Thursday, March 13, 1997
The Bruins’ 1996 recruiting class brought no players who could
make an immediate impact. New coach Steve Lavin, on the other hand,
has helped turn the Bruins’ season around.By Hye Kwon
Daily Bruin Staff
In one year, Steve Lavin has gone from being the Bruins’ second
assistant coach to being head coach of one of the most storied
college basketball programs in the nation.
It has been a whirlwind tour that Lavin will not soon forget.
The season has been filled with big victories and disappointing
defeats. Regardless, Lavin and the Bruins are poised to make a run
at the Final Four.
One week before the tournament ago, he sat down with the Daily
Bruin and revealed his theories, experiences and expectations.
Do you consider yourself lucky, or did you figure that at some
time down the line you would get a break like this?
As an assistant, you’re aspiring someday to be a head coach. So
what you’re doing is preparing yourself for the day the opportunity
presents itself. You don’t think that the opportunity is going to
present itself at UCLA when you’re 32 years old.
You figure that your first job would be somewhere like the
University of San Francisco, which has always been my sentimental
favorite because my father played there and I grew up as a kid
going to USF games, watching Bill Cartwright and some of the other
greats.
I figure a job like USF, UC Irvine or UC Santa Barbara and maybe
10 years later  in your early 40s  you’d pursue a job
like this. But at the same time, I think the key to life is to
prepare, to learn and to study. So when the opportunity presents
itself, you’re ready.
So, how are you enjoying the new office?
Actually, I’m starting to get comfortable. As you get more
personal items in it, it gets to be a little more cozy and feels
more at home.
I know you can’t go into specifics, but how is recruiting
going?
It’ll be good. Next year, with the three underclassmen all
returning, we’re going to be strong. Earl Watson is having a great
senior season. The other day, he had 22 points and 19 rebounds.
We’ll look to sign one or two other players, and next year, we’ll
probably bring in another five. The combination of who we’ll bring
in this year and next year’s class will be the future of UCLA.
What are your feelings as a coach, going from a 48-point loss to
Stanford to a win over Duke?
I think the most gratifying, rewarding or satisfying part of
coaching this team has been watching its growth and development of
maturity, both individually and collectively as a team. The
characteristic that I’m most proud of is this team’s resiliency,
which says a lot about their character and their heart and their
mental toughness that they’ve shown.
I told people early when I took over as head coach that I was
going to fail and I was going to fall face first. And I’ve done
that many a times this year. But I also said that one thing to
expect from me is to pick myself up, dust myself off and keep
working.
What my parents taught me as a kid is it’s not whether you fall
down, but whether you get up. This team has a great ability to get
up. When we lost by 48 to Stanford, we came back less than 48 hours
later against California and bounced back. When we lost to
Illinois, we pulled out a tough win against St. Louis in front of
17,000 people on the road.
Because beyond basketball, this has been a difficult year with a
lot of trauma and a lot of shock, that a group of 14 18- to
21-year-olds had to go through. Forget jump shots, forget wins and
losses, it was really traumatic to lose a head coach who’s
basically like the father. And then as assistant coach, who is like
a big brother, who now has to step into kind of a father figure
role for that team … a lot of difficult moments.
I think our team has learned from those setbacks and from the
same difficult set of circumstances that I inherited as a head
coach. They’re enjoying themselves, they’re attacking and
aggressive in man-to-man defense. We have a lot of players that are
confident and playing the best basketball of their careers right
now. And you couldn’t ask, timing-wise, for a better, more
opportune time for your players to play good basketball than going
into March.
Can you envision, maybe 50 years down the line, people putting
your name next to the likes of John Wooden, Dean Smith or any other
legendary college coaches?
I haven’t had the time to step back and put this whole
experience into perspective because I inherited the head coaching
job here in the midst of a storm. Our ship had already set sail
when I became the captain of the ship and my number one goal was to
get the ship out of the storm and out of the difficult period.
That’s probably what I’m most pleased and most proud of.
We’re back in the calmer waters. We’re back in the top 10 in the
country. We’re playing the best basketball late in the season and
our recruiting is back on track. There’s been a lot of positive
things. Because I was in a situation where I had to roll up my
sleeves and start working, there was no time to step back and
really appreciate a sense of accomplishment or feel as though my
career goal has been realized.
Perspective-wise, it’s a good thing that I wasn’t able to think
about it too much because it probably wasn’t a healthy thing to do.
What the program needed and what was also the best thing for me was
to dive in head first and let my coaching instincts just take over.
If I reflected upon it, it might have been overwhelming.
Do you feel that this is now your team, whereas before you were
taking over someone else’s team?
This is definitely Steve Lavin’s basketball team. I don’t say
that from the standpoint of having a large ego. But because we
bottomed out as a group, as a basketball family we went to the
bottom of the Grand Canyon.
You can’t get any lower than a 48-point loss, you can’t get
lower than dropping out of the Top 25 and being 3-3, you can’t be
any lower than being down 28 points in the first half and getting
booed by the fans on your home floor. Because our basketball family
went through the tough times, it’s kind of clear to them that this
is Steve Lavin’s basketball team.
