COLLEGE BASKETBALL ‘88-89. : THE HARRICK ERA AT UCLA : He’s Only a Few Miles Away, but Worlds Apart

The UCLA basketball coach once had to be restrained by his athletic director from getting into a fistfight with an opposing coach.

Another time, he insulted a veteran coach, suggesting after a 19-point loss that the offense preferred by the older coach had been left over from the stone age.

And at times he grew so angry with officials that his assistants had to physically hold him down on the bench, lest he rage out of control and hinder his team.

Sweet-talking, back-slapping Jim Harrick, he of the honey-dripping West Virginia twang, has a dark side, too.

Contrary to what he often told outsiders, it was not always “ maaahty fiiiine at the ‘diiiiine ,” also known as Pepperdine.

But, other than a similar combativeness and fieriness, Harrick seems to share few traits with his predecessor at UCLA, the deposed and seemingly never-to-be-lamented Walt Hazzard.

Unlike Hazzard, who was fifth in a line of successors to the heretofore irreplaceable John Wooden, Harrick brings to UCLA some Division I coaching experience, having won 167 games and 4 conference championships at Pepperdine, where he took his teams into postseason play 6 times in 9 seasons.

Also unlike Hazzard, Harrick doesn’t regard outsiders, including reporters, as his enemies.

And players seem to want to play for Harrick.

One of the reasons the program deteriorated under Hazzard--UCLA was 16-14 last season and lost to Washington State in the first round of the Pacific 10 Conference tournament--was that Hazzard was unable to keep the local talent from straying out of state.

But last spring, not long after he was hired, Harrick signed Don MacLean, a 6-foot 10-inch forward from Simi Valley High School, and convinced Darrick Martin, a 5-11 1/2 guard from St. Anthony High in Long Beach, that he should honor the letter of intent he signed under Hazzard, which Martin threatened not to do.

Last week, Harrick signed three more highly regarded recruits, among them 6-5 Mitchell Butler of Oakwood School in North Hollywood and 6-7 Zan Mason of Westchester High, each of whom is said to be among the top three prospects on the West Coast this season.

But, like Hazzard, who was brought on board when Larry Farmer unexpectedly resigned in 1984, Harrick was signed almost as an afterthought by the Bruins. UCLA favored, apparently in this order, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, North Carolina State’s Jim Valvano and the elusive Larry Brown, formerly of Kansas by way of UCLA.

Krzyzewski and Valvano both said thanks, but no thanks. Brown, of course, accepted the job, then changed his mind, all in a matter of hours. He eventually landed in the National Basketball Assn. as coach of the San Antonio Spurs.

UCLA turned at last to Harrick. Five months later, the Bruins are confident they hired the right man.

And Harrick makes light of his status as the Bruins’ No. 4 choice: “With a lineup like that, it’s an honor to be batting cleanup.”

Good choice of words.

As UCLA prepares to embark on the Harrick era, which starts Saturday night against Texas Tech at Pauley Pavilion, the new coach has some cleaning up to do.

Actually, catching up may be more like it.

Of the 12 players on the roster, four are walk-ons, a figure that Harrick finds almost unfathomable for a program of UCLA’s stature.

And of the top eight players, as determined by Harrick, two are freshmen, MacLean and Martin, and two others, sophomore guard Kevin Williams and sophomore walk-on forward Keith Owens, played 37 minutes between them last season.

Harrick talks optimistically of using a 7- or 8-player rotation, but admits that, realistically, he may have to rely mostly on his starters, who are expected to eventually include Martin and 6-1 senior Pooh Richardson in the backcourt, MacLean and 6-8 junior Trevor Wilson at forwards and 6-10 junior Kevin Walker at center.

“I’m right in the middle of making that decision,” Harrick said. “I’ll know more in about a week or two.”

Harrick does have two of the conference’s best players in Richardson, UCLA’s all-time assist leader, and Wilson, the Pac-10 rebounding champion and UCLA’s leading scorer last season.

And in Walker he has a good-shooting, hard-working center whom he believes may be ideally suited to be the middle man in his high-post offense.

Beyond that, the Bruins are pretty thin. Williams may start in the backcourt if Martin doesn’t, but the only frontcourt reserves expected to play much are the 6-7 1/2 Owens and 6-7 1/2 senior Charles Rochelin.

Considering the limited pool of talent at his disposal, Harrick still talked at the time of his hiring of annually reaching the round of 16 in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament.

