Coaching

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.