Mike Bibby

By way of cosmic intersection and hoops happenstance--O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!--the private lives of the Henry Bibbys will be put on public display tonight, for the cost of admission. Arizona versus USC, a story of love, betrayal and a crossover dribble, comes as close as college basketball gets to Shakespeare. Such as the Globe Theater is not available, the game will be played at the Sports Arena, in two halves instead of four acts.

Guard Mike Bibby, the best Arizona prep player since Sean Elliott in the 1980s, made an impact in his first Pacific 10 Conference game for the Arizona Wildcats. Bibby, a rare freshman starter for Arizona Coach Lute Olson, made two free throws with 3.6 seconds remaining Thursday night to give the ninth-ranked Wildcats an 81-80 victory over the California Bears at Tucson in the Pac-10 opener for both teams. "Mike Bibby is a special guy," Olson said.

The fact that Phil Jackson and George Karl are former Continental Basketball Assn. coaches was not lost on Henry Bibby as he watched the NBA finals. . . . Bibby coached for eight seasons in the CBA, the minor league of professional basketball. . . . That is part of the reason he is unfazed by the job of trying to rebuild the USC program. . . . "This job is easy compared to the CBA," said Bibby, whose Trojans lost their last nine games last season after he replaced Charlie Parker.