Pepperdine Is Quick to Name Asbury as Harrick’s Successor

To probably no one’s surprise, Tom Asbury, Jim Harrick’s top assistant for nine years in Pepperdine’s basketball program, was named Pepperdine’s head coach Wednesday, a day after Harrick had been named UCLA’s coach.

Wayne Wright, Pepperdine’s athletic director, said at a Malibu press conference that the administration had acted quickly for the sake of maintaining continuity in the program and because Wednesday was the first day when prospects could sign letters of intent to play college basketball.

Wright also said, however: “We never looked at Tom as an assistant or top assistant but as more of a co-coach.”

Asbury had not signed a contract, but Wright pointed out that Pepperdine has had only four basketball coaches in 50 years and that Asbury, the school’s fifth, will have a chance to “build a sound program for the length of his career.”

As if to emphasize the immediacy of the recruiting process, Asbury, who becomes a head coach in National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Division I basketball for the first time, said that he would be “on the road the minute I finish with the last question here today.” He added that he had already talked with the three high school players who signed with Pepperdine last fall and that they had responded positively.

Asbury also said that he was close to signing a couple of junior college players from Northern California.

Four starters will return from this season’s 17-13 team, including top scorer Tom Lewis, but Asbury said that the graduation of 6-foot 7-inch senior forward Levy Middlebrooks, the West Coast Athletic Conference player of the year, would leave the team with “one big void.”

He said that it is possible that 6-8 Geoff Lear, one of the three who signed with Pepperdine last fall and an All-Southern Section player from La Puente Bishop Amat, might be able to replace Middlebrooks.

“If he’s good enough to earn it, great,” Asbury said. “If not, he will certainly contribute off the bench.”

The other two incoming freshmen are Steve Guild, a 6-6 swing man from Marina High School in Huntington Beach, and Doug Christie, a guard from Seattle who, Asbury said, was the Washington state player of the year.

As for hiring assistants, Asbury said that he had spoken with Paul Provost, a part-time assistant under Harrick, and that he has other people in mind as well.

Asbury, 42, was an All-Western Athletic Conference player at Wyoming. He played one season with the Denver Rockets of the old American Basketball Assn., began coaching high school basketball in Colorado in 1969 and was an assistant at Wyoming before joining Harrick at Pepperdine. He said that he had turned down head coaching offers at other colleges, explaining, “I really wanted to be coach at Pepperdine.”

He said he faces a great challenge to continue having successful teams at Pepperdine but that he expects to have “a tremendous basketball team next year.” He noted that the Waves will play North Carolina, UC Santa Barbara and Connecticut next season and he quipped that Harrick “must have had a premonition” about the schedule before leaving for UCLA.

Asbury was asked if he thought Harrick would schedule games with Pepperdine now that he is at UCLA. “I don’t think he’ll avoid us,” Asbury said. “I wouldn’t look for a game next year, but I would down the road.”