoring leader with 2,092 points.

Asked Thursday if anyone could stop him when he wanted to score, he said:

“If you want to be a scorer, you’ve got to believe in yourself. If you say you doubt yourself, then you doubt your shot going in. You’ve got to have faith.”

His coach, Lefty Driesell, has a plenty of faith in Bias. Asked if Bias deserved to be the nation’s player of the year, Driesell said: “A lot of players could be player of the year. But I’d rather have him than anyone.”

He said that he was biased toward Bias because “I started him out in the fifth grade in my basketball camp. But he is a great all-around player.” Driesell said that Bias can shoot inside or outside, plays good defense, rebounds and is physical.

All the talk about Bias, however, didn’t deter Driesell from thinking about the task at hand--playing Pepperdine.

“It’s obvious they’ve got a fine ballclub,” he said. “They’ve won 25 games,” He said he has great respect for Pepperdine, particularly because the Waves have won nine straight games and 18 of their last 20.

“But our ballclub is also playing well right now,” he said.

Asked how Maryland would contain 6-5 guard Dwayne Polee, Pepperdine’s top scorer with an average of 15.9 points a game, Driesell said he would use whatever guard he needed to stop Polee, and if that particular player can’t do it, “we’ll put somebody else on him.”

Harrick said his team hopes to contain Bias and keep him outside. “He’s marvelous inside,” Harrick said. “He’s big, bad and ugly inside.

“I thought at first that I would put Dwayne Polee on him, but my thoughts have changed. We’ll play him straight up and put (6-8 senior forward Anthony) Frederick on him, probably.”

Frederick said he matches up well with Bias. “I can contain him,” Frederick said. “Not stop, but hold him under his average.”

But 6-8 Pepperdine forward Eric White, who averaged 15.3 points a game, indicated that today’s game wouldn’t be a one-on-one contest. “One man isn’t going to beat us,” he said.

Grant Gondrezick, Pepperdine’s sixth man, who averaged 13.2 points off the bench, said that Pepperdine wasn’t happy just to make it to the tournament, that the Waves want to beat Maryland. “We have a great deal of respect for Maryland but we don’t fear them,” Gondrezick said.

Gondrezick added that it’s probably true that Pepperdine had breakdowns in losses by big margins at Kentucky and DePaul this season. “But games like that help you get prepared and get you ready for a game like this,” he said.