There’s Very Little a Coach Can Do When a Player Decides to Move On

If a player has the ability to play college basketball, it shows on the court.

The way he shoots, the intensity of his defense, the physical style of his rebounding can convince a coach he can play at that school.

But will he stay there?

A coach never knows that until the player completes his eligibility or says those three little words that coaches sometimes hate to hear: “I am transferring.”

And no matter what a college coach does, and no matter how he does it, if a player wants out, he’s usually a transfer waiting to happen.

“Once a kid decides to transfer, he’s pretty much made his mind up,” said Joe Harrington, Cal State Long Beach basketball coach. “There’s really nothing a coach can do.”

Still, some coaches try their best to keep the players they recruited happy enough to remain with their programs.

When George Gervin, a former NBA star, came out of Ypsilanti High School in Michigan in 1969, his first choice for college was Cal State Long Beach, then coached by Jerry Tarkanian.

But Gervin didn’t much like life in Long Beach. After the first couple of weeks, he missed home and his girlfriend. Tarkanian recognized the problem, having seen it many times before. He wasn’t about to let Gervin slip through his hands without trying something.

“We knew George was homesick and his girlfriend kept calling him,” said Tarkanian, now coach at Nevada Las Vegas. “We told his roommate to look after him over the weekend and to call me or an assistant if there were any problems.”

The roommate and teammate, Eric McWilliams, was to keep Gervin happy--at any cost.

The instructions seemed simple. Stick with George. George wants to go the movies? Make sure he gets there and back. Out to dinner? Go ahead and treat him, if you have to.

Tarkanian returned Monday morning, and guess what? No George.

Turns out McWilliams followed instructions perfectly, perhaps too perfectly. When Gervin asked McWilliams to take him to the airport, McWilliams complied. Gervin hopped a plane back to Michigan and transferred to Eastern Michigan, where he set the school’s single-season scoring record. He then jumped to stardom in the American Basketball Assn. and NBA.

Said University of Utah Coach Lynn Archibald: “If a kid wants to like a place, he’s going to find reasons to like it. But if he comes in with the idea that he’s not going to like it, he’ll find reasons to support that idea.”

Archibald knows a little about this. Rog Middleton, a former star at Tustin High School, left Utah three weeks ago and has transferred to Chapman.

Maurice Smith, a 6-foot 7-inch forward out of Barton Community College in Kansas, spent the summer of 1985 working out with the Cal State Fullerton basketball team. Titan Coach George McQuarn was counting heavily on Smith playing that season.

But it seems that Smith hated Orange County, the people and his summer job. And he spent most of the summer telling friends, teammates and coaches how much he disliked being in Orange County.

So in August, when Smith said he was flying home to visit his family in Ohio, McQuarn became worried that he was about to lose a player.

“When a kid is whining all the time and then says he’s going home for a visit, you get concerned,” McQuarn said.

He asked Smith point-blank--was he coming back?

“Oh yeah,” Smith said.

McQuarn sill wasn’t convinced. He called Smith’s mother in Ohio. She assured him that her son would return to Fullerton.

A couple days later, McQuarn called again. Smith hadn’t arrived.

“We found out later that his plane went through Tulsa. He got off and went straight to Oral Roberts,” McQuarn said. “He started there for two seasons.”

Tarkanian tried a baby-sitter to keep one player happy; McQuarn tried keeping a running line of communication. But at the heart of many players’ dissatisfaction is a lack of playing time. And when coaches see that is creating the problem, they draw the line. They won’t juggle the lineup and jeopardize the team to keep a disgruntled freshman happy.

“It’s unrealistic for freshmen to feel they should play a lot,” Harrington said. “They have to ask themselves, ‘Did I play on the varsity as a freshman in high school?’ ”

Harrington knows of what he speaks.

In 1973, Harrington was an assistant to Lefty Driesell at Maryland, when the Terrapins landed a prize recruit, Wilson Washington, a 6-10 center.

Maryland already had Len Elmore and Tom McMillen playing post positions. Both were seniors and honorable mention All-Americans the previous season.

Washington seemed to be in the perfect position. All he had to do was spend one year learning the system and adjusting to the school, then be the Terrapins’ starting center for three years.

It was perfect.

But not to Washington.

“He felt he should be playing in front of Elmore,” Harrington said. “Elmore had just turned down an offer to turn professional. It was the craziest thing I ever heard.”

When Washington said he was going back home to play at Old Dominion, it was basically, goodby, good luck and here’s your hat.

“He just came in and told the coaches he was transferring back home,” Harrington said. “He just wouldn’t work into the system. He wanted it all right away.”