College Basketball / Robyn Norwood : McQuarn Is Building New Career

George McQuarn’s career as a basketball coach had its beginnings when he was a student at UCLA, a baseball player who pressed roommate Walt Hazzard for details of John Wooden’s practices.

He coached for 16 years, going 123-8 in four seasons at Verbum Dei High School in Los Angeles, working as an assistant to Jerry Tarkanian at Nevada Las Vegas for four, and running his own program at Cal State Fullerton for eight.

It was a career that came to an abrupt halt the morning of Nov. 3 last year, when McQuarn cleaned out his office at Fullerton, broke the news to his assistants, his athletic director and his team, and left the campus, he says now, a happy man.

Unlike the time in 1986 when McQuarn announced his resignation effective at the end of the season and then retracted it a month later, there was no turning back. He resigned, and he walked away. And he did it the way he always told his friends he would--without a word.

He instructed associates to cite only personal reasons, and refused all interviews.

Now, three months later, McQuarn, 47, is working for Athena Builders, the Carson contracting company he owns with Juritta Brown, a longtime friend whom McQuarn married this month in Las Vegas.

And, finally, he agreed to talk.

“I’m doing well,” McQuarn said. “I’m just fine, happy as I can be. . . . Fullerton is behind me. Coaching is something that’s in my past.”

Once known for drill-sergeant intensity and being the architect of the Titans’ “We play hard,” noses-to-their-sternums defense, McQuarn now spends his days traveling from site to site, overseeing construction work, trying to get the carpenters to give 110%.

“I’m managing, but sort of coaching,” McQuarn said. “I’m serious. I go out on the job site and make sure things are getting done right. There’s a guy who comes out to inspect--he’s like an official. He gets nasty with me and I get nasty with him. Only thing is, he can’t give me a technical.”

Although he says the decisive moment occurred suddenly the night before he resigned, McQuarn says now--and others back his statement--that he told assistants John Sneed and Donny Daniels before the season that this would be his last. His passion for coaching was gone, McQuarn said.

But the catalyst was a meeting that Jewel Plummer Cobb, the university president, held with Fullerton coaches to discuss recently implemented guidelines regarding academics and fund-raising. Those were issues that found McQuarn lacking. He had been criticized for having a disdain for fund-raising, and for the fact that only three players he brought to Fullerton in eight years had earned degrees.

At the meeting, McQuarn listened as Cobb talked about new requirements that tied contract renewal to the achievement of fund-raising goals and athletes’ academic success. He remembers what he thought: “This may be really tough.”

“ ‘Maybe the party’s over, and it’s time to go home,’ ” McQuarn said he thought that night.

“See, I don’t have a problem with that. Go home on your own terms. Don’t wait till 2 o’clock, when they say the party’s over. Leave at about 11.”

McQuarn was home by midnight, pride intact.

And although there might have been pressure on McQuarn after the season, clearly none was being exerted just a month before it began.

Fullerton quickly named Sneed, McQuarn’s top assistant, as acting coach for the season. Sneed took over a team that included no returning starters from last season’s 12-17 team.

The Titans, once figured to win only five or 10 games, have won 13--including an upset of Nevada Las Vegas. And now Sneed and other coaches are trying to win permanently the job McQuarn abandoned.

“When you’re a coach, you love coaching,” McQuarn said. “John’s a coach. That’s his passion. That’s something a person has to go through, has to experience for themselves.”

On the occasion of Sean Elliott’s Pacific 10 career-scoring record, set with a 35-point performance against UCLA last week, the Arizona Daily Star duly noted the achievement--with an eight-page special section on Elliott, local boy made good.

It was thorough, to say the least.

Among the Elliott lore the section recalled:

--An August day in 1979 when Elliott won a national softball-throwing contest for 10- and 11-year olds.

--Elliott’s impression of French cuisine when he played international basketball: “I’m not usually too picky about what I eat, but in France it got pretty rough.”

Bob Schermerhorn, the Arizona State assistant who was named acting coach after the resignation of Steve Patterson, has been a busy man.

In addition to coaching the Sun Devils, he is eyeing several moves for next season.

He has applied for openings at Chapman College, a Division II school in Orange, and at Cal State Fullerton.

And, oh yes, at Arizona State.

“Everybody’s talking about how Arizona State needs a big-name coach,” he said on a Phoenix radio talk show recently. “Well, I’m a big name. My last name’s got 12 letters in it.”

UC Santa Barbara, once 11-0, may be in danger of missing the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament unless the Gauchos win the Big West Conference tournament.

Santa Barbara, now 18-6, has won only seven games since Jan. 10--and four of the victories were over San Jose State and Pacific, which have won only two conference games between them.

College Basketball Notes

With the speculation on NCAA tournament bids and pairings heating up, the NCAA this week clarified a policy that prohibits teams from playing on their home courts, as some teams have in the past. But the policy--which defines home court as the site of at least half of a team’s games--will not prevent Indiana from playing in the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, North Carolina from appearing at Greensboro, or Georgia Tech from going to the Omni in Atlanta. Those three sites as well as Boise, Ida.; Dayton, Ohio; Dallas; Nashville, Tenn., and Providence, R.I., will have regional tournament games beginning March 16.