Pete Newell used to do it, and...

Pete Newell used to do it, and he certainly got the job done, but Jerry Tarkanian says that’s not the reason he chews on a towel during Nevada Las Vegas games.

“That started with me, 24 years ago,” Tarkanian told Owen Canfield of the Hartford Courant. “I was coaching Redlands High School in an afternoon championship game. It was boiling hot. I was dry. Kept getting up and running to the water fountain for a drink, every timeout.

“The game wound up tied in regulation. I grabbed a towel and soaked it in water, and just sucked on it so I wouldn’t have to keep getting up.

“We won the game. I’ve done it ever since. Superstitious? Sure, but we all do strange things. We’re basketball coaches.”

From Villanova basketball Coach Rollie Massimino: “I’m not one of those coaches who calls time when the other team scores four points in a row.”

How about against Georgetown?

“Six in a row, I’m calling time,” he said.

Now-it-can-be-told dept.: In the wake of Sunday’s 77-76 loss to Illinois, Houston Coach Guy Lewis told Bob Galt of the Dallas Times Herald he tried something different to shake up the team.

“I told the starters they would only be out there for Illinois’ first 10 points,” Lewis said. “I had hoped it would really shake ‘em up and that they would get after it. I used to do that quite a bit.”

It may be awhile before he does it again.

On the tipoff, the Houston players took off toward the wrong basket, and Illinois scored on an uncontested layup. From there, Illinois built a lead of 22-6.

The next sound you heard was a nation switching channels.

Iowa Coach George Raveling said USC transfer Gerry (Sir Jamelot) Wright has been “like a breath of fresh air” in Iowa City after last year’s dismal season.

“He took the pressure off,” Raveling said. “He transformed us, a new phenomena. He’s outgoing, a rah-rah type. The gung-ho attitude carried over.”

The difference between recruiting at Harvard and other schools?

Says Joe Carrabino, 6-9 center from Crespi High: “When I visited here, I was taken to a Celtics-Milwaukee game and the next day attended the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Library. Then there was a football game where I met Sen. Ted Kennedy. At the other schools, the first thing they showed me was the gym.”

From former Baltimore Coach Weeb Ewbank, explaining the great protection for Miami’s Dan Marino last season: “Marino is pretty lucky. He’s got the same line coach Unitas had, John Sandusky, one of the best in the business. He knows pass protection. He’s doing a fine job there now as he did for John when we were with the Colts.”

Greg Luzinski is out of the big leagues and has accepted a job as a frosh coach at a New Jersey high school, but shed no tears for The Bull.

Said his agent, Greg Sands: “Because of investments we have made, he will receive $200,000 a year for the rest of his life.”

Says Tennessee Coach Don DeVoe, a former Bob Knight assistant, defending the Indiana coach for imposing his own grade standards: “ I think Bob knows what a lot of us know, if the minimum a player needs to stay eligible is a 2.0, that’s exactly what a lot of players are going to get. They’re going to ride the fence.

“A lot of players around the country ride the fence and fall off; they stay eligible but never graduate. You see that all the time. By forcing his players to do better than that, I think Bob protects most of them this way.”

Quotebook

John McEnroe, asked what he will be doing when his tennis-playing days are over: “I have no idea.”