New Wave Cage Coach Lands a Prize Recruit

Tom Asbury, in his first recruiting trip as Pepperdine’s head basketball coach, landed one of the prizes he was after last week: 6-9, 240-pound all-state center David Hariston of Chabot Junior College in Hayward.

Asbury, formerly an assistant coach, was appointed last week to succeed Jim Harrick who was named UCLA’s coach a day earlier. The new coach of the Waves said that the signing of Hariston could mean the end of Pepperdine’s recruiting for next season, though he still has one more scholarship to give.

“We’ve got the nucleus of a fine team with what we’ve got,” he said. But he still would like to sign another player in an effort to fill what he earlier called the team’s “one big void” at forward.

The void was left by senior forward Levy Middlebrooks, who has completed his eligibility. Middlebrooks is the school’s career rebounding leader and was this season’s West Coast Athletic Conference player of the year.

Asbury said that, though he can no longer visit prospects for next season, his recruiting efforts are “not necessarily over. In our business, recruiting is never over completely.”

Hariston, he said, is a “low-post center, big and strong and has good hands. He’ll give Casey Crawford (last year’s starter) a good battle for the center spot.”

This season Hariston, a graduate of Logan High School in Union City, averaged 19.6 points and 10.3 rebounds and shot 64% from the field. He led Chabot to its second straight Golden Gate Conference championship. He was twice named to the all-conference first team.

As for replacing Middlebrooks, Asbury said last week that 6-8 Geoff Lear, one of three high school players who signed with Pepperdine last fall, might be able to do the job. He said that if Lear, an All-Southern Section player from Bishop Amat High in La Puente, is “good enough to earn it, great. If not, he will certainly contribute off the bench.”

Others who signed early letters with Pepperdine are Steve Guild, a 6-6 swing man from Marina High in Huntington Beach, and 6-4 guard Doug Christie from Rainier Beach High in Seattle.

Other returning starters from a team that finished with a 17-13 overall record and an appearance in the National Invitation Tournament are forward Tom Lewis, the team’s top scorer; guard Craig Davis and point guard Marty Wilson.

Wilson, a senior next fall, will be attempting to come back from a severe knee injury that ended his year after 17 games this season. He was redshirted last year because of a back injury.

A thorough review of Santa Monica College’s eligibility practices for athletes is reportedly under way after Dr. Richard Moore, college president, imposed a one-year suspension last week on Anna Biller, athletic director for women and head women’s track coach, for using two ineligible athletes on her track team this season.

Moore suspended Biller, whose team won a state championship last year, from her administrative and “all coaching activities for at least one year,” and the school has forfeited three of the team’s meets. Biller is suspended until at least June, 1989.

Biller will continue in her post as a physical education instructor, and Claudius Shropshire, who coaches men’s track, will assume her coaching duties for the rest of the season, said Jim D’Angelo, dean of health, physical education and recreation. D’Angelo said he has assumed her administrative functions. The two athletes, who D’Angelo declined to name, were declared ineligible for the rest of the season for what a news release said was “unknown prior athletic participation at other universities.”

“In both cases,” the release said, “the women had not satisfactorily completed the required number of units of study since their prior athletic competitions to maintain their athletic eligibility under NCAA rules. If the two athletes had been first-year participants, as thought by Santa Monica College, the units would not have been a factor in determining eligibility.”

The release stated that an athlete’s eligibility is based on signed statements from students. It said that Biller had signed the statements of the two athletes “and had at least some knowledge that the statements were incomplete.”

D’Angelo said this week that Moore’s review will attempt to decide whether “a coach should (also) be an athletic director.” If the president decides that the duties should not be combined, D’Angelo said, it would also affect Ralph Vidal, men’s athletic director, who was appointed head football coach last November after Pat Young gave up coaching football after a long career. Young remained as a physical education instructor.

Following the 1986 track season, Tommie Smith, the 1968 Olympic champion at 200 meters, was suspended for one year as head coach of the SMC men’s track team, also for the use of an ineligible athlete. Smith has remained at the school as a physical education teacher and did not return to coaching last year.

Steve Solomon, a two-time All-Southern Section outfielder-pitcher at Crossroads School, has signed a letter of intent with Stanford, announced Chuck Ice, the school’s head baseball coach and athletic director.

Ice said that Stanford wants Solomon, a 5-11, 175-pounder, for his hitting and to play the outfield. He said that the senior had been recruited by many other colleges, including Illinois, Arizona State, California and UC Santa Barbara.

Solomon missed the first 12 games this season because he fractured a wrist last winter while playing winter ball for a Houston Astros rookie team. He collided with another outfielder in a chase for a fly ball.

Ice said that Solomon, who also pitches, “has a chance to go fairly high in the (major league baseball’s) draft in June, perhaps in the first three rounds.” If so, the coach said, the youngster would have to weigh a major league offer against an education at Stanford.

Crossroads, which won the Southern Section 1-A championship last year, has struggled without Solomon this season, and Bel-Air Prep has been mounting a strong challenge to the Roadrunners in the Delphic League. The first league meeting between the two will be at 7 p.m. Friday at Clover Park in Santa Monica, the home field of Crossroads.

Solomon, who has pitched only briefly since his return, is expected to make his first start Friday against the Bruins. He has no won-loss record but has one save and an earned run average of 2.00. He is batting .241.

Seven high school basketball teams who had much success this season will be honored by the Board of Supervisors at noon May 5 at the County Hall of Administration in Los Angeles.

The teams include the Crenshaw boys, who won their 10th Los Angeles City 4-A championship under Coach Willie West, and Coach Beverlie Pendleton’s Westchester girls, who also won a City 4-A title.

Others are Coach Reggie Morris and his state champion Manual Arts boys, who defeated Crenshaw for a Southern California regional title; the Jordan boys and Coach Roosevelt Wilson, who won the City 3-A championship; the Morningside girls and Coach Frank Scott, who were Southern Section 4-A champions; Coach Van Girard and his Lynwood girls, runners-up to Morningside, and Coach Phillip Chase and his Washington High girls, who finished second in the city to Westchester.