Clark Revitalizes Tulane’s Program : College basketball: After coach pumps life into a team left for dead, Green Wave is undefeated going into tonight’s game at UC Irvine.

Tulane basketball died a dishonorable death after the 1985 season, felled by a swirl of scandal.

It wasn’t until 1989 that a Green Wave team took the court again, this time under the direction of Perry Clark, who confounded plenty of folks by taking a job as coach of the collegiate version of an expansion team.

He started with no players, no uniforms, no offices, no staff.

“We lined up for our first practice,” Clark said, “and realized people forgot to order basketballs.”

Seven games into its third season after being revived, Tulane’s basketball team is undefeated going into tonight’s game against UC Irvine at 7:30 in the Bren Center.

Resurrection is wonder enough. That the corpse looks so healthy is a miracle.

Tulane was 4-24 in 1989-90, then bolted to 15-13 last season. This season, a team anchored by power forward Anthony Reed--a junior who signed in high school to join a team that didn’t yet exist--and sophomore guard Kim Lewis has beaten seven opponents by an average of 19.7 points. The Green Wave is forcing more than 27 turnovers and getting nearly 16 steals per game with an aggressive defense that presses and traps.

Clark didn’t bring a timetable to Tulane, not even a five-year plan.

“I knew I hated losing, and I wasn’t going to be there for four years and still be talking about building,” said Clark, a former Georgia Tech assistant who helped Bobby Cremins build the Yellow Jacket teams that included such players as Mark Price, John Salley and Bruce Dalrymple.

After far exceeding expectations last season, Clark is suddenly wary that now predictions could outpace reality.

“I like what I see so far,” Clark said. “I think we have a chance to be a good basketball team. A season takes different phases, goes through different stages. We’ve done everything I’d like to see us do.”

The Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, perhaps the most authoritative of such publications, chose Tulane as the No. 36 team in the country before the season. Tulane’s nonconference schedule hasn’t been tough enough so far to confirm exactly how good the Green Wave is, but a Jan. 4 game against Louisville should give a good indication.

“We’ve never used it as a crutch, but we’re still a third-year program,” Clark said. “People who look at us as something in the category of Georgia Tech, Seton Hall . . . I’m not that foolish. I think we’re in the next echelon. Against that echelon, we compete very well.”

Morgan Wootten, the famed coach at Maryland’s DeMatha High School in the suburbs of Washington, was Clark’s high school coach, and his first boss. Cremins is another influence, and Clark remembers the time spent taking Georgia Tech’s program from the dregs of the Atlantic Coast Conference to its upper reaches as his own “Camelot.”

But when the Tulane offer came--four years after the program was discontinued because of a point-shaving scandal and allegations of payments to John (Hot Rod) Williams, now of the Cleveland Cavaliers--Clark grabbed it.

“Most people thought I was crazy to take the job, coming from Georgia Tech, working with (Cremins), where we had great players,” he said. “For me, I wanted to prove something to myself, see whether or not I could do it. I thought it was a great challenge. I like challenges. A lot of coaches think they’re pretty good. They think, ‘If given the chance, I could really get the job done.’ I wanted to prove to myself, ‘Clark, I’ll find out how good you are.’ ”

Getting such players as Reed and Lewis, some Georgia Tech transfers along the way--plus newcomers such as forward Matt Greene, a community college transfer, and New Orleans-grown freshman point guard Pointer Williams--make a coach look good.

“I think philosophically, you know you’re not going to win championships your first year,” Clark said. “It’s important to get guys with your type of philosophy, your type of heart.”

And if they win a little early, well, all the better.