LAWRENCE -- The only thing in Las Vegas as hot and relentless as the sun last week was the basketball.

It was hoops mania that began at 8 a.m. each day and lasted until midnight, going non-stop in eight different high school gyms, a total of 256 AAU teams from across the country filled with players as eager to hit their jackpot as any casino diehard.

An NCAA convention doesn't get the college attendance Vegas had.

Don Harnum was there for Rider, of course. Harnum and assistants Jim Engles and Tony Newsom have been everywhere. Coast to coast. North to south. This week it's Orlando. July is the open month to shop for the merchandise, and though you can't buy, can't even talk to players, if you're a coach with aspirations of winning, you've got to be out in the marketplace.

FOR HARNUM and his staff, it's a strange shopping trip. When he made the decision recently to commit his final available scholarship to a 6-10, 265-pound transfer from Long Beach State, it meant the Rider coach had but one scholarship to award this coming year, and just two more the following one.

Unless things change. Inevitably they do.

"Whether you have none available or eight," Harnum said before heading to Florida this week, "you have to be out there. You just have to know the whole landscape, know all the kids out there, the ones who might fit your program, the ones you might be playing against. It's critical you see as much as you can, as many players as you can, and that you be seen and what you represent be known."

HIS LATEST addition is 6-10 Ian Milley, whose two years on the bench at Long Beach were pretty much a waste of time. But Harnum remembers being impressed with the Californian a couple of years ago while he prepped at Mercersburg in Pennsylvania and is convinced if the big kid were coming out of high school this year, he'd be much in demand by everyone in the MAAC -- as he was back then.

The hardest thing about committing his current final scholarship to Milley -- besides the fact he must sit out a year when he could be of great value this coming season after Ken Lacey's sudden decision to seek a pro job in Europe rather than return for his senior year -- is that the Rider coaches couldn't see him play.

Though Milley visited the campus before selecting Rider over several other suitors, the NCAA rules don't permit tryouts and don't even permit a coach to watch prospects. Harnum had to go by what outsiders reported.

But 6-10, 265-pounders with good grades and good work ethics aren't easy to find, and the Broncs can look ahead to uniting Milley with this fall's incoming big men, 6-10 Robert Reed and 6-9 Tank Wahlmann, and feel comfortable with their future in the middle. Both Milley and Wahlmann have 15-foot shooting range -- bigger versions of Kevin McPeek.

MERCERSBURG BASKETBALL has been excellent, with the prep's team of last year having sent the Ivy's top recruit, 6-8 Ugonna Onyekwe, to Penn, and his 6-10, 310-pound teammate, Kareen Wright, to Rutgers. Milley was that kind of prospect there a couple of years ago before returning to the west coast for college, a decision he came to regret.

Armed with the knowledge his big-man needs have been filled, Harnum found himself in the "just looking" category of shopper this month. Until he discovers in the fall just how advanced -- or behind -- his five other newcomers are, he really doesn't know what his most-crying need might be.

Ideally, a 6-5 or 6-6 shooter who can rebound with force, a Charles Smith-type small forward, would be hard to resist. Finding one is as tough a recruiting task as a mid-major coach ever faces.

Harnum hopes he's buoyed his backcourt with 6-3 playmaker Junior Curtis and 6-2 shooter Mike Wilson, hopes he's gotten forward help in 6-4 Howard Williams and 6-5 JUCO Alexander Iseghohi, but until they arrive and prove themselves, he's shopping in the dark. Milley, if nothing else, will add experience and muscle to practices for a year until he becomes eligible.

TALK COMING out this week about the NCAA pushing to limit incoming classes to four basketball players a year comes at a bad time for the Broncs. Milley, with a three-year stay upcoming, falls into the group with last year's four freshmen. The newest class has five freshman plus Iseghohi, who joins Mike Crawford as the lone juniors. In addition to being very young, the Broncs are not going to be able to add much help for two years, then will need a load of newcomers the following two seasons.

But that's assuming everyone stays. That no one gets homesick, that no one has academic trouble, that no one moves on to get more playing time elsewhere, that no one takes off for a shot at the pros. History shows all those things happen.

"You just have to look at as many prospects as you can," says Harnum, who would like to finish the summer with "10 or 12 kids in whom we're interested and who are willing to talk to us, who want to get to know the coaches and visit the campus. If we only have scholarship aid for one this year, fine, we'll try to pick the one who can help us most."

Maybe by mid-August, after the recruiting and the summer camps are over and before the new class arrives, he can get back on the golf course. Each time he drops his average to a respectable score, he has to put the clubs away and go to work.