A SIDEWAYS GLANCE : UNLIKELY HERO.

When Cameron Mills first caught Rick Pitino's eye at a basketball camp, the Kentucky coach quickly assessed the guard as a guy who was ``too slow, couldn't dribble, couldn't shoot and couldn't jump.''

Now Mills, a walk-on player that Pitino tried to convince not to attend Kentucky, is one of the stars as the Wildcats head into today's West Regional final against Utah.

With 19 points off the bench in Thursday's win over St. Joseph's, Mills has been a key reserve over the last few weeks. And with injuries to guards Derek Anderson and Allen Edwards, he has become even more important to the Wildcats.

Mills got a break when his father, a friend of the Kentucky equipment manager, sent a message to Pitino that he wanted Cameron to be considered as a walk-on for the Wildcats - even though he had been offered scholarships elsewhere.

``I said, `Your son's good enough to play somewhere, he's not going to play at Kentucky,' '' Pitino said Friday.

All Mills does is shoot and make 3-pointers. He does it just about every night, and now he has made a believer of his coach. ``He's not a very good athlete,'' Pitino said. ``He can't guard a soul. But you can't tell him that. He goes out every night and thinks he's Rick Mount.''

Nails and boards

Scot Pollard decided to stick with a winning fingernail-polish color.

The eccentric Kansas forward painted his nails blue, the same color they were for a second-round victory over Purdue.

``Last week he got 19 rebounds,'' Kansas coach Roy Williams said. ``He said he thought he would keep them that color.''

Williams said he's enjoyed coaching Pollard, despite some of his unusual traits.

``I've always said we're 180 degrees apart on a lot of things,'' Williams said. ``But he's as good a kid as there could possibly be. I would have felt cheated not to have been able to coach him.''

Actually, coach and player do have something in common.

``We're not 180 degrees apart, we're only 179,'' Williams said. ``He and I are probably the only ones who never, ever watched a soap opera in our entire lives.''

No pity for Pitino

Utah coach Rick Majerus recruits ``who we can trick into coming.'' He realizes that Kentucky coach Rick Pitino has to do much less work to get the interest of high school stars.

Majerus said he accepts the fact that he's going to have to work harder than Pitino to recruit top high school players. And the portly Majerus knows he'll never rival the dapper Kentucky coach for a spot in a fashion magazine.

But that doesn't stop Majerus from being envious of the Kentucky coach in other ways.

``I'd like to have his wife. I saw her last night. She ate at the same place I did last night,'' he joked. ``I'd also like to have his bank account.''

Slim rims

It wasn't only tough defense that kept shooting percentages low in the Utah-Stanford semifinal Thursday in the West Regional.

The players are convinced the rims at the San Jose Arena were very unforgiving.

Stanford missed 12 of its first 13 shots and shot just 32 percent for the game. Utah won despite hitting just three of its first 14 shots and hitting 42 percent overall.

``The rims are tight,'' said Stanford guard Arthur Lee. ``In the first half, nothing was falling for us.''