Coaching

Published: Tuesday, January 31, 1995

Coaching

more than

just wins

and losses

Question. Who is the better college basketball coach, Jerry Tarkanian or Jim Harrick?

Before you poke your eye out in a frantic attempt to circle Tarkanian's name as quickly as humanly possible, put down your copy of the Official Guide to Harrick-Bashing for a moment and listen up.

On the one hand you have Tark "the Shark". His nickname alone should immediately alert you that this is not exactly a man bursting at the seams with integrity.

Hustlers, pimps and pushers go by the name "Shark" not college basketball coaches.

College coaches occasionally need to rub elbows with distinguished types; like deans, provosts and professors. The university chancellor can't do his job knowing he has a coach on his payroll who could bump him off with a simple phone call.

On the other hand there is Harrick, maybe not quite as gregarious as Tark, but someone who you could send your son to play basketball for without fear of guys like Richard "the Fixer" Perry tagging along for the ride.

Now is the time when you go into epileptic seizures asking what Harrick's teams were doing while Tarkanian's UNLV Runnin' Rebels were busy winning the 1990 National Championship.

Answer: laying the groundwork for a successful and lasting college basketball program.

The bottom line is that Harrick runs a good, clean program that hasn't won the big one yet, but has a chance to win it all in any given year, and he gets no credit for it.

UCLA assistant coach Mark Gottfried has heard every criticism of Harrick imaginable; on the radio, in the newspapers, and on the streets and he laughs.

"When people actually begin to evaluate and really take a look at Jim Harrick's accomplishments, it becomes very foolish to criticize," Gottfried says. "My question to people is who in coaching that has continually been in the Top-10, from beginning to end, receives as much criticism as him? We're in the top five or ten in every preseason magazine and yet in every magazine it says Jim Harrick is in the hot seat. That's absurd to me."

Gottfried mirrors a growing population of people who are beginning to recognize the pitfalls of a win-at-all-costs attitude in college sports. A recent issue of Sports Illustrated chronicled the debilitating affects the pressure of college basketball has had on some of its coaches, most notably Mike Krzyzewski of Duke and Tim Grgurich of UNLV, who cited fatigue and health concerns as factors necessitating temporary leaves of absence from coaching. Coach K's run of Final Four's was nearly as amazing today as some of the things Wooden accomplished years ago, but even Duke has fallen on hard times and will most likely not be invited to the NCAA tournament this year, which would snap an 11-year streak of appearances for the Blue Devils.

That would leave only North Carolina, Arizona, Indiana and Arkansas with more consecutive tournament appearances than UCLA's six trips under Harrick.

So how many coaches would you rather have at UCLA than Harrick? Dean Smith, Bob Knight? probably, but fat chance of them heading west any time soon. Lute Olson or Rick Pitino? admittedly great coaches, but both of whom were beat by Harrick this year and neither of whom have won a national championship.

Or would you disregard Harrick's accomplishments and seek out a Pete Gillen-type who is credited with being a great coach, but is no guarantee of being any better than Harrick, and could be much worse?

The answer should be none of the above. Harrick has done everything the university has ever asked of him and would likely improve on that if he could ever get the support a Knight or a Pitino gets.

"When I look at it, number one our guys are all graduating," says Gottfried. "Number two, in his six and a half seasons here and I've been here the whole time we have had zero social problems, which is a credit to recruiting quality people. Number three, he wins 23 games a year and number four he's been in the NCAA Tournament every year. The only thing we haven't done is go to the Final Four. So for all those who like to criticize, they should criticize for not going to the Final Four and you can't argue against that but anything else is irrelevant because people forget that in the seven years prior to Harrick coming here they only went to the NCAA tournament twice."

People also forget that John Wooden didn't win his first national championship until his 16th year as the UCLA head coach, at which point he rolled off 10 titles in the next 12 years.

Jim Harrick deserves similar patience and respect.