NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - It's a small-cap revival: the large-cap Standard & Poor's 500-stock index lost nearly 12 percent in 2001, while the small-cap Russell 2000 finished with a 2.5 percent gain.

Value-priced smaller stocks led the way, with most small-cap value funds seeing double-digit gains. Then small-cap growth funds shot up faster than the rest of the market in the fourth-quarter rally, gaining nearly 25 percent for the period.

Investors certainly noticed: According to Financial Research Corporation, small-cap funds saw net inflows of $29 billion last year, up 55 percent from 2000. And because small-cap funds function best with modest, maneuverable asset bases, the past year has seen the closing of some of the top small-cap value funds.

Off limits to new investors are such gems as American Century Small Cap Value, Boston Partners Small Cap Value, Wasatch Small Cap Value and Turner Small Cap Value, which is one of the offerings on our latest MONEY 100 list of the best mutual funds.

The pickings are slimming among growth-oriented vehicles too. Arden Armstrong, mastermind behind MSIF Small Cap Growth and MSIF Mid Cap Growth, is leaving Morgan Stanley to start her own shop; these MONEY 100 funds are now decidedly less desirable.

Two MONEY 100 favorites, Neuberger Berman Genesis and Wasatch Core Growth, have recently shut out newcomers. Bogle Small Cap Growth, another MONEY 100 pick, will close when it hits just $150 million in assets, perhaps sooner. (At last count, its assets were at $113 million.) To slow the flow of incoming cash, Buffalo Small Cap has closed to fund supermarket buyers, and Artisan Mid Cap shut on March 11, after hitting $2.2 billion in assets.

Of course, the odds are against small-cap managers trouncing the S&P 500 for a third year in a row. But the recent outperformance of these winners is a clear reminder that some small-cap exposure (typically 20 percent of your stock portfolio) can be a lifesaver when blue chips flounder.

Get 'em while you can       • Aegis Value • Artisan Small Cap • FPA Paramount • JohnsonFamily Small Cap Value • Schroder U.S. Smaller Cos.

With the exception of $13 billion Fidelity Low-Priced Stock, another MONEY 100 name, the best small-cap funds are slim and limber. (Even the bulky Fidelity fund closes occasionally to digest new assets.) So we sought out lesser-known champs with less than $150 million in assets. Two of our new picks follow a value style, two are growth-oriented and one falls somewhere in between.

Aegis Value is a young fund that's proving worthy of bearing the Graham and Dodd standard. Just as those grandfathers of value investing prescribed, the Aegis fund's managers stick to stocks selling at steep discounts to what they believe the company's assets are worth.

Co-manager Scott Barbee puts forth Allied Research, the fund's most significant purchase in 2001's third quarter, as an example. The munitions and security company was selling at less than its stated book value and had lots of cash on its sparkling balance sheet. Barbee couldn't have anticipated that the attacks of Sept. 11 would send the stock up 100 percent, but he points out that "when a stock sells at only four times earnings, eventually something will get people excited about it."

That success went toward the fund's 20.7 percent annualized three-year return through Feb. 22, which lands it in the top 15 percent of its value category.

JohnsonFamily Small Cap Value is another outstanding unknown whose managers never overpay for a stock; it ranks in the top third of small-cap value funds over the past three years.

Eric Ende and Steve Geist, managers of FPA Paramount, look for industry leaders with consistently high returns on capital that are selling cheap, often because the sector is in a slump. Last summer, for example, they added three oil services names, Tidewater, Noble Drilling and Cal Dive, when "people were hysterical about [falling] natural gas prices," recalls Ende.

He distinguishes this strategy from that of his renowned colleague, the cheapskate contrarian Bob Rodriguez, who runs the famed FPA Capital and FPA New Income funds: "Bob's severe valuation criteria can lead to slow turnarounds; I'm willing to pay up for higher quality."

Ende and Geist took over this fund in 2000, and its record still reflects their predecessor's troubles. But their 16.3 percent annualized five-year return at FPA Perennial puts that fund in the top 10 percent of small-cap blend funds, and they have remade Paramount in the same mold. An added plus for those who invest in Paramount: Its previous manager racked up such extensive capital losses that the fund probably won't have to distribute a taxable capital gain for years.

Schroder U.S. Smaller Companies never hit the skids in 2000 because manager Ira Unschuld had never piled into trendy tech names in the first place. While Unschuld seeks companies with strong earnings-growth prospects of 20 percent or greater, he insists on relatively modest price multiples of no more than 15 or 20 times earnings. (He actually shorts the market's pricier stocks at microcap Schroder Ultra, a perennial chart-topper that is closed to new investors.)

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Unschuld has been adding consumer-oriented and cyclical stocks that he believes will do well in a recovery. His caution explains the breadth of the portfolio -- about a hundred names, none more than 2.5 percent of assets, spread across almost every sector.

That makes this one of the least volatile small-cap growth funds, yet its 19.2 percent annualized three-year return ranks in the top 15 percent. Artisan Small Cap also takes a moderate approach to growth investing. It can lag in rallies, but its three-year numbers are in the top 40 percent of its peers.