Finally, the NCAA put in a rule that actually the college coaches like, but one the players will end up hating -- a penalty for playing games at the Chicago pre-draft camp.

Make no mistake, the penalty is harsh and could deem a player declaring for the draft selfish. Why? Well, if an underclassman plays all three games in Chicago, then decided to return to school, the NCAA will make him sit out his team's first three games of the 2002-03 season.

	Matt Doherty finds himself re-recruiting some of the nation's top players who are already headed to North Carolina.

Bottom line: the rule clearly makes it harder for players to get a true gauge on where they stand in the draft. But it gives college coaches even more ammunition to tell a player not to stay in the draft.

"It will prevent a player from taking that free swing in Chicago that he thinks he gets by declaring," said Ohio coach Tim O'Shea, whose star player Brandon Hunter declared with the intent of playing in Chicago, but has since pulled back from his original statement once he understood the rule. "I think this is a good rule to ferret out those who are serious and those who are not. It should keep the floodgates closed on some players declaring."

But Hunter seems to be the rare exception for high-profile college coaches who recruit likely NBA-level players, or mid-major coaches like O'Shea who get that one player every few seasons who feels he is ready for the NBA. The draft has become one of the toughest parts of a college coach's job, a close second to dealing with the scholarship restrictions and overall recruiting limitations throughout the year.

"It has become a major problem," said Florida coach Billy Donovan, who has seen Jason Williams, Mike Miller, Donnell Harvey and signee Kwame Brown bolt early for the NBA. He has also had to snuff out interest from present players Brett Nelson, David Lee and James White either along the way to Florida, or once they arrived in Gainesville.

"I understand why kids are going and I have no problem with it. But from a coaching standpoint, the time and energy spent recruiting them is hard because you only get them for a short time period," Donovan adds.

Donovan said he hears from college administrators that schools like Florida shouldn't recruit players who are going to bolt early or even before they get to school. But he said he never envisioned Miller leaving after two seasons, let along being the fifth overall pick in 2000, after he was the "seventh or eighth best small forward coming out of high school."

Throughout the defections, Florida has maintained a high-level of play, largely from getting a few four-year players like Udonis Haslam, Brent Wright and Major Parker to buy into Donovan's system, instead of having a warped opinion on their draft status.

"Fifteen to 20 years ago, guys like Mike Miller, Donnell Harvey and Kwame Brown were four-year guys," Donovan said. "But what happens is it puts so much pressure on the recruiting the next year, the next year and the next year after that."

The lure of the NBA makes it harder for coaches to decide who they should target as 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds. Donovan recruited Brown, and after he signed him to a letter of intent, Brown's stock soared. Brown was wasn't being hailed as a potential overall No. 1 pick out of high schoo, or a 2001 lottery pick, and maybe not even a first-round pick the previous summer. But that changed during Brown's senior year.

And Brown was a rarity -- a player who was going to be eligible as a freshman in college, yet still chose to go into the draft. The majority of high school players who make the jump, save Kobe Bryant, are struggling to get eligible. All five of the high school seniors in this year's draft weren't expected to be eligible this season in college, and only two of them actually signed national letter of intents.

	“	I have a problem with the high school defection to the league because you don't know who to recruit. ... You have to make an educated guess on who's going and who's not from high school. ”
		— Bob Huggins, Cincinnati head coach

"I have a problem with the high school defection to the league because you don't know who to recruit," Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins said. "Primarily, they are big guys, and now you're looking at big guys and saying, 'Well, he's probably going to go to the league.' So now you go to a tier down and try to find some bigger people. You have to make an educated guess on who's going and who's not from high school.

"The early entry in college makes it really tough to replace guys. We lost Kenny Satterfield, but fortunately we had Steve Logan in the program. We didn't drop off at all because we basically played two point guards the year before. But I don't think that happens very often."

Again, the newly enforced Chicago rule will help college coaches. But since the end of the season, they've had to deal with another wrinkle for high school players. In April, the NCAA allowed them to declare for the draft, get drafted and still return to college -- something that isn't offered to Division I underclassmen or junior college players.

Of the five high school players who declared, only two -- Brandon Roy (signed by Washington) and Giedrius Rinkevicius (Missouri) kept their options open by not signing with an agent. But this new rule meant college coaches were calling their players hoping they wouldn't take the gamble. Reminding them in some cases that they would be tied to the NBA team that drafted them next month until the year after their college eligibility expired.

Villanova's Jay Wright had to explain it to top recruit Jason Fraser. The same occurred at UCLA, where their top signee -- Evan Burns -- was told of the new rule. It happened at Syracuse, Duke and especially at North Carolina, where Raymond Felton and Rashaad McCants were candidates to make the jump.

Dealing with these rules are a recently added chore in the spring for college coaches. They must re-recruit and educate their own players to ensure they don't declare for the draft.

"I immediately called Raymond's, Rashaad's and Sean's (May) parents to explain it when I heard about it," North Carolina coach Matt Doherty said. "It was neat that they immediate said they weren't interested in the draft."

But when the trio played in the McDonald's All-Star Gme in New York during the first week of April, Doherty wasn't allowed to attend. Under an NCAA mandate, no college coaches were allowed in Madison Square Garden. Ah, but the NBA was there -- and was represented with tons of scouts, giving a false opinion for the players involved that they were ready for the league -- another NBA-sized headache for college coaches this spring.

"It sends the wrong signal," Doherty said. "We need to protect our turf. There were 70 scouts and 100 agents. College basketball had no presence."

Minnesota coach Dan Monson had a recruit in last season's McDonald's game -- Rick Rickert -- who played for the Gophers this past season. Monson will again have Rickert in the lineup this season, but that could be it if Rickert has an all-Big Ten-type season. If that occurs, then the Gophers will have had a good year, a tradeoff Monson is willing to deal with in 2003.

"But this is where a school like Gonzaga has an advantage over a Minnesota," said Monson, who coached the Zags prior to the Gophers. "Kids go to Gonzaga with less of a blown up sense of their chances of getting to the NBA. Therefore, they stay and they get better chemistry. I want players at Minnesota who think they're going to the NBA, but it's a fine line to sustain the chemistry when players have one-eye on the NBA."

Expect coaches to have the other eye on what to do, as their best players on campus and those scheduled to arrive this fall, all chase that dream of someday playing in the NBA.

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com. His Weekly Word on college basketball is updated Fridays throughout the year and will return on May 31.