The Johnnies, for their part, have quite a cast of characters under the disciplined and effective tutelage of first-year Coach Mike Jarvis, and play the Little Engine that Could to Maryland's scoring machine.

Jarvis, who coached Patrick Ewing when the latter played his high school ball up the street at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, is the perfect antithesis of his predecessor, the bumbling, irate Fran Fraschilla who was canned after the Storm lost its NCAA opener last year to Detroit.

Jarvis has skillfully managed a team comprised largely of graduates of New York inner-city high schools--Artest of LaSalle, freshman Erick Barkley of Christ the King and senior Tyrone Grant of Grady--and has steered the Storm deeper into the Dance than any coach since Lou Carnesecca in 1991.

St. John's has battled all season, with near-miss losses to Stanford and Purdue and the Preseason NIT and to No. 1 Duke in overtime at Madison Square Garden, in a game Elton Brand thought was the best he's ever played in, a 92-88 defeat.

Jarvis can also claim much of the credit for the Storm's 86-61 demolition of Indiana in the second round--his zone stifled the Hoosiers into 40 percent shooting, and Bobby Knight said that he couldn't have beaten St. John's with five more tries.

St. John's will depend on Artest, a highly vocal leader and likely lottery pick should he declare for the NBA draft, who averages 14.8 points and 4.4 assists per game.

Artest's backcourt is one of the freshest and quickest in the nation, manned by rookies Barkley and Bootsy Thornton, like Francis a ju-co veteran. Bootsy, whose birth certificate reads Marvis, got his nickname when his mother named him after Parliament Funkadelic's Bootsy Collins.