Wishing It Was Easy as A.B.C.D.

College basketball recruiting season opened this week, and the standings show the early leader to be. . . .

Duke?

Indiana?

Seton Hall?

Try UC Irvine.

Name another school that has already been visited by Charles O’Bannon, Cameron Murray, Avondre Jones, Dontonio Wingfield and 116 more of the top high school basketball prospects in the country.

The past three days, the Bren Center has housed them all. In and out the players go--examining the floor, testing the rims, checking out the lighting, seeing if the jump shot falls any differently this close to sea level.

They are here, having congregated for something called the Academic Betterment and Career Development Camp, which is better known as A.B.C.D., or, to you and me, the Coaches’ Home Shopping Network.

If the Orange County swap meet dealt only in crossover dribbles and vertical leaps, it would look a lot like this.

Players spread out on three courts, operating simultaneously, displaying their wares.

Coaches scattered above in the arena seats, stroking chins, scribbling notes, assessing the merchandise.

It is a three-ring circus crossed with a Roman gladiator fight. Three different games are forever in progress--five-player units are waved on in shifts--and up near the rafters, Division I head coaches are perched like Nero, peering down at the combat 30 feet below as they decide who goes thumbs-up and who goes thumbs-down.

“This camp,” says Seton Hall Coach P.J. Carlesimo, “is the best money we’ll spend on recruiting this year. I’ll spend the same money recruiting one kid as I do coming here to see 100. Five of our top (recruits) are here and we couldn’t create a better evaluation situation.

“Where else can you see how a kid from Ohio competes against a kid from New York or California?”

The competition in the stands is as compelling as the competition on the floor. Jim Boeheim of Syracuse and Joe Harrington of Colorado stop by to trade jibes with Carlesimo. Along the upper concourse, Seth Greenberg of Cal State Long Beach and Lou Campanelli of Cal chat. Bobby Cremins of Georgia Tech is working one side of the room. Walking up the aisle is Bill Freider of Arizona State.

Watching in wonderment is Clayton Olivier, the Los Amigos High School coach who was among those on a similar floor a dozen years ago.

“I think every big-time coach in the country is here,” Olivier says. “If they’re not here, you probably won’t be seeing the coach working very long. These are their teams of the future.”

Both the coaches and the players are here for their livelihoods. The coaches, Olivier says, “are going to give a kid an $80,000 scholarship, so they better make the right decision. They don’t want to bring in a hoodlum.”

The players, likewise, “are marketing themselves,” Olivier says. “When I played in the Superstars Camp in ‘78, ‘79, ‘80, I didn’t want to go to practice or run through drills. You are there for one reason--to show the coaches what you can do.

“Every one of these coaches is now going to go back to his office, punch the computer printout and send each of these kids a letter. The kids know it, too. For many of them, this is their one chance to go to college.”

How the camp got to UC Irvine is an intriguing subplot in itself, complete with acrimony, potential conflict of interest and warring shoe companies.

In short: Sonny Vaccaro, longstanding guru of the prestigious Nike summer camp, splits from Nike and splits with the idea. Shopping for a sponsor, he enlists Converse. Shopping for a host, he rings up Irvine Coach Rod Baker, an old buddy.

One problem: Baker has a shoe contract with Nike. Nike hates Converse. Nike especially hates it when Converse underwrites a basketball camp that runs on the West Coast the same week as Nike’s in Indianapolis.

The A.B.C.D. camp comes to Irvine, anyway. The offer, as they say, was too good to refuse.

“Hey, Rod’s got 120 of the best high school kids in the country on his campus for a week,” Carlesimo says. “It’s a tremendous advantage for him. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t get a kid or two out of this.

“Normally, a kid back east will say, ‘Cal Irvine? Where’s that?’ Now, they get back from the camp and they say, ‘You know, you should really see this place. They have a beautiful campus, a great facility.’ You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

“Any coach would be thrilled to get one of these kids to visit. Rod’s got every one of them right here.”

Baker wasn’t at the Bren Center Tuesday. He was in Indianapolis, attending the Nike camp, presumably to massage some bruised egos.

Meanwhile, Irvine Athletic Director Tom Ford is back home, taking care to point out that the Bren Center is not a UC Irvine property and “we have no control over what events are scheduled here” and Baker served “only as a connection through which the arrangement was made.”

Baker also went 7-22 during his first season at Irvine.

Let he who is without concern for his own coaching career cast the first stone.

Carlesimo is an old friend. He hired Baker as an assistant in 1988 and the two talk regularly. Under those terms, he says he has no problem with Baker landing the recruiting bonanza of the summer.

“Let me put it this way,” Carlesimo says. “I would be enormously disappointed if some school in the Big East was putting on this camp. But if it’s Rod, fine, then. Good.”

Just as long as no Pirate-to-be gets landlocked in Orange County.