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By Chris Umpierre

Daily Bruin Staff

While Jason Kapono is thinking about Hofstra and the NCAA tournament, he’ll also be thinking about the difference between the Fourth and 13th U.S. Amendments. The same time the UCLA forward is studying scouting reports on Hofstra’s leading scorer Norman Richardson, he’ll be contemplating the significance of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson court case.

You see, Kapono has a final in History 151B, U.S. Constitutional History, on Monday morning. He’s worried he won’t have enough time to prepare for the exam because his No. 4 seeded Bruins have NCAA tournament games on Thursday and possibly Saturday. They play the first and possible second round games in Greensboro, N.C., and in between practices and games, Kapono will be reading books such as David O’Brien’s “Constitutional Law and Politics.”

Juggling academics with basketball will be a tough task for Kapono and his teammates during the next two weeks.

“This is the part that nobody thinks about,” UCLA senior guard Jason Flowers said. “Everybody thinks that UCLA basketball is all peaches and cream. That we have everything all made for us. We have to take finals just like everybody else.”

If the Bruins move past the second round, they will play in the Sweet Sixteen during finals week on Thursday, March 22, in Philadelphia.

Since UCLA prefers to travel two days before the event, many players who have finals scheduled Tuesday through Friday will not be in town to take them.

Several players, such as shooting guard Billy Knight, have already prepared for that possibility.

“A lot of times the professors are real friendly and they’ll let me take the finals either before I leave or when I come back,” he said. “Two of my classes are take-home (finals) so I’ll probably do them on the road.”

UCLA History Professor Mary Corey, who teaches many of the basketball players in her History of California course, is one such professor who sympathizes with the plight of student athletes.

“Just like if someone in a student’s family is having surgery or if they have to go home to take care of a sick mother, I believe you have to work with student-athletes on these things,” she said.

She argues that not only does the basketball team have to perform the difficult act of juggling basketball and school, they also must do it under a cloud of prejudice that assumes they are dumb jocks.

“This notion of student-athletes, particularly basketball players, not being smart and just getting a free ride is not fair in my view,” Corey said. “My student-athletes do my work and they do it under conditions that I wouldn’t want to do them under.”

She recalled a recent incident she had with a colleague in a campus elevator. Corey had just received midterms from the basketball team, which the players had to turn in two days late because they were playing on the road. With midterms in hand, she entered the elevator.

“The colleague, which shall remain nameless, said, ‘What are those?’” Corey recalled. “And I said, ‘These are the midterms from the basketball team,’ and the colleague said, ‘Well that shouldn’t take long (to grade), they will all be the same.’”

“That’s an outrageous thing to say. Student-athletes often face that kind of prejudice from academics who assume they are schmoes. But you tell me that Earl Watson hasn’t got a lot out of his education. I’m proud that I’m his teacher. Todd Ramasar, Jason Flowers, Billy Knight – all these people have grown up (academically).”

The intermediary between the professors and the student-athletes on the basketball team is full-time academic counselor Mike Casillas. His job is to constantly check on the progress of the players in the classroom.

During the quarter, he gets progress reports on every player in every class he has and meets with the coaching staff on a weekly basis.

With finals around the corner, this is the most hectic time for Casillas.

He’ll be holding study halls in the team’s North Carolina hotel this weekend. He will also proctor some exams during the weekend for those players who have arranged with their professors to take the exams early.

Of course, juggling basketball with school was part of what the players signed up for when they decided to come to UCLA, a university known as much for its academics as for its basketball prowess.

The juggling act has been so difficult in recent years that it has claimed several players along the way. A year ago, forward Matt Barnes was deemed academically ineligible for the fall 1999 quarter, forcing him to miss the first five games of the season.

This season the basketball team made news when two players registered grade-point averages of 1.0 or D-level during the fall quarter.

The players’ chore of studying for finals and writing papers while preparing for a quality Hofstra team and the NCAA tournament is not something a lot of UCLA students would enjoy.

“I’m taking four classes and I have trouble as it is studying for all my finals,” said Joel Mecklenburg, a senior economics major. “I can’t imagine dealing with the pressure of the tourney and still getting all my schoolwork done.”

One player who is having trouble with the juggling act is Flowers. The senior is just one class from graduating and has this question for fellow students: “Hablas español?”

“If anybody out there wants to tutor me in Spanish 3, put it in the paper that they can get a hold of me through the basketball office because I need the help,” he said.