"I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I have not once thought of business or care or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness."
-- Mark Twain LAHAINA, Hawaii -- "Welcome to Fantasy Island" is often the greeting for visitors.
But there is danger lurking in a bandbox gym called the Civic Center, in the annual Maui Invitational basketball tournament. It happens when your team plays host Chaminade.
"You're so far removed from the regular basketball pressures, so your kids relax," Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams said. "That's why you see so many upsets that you can't believe. But when you're over there, you believe them."
Williams is hoping that it doesn't happen to Maryland, which opens its 1994-95 season here today. The Terrapins, ranked seventh in the country, play the Division II Silverswords at 9 a.m. Hawaiian Standard Time (2 p.m. EDT).
It happened first in 1982, in the four-team event that pre-dated what became an eight-team tournament. Stopping here on its way back from a game in Japan, top-ranked Virginia lost to Chaminade, 77-72.
It became the David-over-Goliath upset against which all others in the sport would be measured.
"The funny thing is that we were playing well going in there," recalled former Virginia coach Terry Holland. "We had beaten Georgetown in the Capital Centre, and had won without Ralph against Houston in Japan. And we had our best practice of the year the day before the game."
But: "Strange things happen when you're so far from home," said Holland, now the athletic director at Davidson. "It's not like we didn't play hard. We must have out-rebounded them something like 48-20. We had played them a couple of times before, and we were always comfortably ahead in the second half. But I knew that when push came to shove, we could be in trouble."
In other words, the Cavaliers believed they fell victim to some home cooking from local referees. And they blamed All-America Sampson's lingering flu bug.
But what about the losses by No. 3 SMU and No. 14 Louisville the following year? Or the Cardinals losing again in 1984? Or Providence losing in 1991 in overtime? Or Stanford's double-overtime loss in 1992?
"One of the reasons is that they've had some really good teams," said Louisville coach Denny Crum, whose Cardinals will make their first trip back next year. "If they had those teams playing over here, they would have been competitive. They were tough as nails."
"With all the distractions over there, it's tough. But the biggest difference to me is the time change.. . . . You need a couple of weeks over there to get adjusted. We played Hawaii-Hilo one year and we had 38 turnovers. We couldn't even catch the ball."
The Terps arrived Saturday afternoon and practiced at the Civic Center the past two days, so Williams knows his players might still be on College Park time. And that meant a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call this morning, 5 a.m. breakfast and a 6:50 bus to the arena.
"You don't want your players to get that far out of their routine, but sometimes you have to adjust, especially if the other team doesn't have to," said Holland. "The biggest thing is to make sure your players know the reason they're there is to play basketball."
But even a bleary-eyed bunch of Terps might be able to sleepwalk through today's game. The days of Chaminade competing with -- and beating -- ranked Division I teams appear to be long over. In the early-to-mid 1980s, the school's NAIA affiliation allowed it to take any player.
Partly the result of more stringent admissions standards that accompanied the school's move to Division II, and partly the fallout of the school's financial problems in the late 1980s, Chaminade has had three losing records and has finished no better than .500 since going Division II in 1989.
But it still has a place among college basketball fans and -- Silverswords coach and athletic director Don Doucette hopes -- among recruits. "It's amazing the name recognition of Chaminade," said Doucette, 42, who came here last season from Division I North Carolina-Asheville, where he'd been head coach for five years. "It's because of what happened in the old days, and because of the affiliation with ESPN through the Maui Invitational. Not bad for a little Catholic school on a hill overlooking Wakiki."
But Doucette's expectations aren't high.
"We were 6-19 last year and had only two players come back," he said. "Of the eight new players, two didn't fulfill their academic requirements over the summer, another two left after a couple of weeks and one kid who broke his foot last year is taking a medical redshirt. . . . . I think we can be competitive, but I don't know if we can compete with a team like Maryland."
The key could be when Williams and his players walk off the bus that will take them from their luxury hotel to a 2,500-seat gym that often is a sauna for three days each November.
"You get off the bus, you make a left to go to the gym and a right to go to the beach," said Williams, whose Ohio State team played here in 1988, finishing with two wins and a loss, to top-ranked Oklahoma. "You make sure your kids make a left."
Stranger things have happened here on fantasy island.
TODAY'S GAME
Maryland (0-0) vs. Chaminade (0-0) Site: Lahaina (Hawaii) Civic Center
Time: 2 p.m.
TV/Radio: ESPN/WBAL (1090 AM)
Outlook: After erratic performances in two exhibition wins, the Terrapins open the 1994-95 season. Today's meeting with undersized, overmatched Chaminade should be another tuneup for tomorrow's anticipated showdown with No. 9 Indiana. (The Hoosiers play Utah at 9:30 p.m.) First-team All-American Joe Smith had 57 points in the exhibitions and sophomore forward Keith Booth had 54. The Silverswords have only one player over 6-8 in their lineup.