Bark, Ed, HBO shoots and scores - twice, The Dallas Morning News, 23 Mar 1998, pp. 1C.

It's been a great NCAA basketball tournament so far. Buzzer-beating finishes, underdogs unleashed and even quality coverage on CBS after its pewter-medal presentation of the Winter Olympics.

Now comes dessert, served by HBO. The cable network's reputation for exemplary sports documentaries is underscored this week with two revealing looks at college hoops then and now.

Tuesday's City Dump: The Story of the 1951 CCNY Basketball Scandal is a lush filmic swish, even if some of its narrative gets gaudier than a Dennis Rodman dye job.

Thursday's A Cinderella Season: The Lady Vols Fight Back documents the University of Tennessee's surprise 1997 NCAA championship after a mediocre regular season. The star player is head coach Pat Summitt, a tight-jawed task-master with a grudging Al Haig smile. As of this writing, her current team is 35-0 and heavily favored to win a third consecutive championship.

City Dump begins as though it's going to be a hard-boiled Mickey Spillane detective yarn. "They call it the Apple," says Burt Young of Rocky movie fame. "And it's filled with the juices of both good - and evil."

Mr. Young, the off-camera setup man, quickly gives way to narrator Liev Schreiber, who's less grandiose. But some of the interview subjects can't restrain themselves. Former NBC newsman Marvin Kalb, a 1951 City College of New York grad, is not generally known for dynamism. But he's Damon Runyon on a coffee jag when talking about CCNY's storied 1949-50 team, which won both the NCAA and NIT tournaments in times when the latter was more prestigious.

"I see it as Guys and Dolls. I see it as Nathan Detroit," Mr. Kalb says, snapping his fingers. "It was quick, in-your-face, a tease to the left when you knew you were going to the right. It was a magnificent acting out of the culture of the city."

Much of the fun is hearing these boys of CCNY vividly recall what the team meant to New York and its denizens. The imperial New York Yankees, led by Joe DiMaggio, "were people from another planet," says Mort Sheinman, class of '54. "These were guys from my neighborhood."

The CCNY team, composed of Jews and blacks and coached by staid Nat Holman, played in Madison Square Gah-den before packed houses of chain smokers. City Dump is loaded with marvelous game footage from those times. Most of the players hadn't yet discovered jumpers, but the action is still surprisingly graceful, even picturesque. These guys really knew how to use the backboard. And those vintage, chest-high set shots have a way of growing on you.

After upsetting rival St. John's of New York, CCNY vaulted to seventh place in the national rankings. But a midseason slump, including a "curious" loss to Niagara, made CCNY a long shot at tournament time. Everyoneexpected the team to be crushed by the Kentucky Wildcats, coached by segregationist Adolph Rupp. Instead the CCNY Beavers routed Kentucky and then beat Bradley University for the NIT crown. All these years later, Mr. Kalb is still eager to express his manifest distaste for Mr. Rupp, spitting out his name as though he were Adolf Hitler.

CCNY again beat Bradley for the NCAA title, causing Gotham to collectively bear-hug its Beavers. An unidentified New Yorker puts it best: "It's not like they did it for us. It's that they were us and did it."

But the following season became paradise lost. One by one, the stars of the championship team were implicated in a point-shaving scandal. In return for payments from big-time gamblers, they conspired to fix games by either losing them or not winning by the expected margin. CCNY's tournament victories were untainted, but several of the regular season games had a stench. New Yorkers reacted as though Santa Claus had been caught shoplifting at Woolworth's.

"Truly betrayal on a biblical level," says Mr. Kalb.

"That was the last time that I really believed in pure idealism," says longtime New York sportswriter Maury Allen.

None of the "dirty" players are interviewed in City Dump. But their bowed-head shame is evident in news footage from that time.

"In a world filled with twisted morality and human frailty, perhaps the City College basketball scandal was inevitable," says narrator Schreiber.

That's an all-too-easy generalization. Famed basketball coach/analyst Al McGuire gets closer to the nub by noting that the CCNY players were mostly cash-poor.

"Let me tell you, when you got no green, green talks," he says. "And green talks loud."

The orange-clad Lady Vols lately have been leaving rival women's college basketball programs green with envy. The producers of Cinderella Season were given a full season's access to the team's locker room, practices, players and coaches. The result is an intriguing inside look at what first looked like a debacle. The Lady Vols had 10 losses during the regular season, several of them lopsided. But they regrouped under the steely Ms. Summitt, beating Old Dominion last March for their second successive national title.

"We were just trying to . . . make y'all's tape interesting," a jubilant player tells the filmmakers.

Ms. Summitt sometimes seems and sounds like a distaff Bobby Knight without the profanity or pot belly.

"I'm accustomed to animals on the boards," she tells the team, not satisfied with an early-season 80-59 victory.

"You broke my spirit the last two games," she informs a senior player with a troublesome attitude.

But the coach is compassionate as well, praising the team for playing with heart after it blows a big early lead against Old Dominion and loses a regular-season game. "If you play this way, I'm tellin' you right now we're gonna be there in March," she insists.

We see how very right she was. HBO's up-close look at the Lady Vols and their improbable season occasionally is marred by some obvious overdubbing of words that don't match Coach Summitt's mouth movements. It's not a flagrant foul, though. Cinderella Season wears a glass slipper most of the time, treating viewers to a riveting look at the team and coach behind a storybook season.

"You don't even have to have the most talent," Ms. Summitt tells them at a victory party. "You have to have the mind and the heart."

Precisely.
PHOTO(S): (UPI/Corbis-Bettman) HBO's City Dump follows the story of
the 1951 CCNY basketball team, which took payoffs from gamblers in

return for shaving points or dumping games. ; LOCATION NOTE: This photo
was not sent to the library for archiving.