Is It Just a No-Win Position? : Raveling Can’t Let USC Record Speak for Itself

The first question you want to ask George Raveling, USC’s basketball coach, is, “How do you keep your job?”

Since replacing Stan Morrison in 1986, just a year after Morrison’s team had shared the Pacific 10 title with Washington, Raveling has finished in last place for two consecutive seasons and is headed there again this season.

“USC is one of the biggest mysteries in college basketball,” said Dick Vitale, ABC and ESPN commentator. “I thought that job would be Lock City by now for George. But it’s been Heartbreak Hotel for him.”

No kidding.

The Trojans are awful again this season. Before Saturday’s 84-81 overtime victory at Arizona State, they had lost 13 consecutive games and were winless in 12 conference games.

“As soon as you start losing, that’s the first thing people say, ‘Well, Raveling can’t coach,’ ” Raveling said. “This thing about Raveling can’t coach is a damn joke. I’ve never fashioned myself as being a John Thompson (Georgetown basketball coach) or a Bobby Knight (Indiana coach), but I don’t think I’m the worst coach in the world either.

“The thing I find interesting is that no one has looked at this team and been willing to suggest that maybe Raveling is doing a hell of a coaching job. Maybe Raveling’s getting as much out of his team as he can possibly get out of them.”

One of college basketball’s first black coaches, Raveling thinks the knocks on his coaching may be racially motivated.

“One of the things I grapple with is if there’s a touch of racism in it,” Raveling said. “If a white coach gets fired it’s, ‘He couldn’t relate to the players,’ or ‘He let the program go.’ But it’s never that he couldn’t coach.

“The other thing I find interesting is that every black coach in L.A. so far has had the rap that he couldn’t coach. Look at Walt Hazzard (former UCLA coach). The funny thing about Hazzard was that he took them to the NIT and NCAA and was coach of the year and all of a suddenly he can’t coach.”

Can Raveling coach?

“George is a coaches’ coach,” said Digger Phelps, Notre Dame coach. “That’s why he helped Bobby Knight with the ’84 Olympic team and John Thompson with the ’88 Olympic team.

“If you’re looking for negatives, you’re talking to the wrong guy because George and I have been friends for 23 years. George is one of the class guys in this business, who’s done nothing but good for college basketball. If you just leave him alone, he’ll get the job done.”

Although Raveling’s record in 2 1/2 seasons at USC is 24-57 going into tonight’s game against Stanford, USC officials apparently are confident that Raveling can rebuild the woeful program.

“We are totally supportive of George,” Mike McGee, USC athletic director said. “He’s building a base for a consistent winner.”

Besides, retaining Raveling is fiscally prudent for USC, which recently has paid off the contracts of Ted Tollner, the former football coach, and Morrison.

Raveling, who has two years left on his contract, reportedly earns $200,000 a year, which includes income he would have received from a TV show, if he had one.

Many college coaches empathize with Raveling but Pete Newell, former Cal coach, figures USC got itself in trouble.

“Why fire Morrison?” he asked. “They win one championship in 27 years and then they fire the coach when he’s just recruited his finest class. He didn’t win it with mirrors.

“I think SC has made some bad decisions and they’re paying for them.”

Mostly, though, Raveling gets nothing but support from the coaching community.

“George is well respected among people who know the game and doesn’t have an ax to grind,” Georgetown’s Thompson said.

“I know I wouldn’t want him coaching against me in the Big East. He has a knowledge for the game and a feel for the game. And he has a good feel for people. George is very capable.”

If USC is patient, Thompson said, Raveling can succeed.

“If the people there don’t put any extreme amount of pressure on him, you’re going to find out that there aren’t a lot of people around with the total package he has. But if they get impatient, who are they going to get who’s going to do the job better?”

USC’s talent is among the worst in the Pac-10. Scouts and coaches say they have just two players who are good enough to be starting for other teams, junior guard Anthony Pendleton and senior forward Chris Moore.

“George has got a really young team,” Washington Coach Andy Russo said. “You wouldn’t expect a high school coach to win with talent like that.”

Said Ralph Miller, Oregon State’s veteran coach: “There was no talent left when he took over at USC. You need at least three to five years to get the job done, but I don’t know a lot of people who have very much patience in L.A.

“I think George will get the job done, but in coaching there are only two grades, A and F.”

If that’s so, Raveling probably rates an F for his recruiting at USC.

Despite his reputation as a strong recruiter, Raveling has brought in no shining stars.

Junior center Chris Munk, who chose USC over Stanford, has been inconsistent. So has sophomore point guard Duane Cooper.

“To be frank with you, we have made mistakes in judgment,” Raveling said. “But I don’t think that’s anything new. I don’t think there are coaches who haven’t made mistakes in judgment.”

There are many who think Raveling made his most serious mistake in judgment shortly after he arrived at USC.

He revoked the scholarships of three talented freshmen--Bo Kimble, Hank Gathers and Tom Lewis. Kimble and Gathers transferred to Loyola Marymount and Lewis went to Pepperdine. All three have flourished.

Raveling has refused comment on that matter, saying he would be vindicated when the full story was disclosed.

Some information surfaced in December, when the Pac-10 reprimanded USC because two players, later identified as Gathers and Kimble, had received free airplane tickets, meals and long-distance telephone calls in 1985-86 from Pete Priamos, a friend of Morrison, who has denied any knowledge of the violations.

“If we had kept those guys we’d now be on probation,” one USC official said. “I don’t think we bent over backward to keep them.”

