COLLEGE BASKETBALL GALORE ON THE INTERNET.

Byline: Denise N. Maloof Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If there's any doubt about college basketball fans' loyalty or fanaticism, look no further than the Internet.

The World Wide Web is awash in sites that deal with the sport, from the all-inclusive mega-stops to smaller ones that spotlight such things as youth camps.

But that's not nearly all. Aside from beefing up one's daily knowledge, fans also can buy replica merchandise, conduct rotisserie leagues, vote in user polls and e-mail five members of the University of North Carolina's men's basketball team.

If you're not yet a Net whiz or don't know where to start, don't panic. Start by visiting big sites such as ESPNET SportsZone, Sports Illustrated's SI Online and USA Today before fishing for smaller, harder-to-find sites. The big ones handle all major college and professional sports in general, newsy fashion and organize each in a magazine format with cover pages, daily headlines, color photographs and chat rooms. Most offer separate sites for men's and women's basketball.

USA Today uses student correspondents for its Division I men's and women's game reports, plus it incorporates league standings, statistics, all the major polls and updated scores. ESPNET offers a similar package along with men's previews by ESPN analysts Digger Phelps and Dick Vitale. Mechelle Voepel of The Kansas City Star files a column for the women's pages. Her most recent dealt with a rash of upsets by ACC teams over SEC teams.

Any global search tool can catalog sites by conferences, schools, men's and women's teams and tournaments; users need only pick and choose.

It's easy to find most Georgia teams under the conference formats. The Georgia Tech men's team has a school-sponsored page and some unofficial ones that offer statistics, rosters and schedules. Georgia's women's site has more information such as a longer history of the program than the men's, possibly because of last year's Final Four appearance. However, the women's site received 229 hits, compared with 451 for the men during a recent five-day period.

``Some schools contract with a company to do theirs,'' said Georgia associate sports information director Tim Hix. ``We do our own.''

The Tech and Georgia sites feature biographies, photos, statistics and game recaps. There's also an audio service for live game broadcasts using a service called AudioNet. Hix said the men's site recorded 200 listeners for last week's Tech-Georgia game.

The spotlight's a bit brighter for North Carolina fans, who have all of the above available, plus personalized sites called Blue Heaven pages for Tar Heel players Vince Carter, Ademola Okulaja, Antawn Jamison, Shammond Williams and Makhtar Ndiaye. Start with Williams' page and navigate to the others. Fellow UNC student Seth Fleishman, a junior, maintains the pages, providing scores, stats, interviews, e-mail addresses and a photo.

THE SITES ESPNET SportsZone: http://espnet.sportszone.com/ SI Online: http://www.pathfinder.com/si USA Today: http://www.USAToday.com Georgia Tech Basketball Homepage: An unofficial site with player stats. http://www.lehigh.edu/jwt2/gt.html Georgia Tech Athletic Association Basketball: The official site. http://www.gatech.edu /athletic/sportinfo/mbasketball

Georgia Women's Basketball: The University of Georgia Athletic Association site. http://www.sports.uga.edu/basketball-womens /index.html Georgia Men's Basketball: The athletic association site. http://www.sports.uga.edu/basketball-mens/index.html Shammond's World: The site for University of North Carolina player Shammond Williams; with links to other players' home pages. http://www.unc.edu /shammond Fellow Coaches' Edge: The National Association of Basketball Coaches offers articles from its Courtside magazine that spotlight technique, plays and theories used by some of the country's top men's and women's programs. Current features include how Kansas is surviving without Jacque Vaughn and how Stanford's transition game feeds off Kate Starbird. http://www.coachesedge.com NCAA Basketball Pool Software for Windows: One of several available for organizing that all-important NCAA Tournament office pool. http://members.aol.com/sidesoft/index.html