What do you enjoy the most about coaching?
What I enjoy the most is watching the growth and development of
young people. And to be able to do that in an environment or a
platform where we all have a passion or a commonality, which is
basketball. So like any teacher, you enjoy the progress of
students. My classroom is Pauley Pavilion and the subject I’m
teaching is basketball.
But you try to teach things beyond basketball. Life skills that
they’re going to be able to use the rest of their life. What I
think has been great about this season is that there’s no better
example of trying to teach real-life situations of adversity.
What do you hate the most about coaching?
Sometimes I feel bad for our players in that there’s such a high
level of expectations put on them. That’s a good-news and bad-news
situation. The good news is because there’s high expectations, that
tells you this is a great institution. When you have high
expectations, that tends to maximize people’s potentials.
But at times, because we have 11 national championships in
basketball, I feel bad for the players who have a great amount of
pressure on them. Being 18- to 21-year-old kids, they can’t be just
regular students. When I was at Purdue, it was different. It was
very competitive, but there wasn’t that level of expectation
because it’s not the Yankees of college basketball.
When you’re on your home floor and your fans boo you, that’s
tough for a kid in college. At the pro level it’s different.
They’re paid millions of dollars and they’re expected to perform.
That all makes sense to me. But I hear college kids getting booed
and being criticized in the papers individually, and to me college
athletics is similar to the Olympics. The spirit should be learning
something about life, about camaraderie and friendship.
I don’t mind getting booed. As a coach, I’m getting paid to be a
basketball coach, so I understand that there’s high expectations.
They can boo Steve Lavin all they want, but it’s difficult to see
your players getting booed. Just like when you’re a father, it’s
difficult to see your kids getting booed. You take it kind of
personally.
Going into the NCAA Tournament, which coaches will you speak to
for advice?
For the tournament, I won’t really seek out specific advice from
one coach or another. Pete Newell, John Wooden, George Raveling,
Mike Krzyzewski and Gene Keady are the guys that have been there as
allies, less for basketball than as friends, colleagues and
teachers.
Strategically for the tournament, I don’t plan on contacting
anyone. We have our system set and know what we’re running and what
I want to accomplish on the floor. In the tournament, you don’t
want to change too much.
When was the last time you spoke to Coach Harrick?
Coach Harrick and I haven’t spoken to each other since December.
We talked early, but once you get into the season, you become so
involved and entrenched in your own team that you just don’t have
the time. And also with Coach Harrick, he’s going through some
difficult time in his life right now, so he has his own
struggles.
Why don’t you sweat anymore?
I was kidding with this booster group I spoke with that there
must be a direct correlation between having a contract and my
perspiration. Maybe the contract means less anxiety, because since
I signed the contract I haven’t been perspiring on the
sideline.
On the serious note, I’ve always been so passionate about
coaching and the things that I’m passionate about (I) have the full
spectrum of emotions. I can watch a basketball game and I’d get
goose bumps.
In the course of a game, the range of emotions you go through,
from being happy to being frustrated to being anxious … But I
love what I’m doing and that’s the biggest reason why I sweat. The
players on the floor, they’re working. I’m on the sideline working.
To me it’s a positive thing.
I’ve had people writing me letters and the one I got today, it’s
hilarious: "I want to offer a suggestions that have helped several
of my friends. I realize that a lot of humor has been associated
with your perspiration, but there is a medication called Drysol,
which I believe can put an end to this issue. Please talk to your
doctor about it. It must be prescribed by a physician. I highly
recommend it as a blessing to my friends who suffered with this
problem for years. Once they tried Drysol, they were totally
cured."
I get a kick out of that because sweating is a healthy thing.
That’s a normal human reaction. If I wasn’t sweating, I think I’d
be concerned.
Are you going to sell your old Toyota Camry?
I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to trade that in or
maybe my parents will pick up the payments, I’m still not sure.
There’s a lot of things. I’m kind of waiting until the season is
over and recruiting is over to decide. Probably in May or June I’ll
make a lot of decisions like whether to buy a house, a condominium
or what I’m going to do with my car.
Right now, I’m just trying to concentrate on the team. I’m
trying to put everything else in the back burner as secondary
priority. The top priority is to try to get this team to compete
and play its best basketball in March. And the next most important
thing is recruiting.
What were you like as a kid?
I had a little bit of trouble-maker in me. I spent a lot of time
on Ross Grammar School’s principal’s bench. Basketball, for me,
allowed my negative energy to turn into positive. The coaches that
I had as a kid made good impressions on me. And the friendships
that I developed, I developed through basketball. That’s why it was
a natural that I wanted to go into coaching when I graduated from
college.
JUSTIN WARREN/Daily Bruin
Steve Lavin hopes to add a 1997 championship trophy to the one
already on his desk commemorating the 1995 championship.SUSIE MING
HWA CHU/Daily Bruin
Steve Lavin enjoys helping players develop on and off the
court.