Said Raveling: “We’d be in the top 20 if we had those kids. But sometimes leaders have to make decisions that are not always popular. Sometimes you have to take a step back to take a step forward.”

Raveling might have taken some steps forward last fall, when he signed Harold Miner, a 6-foot-5 guard from Inglewood High who chose USC over Notre Dame, and 6-8 forwards Sean Zone of Houston and Keith Greeley of Riverside. Cordell Robinson, a 6-5 guard from Detroit who was academically ineligible this season, also becomes eligible next season.

Ever optimistic, Raveling thinks that the future for USC basketball is bright. “The reality is that McGee hired a construction worker, not a miracle worker,” Raveling said. “I just hope they’re patient with me. My first two years at Washington State were an exact duplicate of this.”

George Raveling had a premonition of doom as he was answering a summons from his boss.

Raveling had floundered in his first job as a head coach, finishing in last place or tied for last in his first three seasons at Washington State.

“I thought I was going to be fired,” Raveling said.

He was wrong.

“George, I really like the job you’re doing and I’m giving you a raise and extending your contract,” Ray Nagel, then Washington State’s athletic director, said.

Raveling responded by devoting himself to his job. A workaholic, Raveling rejuvenated the Cougar basketball program by working 16 hours a day.

He was constantly on the go, recruiting players to come to tiny Pullman, Wash.

“What he did at Pullman amazes me,” Phelps said. “He made that program competitive.”

Washington State made the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament in 1980 for the first time in 39 years.

During Raveling’s final eight seasons there, the Cougars had the third-best record in the Pacific 10, behind UCLA and Oregon State.

As Washington State’s reputation grew, so did Raveling’s.

He wrote a newspaper column that was carried throughout the state, authored two basketball books and made a videotape. He became a fixture at clinics.

But the cost was high. Raveling worked himself out of a marriage.

He also outgrew Washington State, leaving for Iowa, where, again, he got off to a slow start.

In Raveling’s first season at Iowa City, the Hawkeyes were 13-15 and he was severely criticized.

Raveling hit the recruiting road again and brought back B. J. Armstrong, Roy Marble and Ed Horton, extraordinary high school players.

The Hawkeyes won 20 or more games in each of the next two seasons and made the NCAA playoffs. Raveling became the toast of Iowa, beating out the governor in a poll of the state’s most popular figures.

As George Raveling entered the restaurant, the patrons rose as one to applaud the Iowa basketball coach.

Raveling’s dinner was interrupted 20 times by autograph seekers.

“My grandson would kill me if I told him I saw you and didn’t get your autograph,” said a woman as she thrust a scrap of paper in front of him.

As coach of the Hawkeyes from 1983-86, Raveling was under a microscope.

Said Arizona Coach Lute Olson, Raveling’s predecessor at Iowa: “The best thing about Iowa is the fan support, and the worst thing about Iowa is the fan support.”

To avoid fans, Raveling did his grocery shopping at 2 a.m. After losses, he locked himself in his house.

“It was kind of like I had to be two people to make it work,” Raveling said. “I was totally happy with my vocation in life. We had great facilities. We had (an unlimited) budget. Every game was on TV. If I sat down and wrote a script for what kind of job I wanted, I couldn’t have come up with a better job than Iowa.

“But I just didn’t enjoy life outside my work and I didn’t want my job to consume me. There was just nothing for me to do as a black man in a state that has less than 1% black population. There was just nothing for me to do socially.”

So, Raveling left for USC.

“I gambled my whole coaching career on coming to USC,” he said. “I had a sure thing at Iowa and I left. But the people who have historically achieved the unusual are people who are risk takers.”

Did he make a mistake?

“I’m sorry that he ever left Iowa,” said Jerome Nadine, a Catholic priest who befriended Raveling in junior high school in Pennsylvania. “I think he made the biggest mistake of his life.

“I argued with him, but he said, ‘Father, I want to live. I want to enjoy what I’m doing.’

“He probably would have had a perennial top-10 team had he stayed at Iowa, but he risked that for quality of life. People have to remember that he didn’t have the quality of life you had growing up.”

George Raveling lives the American dream. He has a dream house in Ladera Heights, an upper middle-class black enclave.

He is surrounded by the trappings of success. A new Jaguar, for which he paid cash, is on the driveway. And there’s a Mercedes in the garage.

Raveling, 52, appears to have it made.

But he didn’t always have it so easy.

When Raveling was 9, and growing up in Washington, D.C., his father died.

A year later, his mother had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric hospital.

“I remember going to visit her and she didn’t even know who I was,” Raveling recalled. “She was twisting her fingers and rolling her eyes around.”

Raveling was sent to a Catholic orphanage near Scranton, Pa., by his aunt and grandmother, his only remaining adult relatives. He had no visitors while he was there, friends recall.

An angry youngster with no direction, Raveling struggled to find himself at St. Michael’s School for Boys, where he completed grade school and went through high school.

Some of his teachers thought he would never make anything of his life.

“ ‘George Raveling, you’re never going to amount to anything,’ ” Raveling said a nun once told him.

Raveling, however, blossomed athletically. He starred on the basketball team and earned a scholarship to Villanova, where he was the first black to captain the basketball team.

“When I graduated from Villanova I sent (the nun) an invitation to my graduation to show her that I’d made it,” he said.

Raveling’s early adversity has helped prepare him for the problems he faces at USC.

“I’m already further along in life that I ever thought I’d be,” Raveling said.

“If I took a yellow legal pad and drew a line down the center, with good and bad, the only thing on the bad side would be that we’re not winning.”