M is for March Madness: An alphabetical overview

With the culmination Monday of March Madness and the Final Four, two words still linger at the forefront of every hoop fan's brain: Alaa Abdelnaby. For truly, college basketball is America's great almanac of alliterative appellation. Here's an alphabetical overview.

Alaa Abdelnaby: Certainly the most A-riffic player in college basketball history, Abdelnaby led Duke to Final Four appearances in 1988 and 1989. Duke reached the Four by beating top seed Georgetown, which Princeton nearly did in the first round that year.

BB is for Princeton's own Bill Bradley '65, who scored 58 points in a national semifinal against Wichita St. in 1965.

CC reminds us of Duke's conference, the ACC, where Chris Corchiani ended his career at N.C. State as the NCAA's all-time assist leader. DD is for Darryl Dawkins, who never played college ball, unlike Duke's Dawkins, Johnny, whose Blue Devil heir, Bobby Hurley, broke Corchiani's all-time assist record in 1993. (Darryl Dawkins, with his repertoire of whimsically named jams, helped inspire the NBA slam-dunk championship, which in the 1990s was won by Cedric Ceballos and Brent Barry, among others. But let's get back to the business at hand.)

We commemorate Oklahoma's loss in Saturday's semifinal by bestowing EE honors on Sooner shooting guard Ebe Ere, whose name has the same mystical arc as his perfect jump shot. FF is for Fran Fraschilla, who just resigned as head coach at New Mexico, but who made his name at Manhattan, not too far from the old stomping grounds of Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash.

The GG combination has been remarkably fruitful, in the form of three NCAA all-tournament nominees over the last four decades. Honorable mention to Gary Garland (DePaul, 1979) and Gerald Greene (Seton Hall, 1989, beating out teammates Anthony Avent and Ramon Ramos), but we go with Bill Bradley's contemporary and fellow Hall of Famer Gail Goodrich (UCLA, 1964-1965).

HH is for Bradley University's Hersey Hawkins, who looked like Bill Bradley as he knocked down 44 in a tournament game against Auburn in 1988. Special mention to former Division I player Hunter Hunter Hunter, who surely honed his game at the gym while hiding from his parents' sense of humor.

Three I's would remind us of Princeton Coach John Thompson III, son of the Georgetown coach whose '89 Hoyas survived the Tigers, but lost to Duke (and Alaa Abdelnaby). The apple of our two I's, however, is Iker Iturbe, who played at Clemson in the late 90s against a Virginia team coached by: Jeff "JJ" Jones. Jones has since been replaced, so let's use JJ to recognize the outstanding player on the team that knocked Ebe Ere from this year's tournament: Indiana's Jared Jeffries. KK will stand for Kerry Kittles, the outstanding mid-90s Villanova wingman, whom Jeffries resembles when he dribbles. More on Villanova, and Georgetown coach John Thomp-son, in a bit.

Several flawed contenders vie for the LL spot; Larry Legend has the tourney credentials, but not the given name; East Carolina's Lester Lyons has the name, but not the credentials: his 1993 squad lost in the first round to eventual champ UNC. We stay out of the fray by choosing an official: Hall of Fame referee Lloyd Leith, who worked 16 NCAA tournaments.

MM is a more storied pairing. Among other things, it's the Roman numeral combination for the year 2000, when Michigan State's Mo-Mateen tandem (Peterson and Cleaves) beat Mike Miller's Florida Gators. But since we spurned Jeff Jones on the JJ, we' ll bestow MM on a former Cavalier, Majestic Mapp, younger brother of all-name-team guard Scientific Mapp. The Virginia theme continues, as NN honors fall on Jones's late-90s big man, Norman Nolan. Nolan wasn' t quite as big as seven-footer Olumide "OO" Oyedeji, who skipped college entirely and now plays for the Seattle Supersonics. Oyedeji here stands in for all the great college centers brought to us by the letter O: Shaquille O' Neal, Michael Olowokandi, Hakeem Olajuwon and the Big O, Oliver Miller. Special mention goes to Eric Montross, who wore number 00.

We declined to mention Greg Ostertag among the centers, because we prefer to honor perenniel Final Four also-ran Kansas with the memory of PP, Paul Pierce. Pierce is a prolific pro scorer, but you may recall that in 1997 he led the NCAA Tournament in rebounding average, pulling in 36 in three games before the Jayhawks' annual premature exit, a Sweet 16 conquest by eventual champ Arizona. Arizona was joined in the Final Four that year by Minnesota. Q is for Minnesota's star forward Quincy Lewis, and also for Qualify, which is what Quincy Lewis would not have done; academically, that is — had Golden Gophers coach Clem Haskins not cheated on his behalf.

RR is a pleasant reminder of pudgy Wake Forest forward Rodney Rogers, who once scored nine points in 8.8 seconds for the Denver Nuggets. Since Rogers was a collegiate disappointment, RR remains the property of Rumeal Robinson, whose overtime free-throws led Michigan to the 1989 title over Gerald Greene's Seton Hall team. The following year, Michigan was down, losing outrageously to Loyola Marymount in the second round, but Michigan State was up. The Spartans earned a top seed behind the play of SS, Steve Smith, whose moment, like his talent, split the difference between Magic and Mateen.

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TT will stand for Tim Thomas, a Villanova wing forward in the Kerry Kittles mold, but just for one year. Villanova will receive more attention after we discuss Ugueth Urbina, Boston Red Sox reliever. Since his middle name also begins with U, and since the first and middle names of all of his siblings begin with U, he is the only reasonable choice for UU honors. His basketball connection, as Sports Illustrated basketball writer Alexander Wolff '80 has noted, goes through his boss, Red Sox CEO Larry "LL" Lucchino '67, who played college ball with Bill Bradley.

Verily, V's are scarce in the college game, and so, after much anticipation, VV is for the two V's in Villanova. In the 1985 tourney final, those two V's added up to perhaps college basketball's most surprising W, a 50-48 shocker over John Thompson's Georgetown team.

We move from that W to WW. Here it belongs to Walt "the Wizard" Williams, whom we recall in honor of this year's NCAA champ, the Maryland Terrapins. The Wizard restored Maryland to respectability after the Lefty Driesell scandals, then threw all his respectability away by appearing in a Hootie and the Blowfish video. In said video, Hootie frontman Darius Rucker sports a XX sweatshirt, but Double-X is more than a manly size. It's another impressive Roman numeral, as well as the nickname of baseball Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx. In college basketball, however, the letter X belongs to one man: Xavier McDaniel. The X-man pulled off a rare double, leading Division I in scoring and rebounding in 1985, beating out Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, and earning McDaniel an honorary XX.

YY is for former White Sox catcher Yam Yaryan (1921-22), but the combo has no patron in basketball — at least until some Chinese imports do for it what Zhi Zhi Wang has done for ZZ. Zhi Zhi, of course, skipped college entirely, just like rookie point guard Tony Parker, who comes from France, the home of top ZZ soccer stud Zinedine Zidane.

But this is the NCAA Tourn-ament, not the World Cup. Even though they lost early this year, we' ll end this list with the Duke Blue Devils, just the way we began it. Alaa Abdelnaby played under Mike Krzyzewski. If you take nothing else from this primer, remember this: You can't spell Coach K without two Z's. Jeremy Weissman '02 is a comp lit major from Randolph, N.J. Dan Wachtell '02 is a philosophy major from Rye, N.Y. They can be reached at jeremyw@princeton.edu and wachtell@princeton.edu.