His expectations were lowered for this season, however, with the loss last summer of sophomore guard Gerald Madkins, who is out for the season after suffering multiple pelvic fractures and abdominal injuries in a traffic accident.

With Madkins, Harrick said, the Bruins could have challenged favorites Arizona and Stanford for the conference championship.

Without him, he said, a more realistic goal is making the NCAA tournament, which would probably require at least 20 victories against a schedule that includes 14 of 27 games at Pauley Pavilion.

None of the preseason magazines rank UCLA among the nation’s top 40 teams, but Harrick seems confident that the Bruins may wind up there by the end of the season.

“I’m not apprehensive at all,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a fun team, a good team. I think the players are very hungry.”

If Harrick’s confidence at times seems to border on cockiness, it is because, unlike his four most recent predecessors at UCLA, he has been through all this.

Neither Hazzard, Brown, Farmer nor Gary Cunningham, whom Harrick served as an assistant coach for 2 seasons, had any NCAA Division I head coaching experience at the time he was hired by UCLA.

“Had they given me the job when Gary Cunningham left, I couldn’t have handled it,” said Harrick, who took the job at Pepperdine after Brown was hired to replace Cunningham in 1979. “I wasn’t ready for the job--mentally, physically or emotionally.”

Now, after 9 years in Malibu, he believes that he is ready.

“People have asked me how I know I’m going to do well,” Harrick said. “It’s because I’ve been through so many things, and I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself, and I’ve been successful.”

Away from the limelight at Pepperdine, he made his mistakes, he said, and learned his lessons.

In his first season in Malibu, he almost came to blows with Coach Jack Avina of Portland, whose team, in Harrick’s opinion, was playing too rough.

“I don’t know what he was so excited about,” Avina said later. “The guy is nuts.”

Two years later, Harrick embarrassed himself during a game against Oregon State in the NCAA tournament, losing his poise when Beaver Coach Ralph Miller employed a delay in the second half of Oregon State’s 70-51 victory.

He complained bitterly about the officiating during the game to an NCAA basketball committee member sitting at courtside. Then later he said of Miller, a sexagenarian who will coach his 38th and last season in Division I basketball this year: “I’m sure when he roomed with Dr. Naismith, he learned that this isn’t the way to play basketball.”

Harrick, 50, said of those incidents this week: “Once or twice a year at Pepperdine, it seemed, I embarrassed myself. And every time I did, they called me in and said, ‘You can’t do this.’ It helped mold me and it helped mature me.

“I’ve had a few operations to get my foot out of my mouth.”

All the while, though, he has also showed that he can coach.

Athletic Director Peter Dalis said that Harrick, who was signed to a 4-year contract, came highly recommended to UCLA by coaches Denny Crum of Louisville and Dean Smith of North Carolina.

And Wooden said: “He may be every bit as good a coach as Valvano, Krzyzewski and Larry Brown, but he hasn’t been in the spotlight.”

Pete Newell, the highly regarded former Cal coach, called Harrick an insightful choice by UCLA.

“He has good respect among other coaches because his teams play hard and they play well,” Newell said. “And he has a confidence in his ability to coach that is reflected in his teams--they play with a lot of confidence.”

That didn’t always seem to be the case under Hazzard, which didn’t go unnoticed by the ticket-buying public.

The Bruins’ average home attendance of 7,855 last season was their lowest since they moved into Pauley Pavilion in 1965.

And the Bruins’ national image was badly tarnished. As one fan wrote in a letter to The Times: “Walt Hazzard has brought new meaning to UCLA: Under Current Leadership, Atrophy.”

When Dalis, after being turned down by Krzyzewski, Valvano and Brown, finally called Harrick, he asked the former Pepperdine coach: “How would you like to join me in the toughest coaching job in America?”

Harrick didn’t flinch then, and he hasn’t flinched since.

“I don’t feel any pressure,” he said with a smile. “But that may change by January.”

Not long after he was hired at Pepperdine, Harrick compared his career with that of Jerry West, another West Virginian and Harrick’s high school rival.

“Our careers have paralleled,” Harrick said. “His is a Continental Mark V and mine is a Volkswagen.”

With his move to Westwood, Harrick said he has stepped up in class to a Buick.

A lot of people will be watching to see if he can handle the twists and turns in the road ahead--and avoid the potholes that sent his predecessors to the pits.