Fuller Era Dawns for the Aztecs : College basketball: UCLA aide introduced as San Diego State basketball coach. Harrick Jr. to return as assistant.

Under the shadow of the man with the highest winning percentage in NCAA history, UCLA assistant Tony Fuller was introduced Wednesday as San Diego State’s new basketball coach.

With Jerry Tarkanian signing books less than 30 minutes away from the SDSU campus, Fuller went from working under Jim Harrick Sr. to working over Jim Harrick Jr.

Fuller, 33, who has no previous head coaching experience, will keep Harrick Jr. as his top assistant and name the rest of his staff--another full-time assistant and one part-time assistant--later.

“I’d like to thank (SDSU Athletic Director Fred) Miller for going out on the limb and hiring a guy like myself,” Fuller said. “It takes guts. That’s the kind of guy I want to work with.”

Fuller gave up a May 1 wedding date--the ceremony has been postponed--but is not giving up the NCAA tournament. Miller and Harrick Sr. agreed Tuesday night that Fuller will recruit for SDSU and continue to coach UCLA in the tournament. The Bruins open West Regional play Friday against Robert Morris in Tempe, Ariz.

Fuller, who will not attend UCLA practices during the tournament, said he will join the Bruins in Tempe either tonight or Friday morning.

“Coach Harrick and I talked about that extensively (Tuesday) night,” Fuller said. “He wanted me to stay on the bench because we have some things that we do, some responsibilities. We feed off one another during the game. He feels comfortable with me there, so I’ll be there during the games and in practice preparations for the games by phone.”

Miller said Fuller was given a three-year contract, with SDSU officials having an option after two years, if they are happy, to extend the pact by a year. Fuller’s base salary is in the high $60,000s, according to a source, with extras such as television and radio bumping the package up from there. The source said the total package is not worth more than $100,000.

The announcement laid to rest speculation about Tarkanian, whose winning percentage (83.7%) is the highest ever by an NCAA coach. Sources said SDSU President Thomas Day quashed the idea.

When Fuller was asked a question about Tarkanian in the news conference, Miller quickly interrupted.

“Our gears are forward, not in reverse,” Miller said. “We’ll field questions about our future with this gentleman, but I won’t field questions about other individuals who may not have been successful candidates for this job.”

Also, a source said, SDSU offered the job to Pepperdine Coach Tom Asbury last week, only to be rebuffed.

Miller, though, said Fuller was the only name officially recommended to Day.

“I say this with a tremendous amount of pride,” Miller said upon introducing Fuller. “This has been a lengthy search and we wanted to do it very thoroughly. We wanted to make sure we examined all the candidates that we had; we looked at all the pluses and minuses.

“I can assure you right now that the only gear we have is forward. We have no reverse. We’re not looking back. We will make sure we give this very successful gentleman every tool that we can give him.”

This is the first head coaching assignment for Fuller, who has been an assistant for the past 10 seasons under Harrick Sr. at Pepperdine and UCLA. He earned praise from Harrick as a good coach, a talented recruiter and a good people person.

USC Coach George Raveling also offered praise for Fuller.

“He’s a excellent selection,” said Raveling, whose Trojans will again play SDSU next season. “I’m looking forward to competing against him.

“He’s worked hard. I think every coach in the Pac 10 would say he’s one of the finest representatives of the conference that we have. He’s a players-type coach, and I think he’ll do an outstanding job at San Diego State.”

It certainly won’t be easy. Fuller succeeds Jim Brandenburg, who was fired Feb. 11 in the midst of the worst season in school history. The Aztecs were 2-26 and finished the season with a 21-game losing streak--the longest in school history.

They went 0-16 in Western Athletic Conference play, becoming the first WAC team to go winless through a 16-game conference schedule.

They have had seven consecutive losing seasons and have not made an NCAA tournament appearance since 1985.

Fuller, though, is used to participating in the tournament. UCLA went 16-14 in Walt Hazzard’s last season and, since Harrick’s staff took over, has made four consecutive tournament appearances.

“We’re not going to set any goals as far as wins or losses are concerned,” Fuller said. “We’re just going to set standards. We have four standards; I call them the four standards of excellence.

“We’re going to play very hard. We’re going to play together as a team. We’re going to play good, sound, solid defense. And we’re going to rebound.”

Fuller described his offensive philosophy as “one-third of the points coming off of the fast break, one-third off of the set offense and one-third coming off of out-of-bounds plays, steals and what I call scrabble basketball.”

A guard on Harrick’s first Pepperdine team, Fuller went on to play with the Detroit Pistons and Anchorage of the Continental Basketball Assn. before returning to Pepperdine as an assistant for the 1982-83 season.

He received his master’s degree in education from Pepperdine in 1989 and is known as a coach who pushes his players academically, which is something Day has been adamant about.

“I couldn’t ask for a better fit,” Fuller said. “When you talk about getting an opportunity to coach, if I was given a pen and paper and someone were to tell me to write down a situation you would like to be in, I don’t think I could have written it any better than the situation we have here today.”

Part of that, too, stems from the fact that Harrick Jr. will be Fuller’s top assistant. They first met in 1978 when Fuller joined Harrick Sr.’s Pepperdine team and have remained close. Both Fuller and Harrick Jr. termed their relationship as being brotherly.

“I love him to death,” said Harrick Jr., who went 0-7 as the SDSU interim coach this season. “They couldn’t have made a better choice. We’re very close. We have a lot of the same philosophy.”

Harrick, who was a candidate himself for the head job, added that he will be happy as an assistant.

“You want to be ready when you get the head job,” said Harrick, who at 27 was the youngest Division I coach in the nation during his stint as interim coach. “You want all the experiences under your belt. Maybe the situation wasn’t right for me to be a head coach.”

Fuller called a 15-minute team meeting before his introduction as Aztec coach, and players said he was well received.

“He said it was going to be our team, not his team,” SDSU center Joe McNaull said. “He wants our input into team matters. It’s not going to be a dictatorship or a monarchy.

“It’s going to be a team affair. It’s going to be a family.”

Said Courtie Miller, who was recruited by Fuller four years ago: “I’m hopeful some of us can realize some goals we had when we signed here. I think he can help us.”

Miller acknowledged that hiring an assistant who is unproven as a head coach could be dangerous.

“There is a risk when you hire an assistant coach, but for every head coach you hire, like a Bobby Knight or Jerry (Tarkanian), he was at one time an assistant coach. At some point, somebody is going to open the door and step through.”

Wednesday, that man was Fuller, who said he was happy to get the opportunity even if it is wrapped in the melancholy of leaving a top-notch Division I program.

“Along with team goals come personal goals,” Fuller said. “That was a goal of ours as a staff, to build that program in four years. We went out and got some pretty good players. We couldn’t have done anything better this season, to get the No. 1 seed in the West.

“But this has also been a goal, a life-long goal. It will be sad in a way because you build friendships and ties with young men. But everybody leaves, everybody moves on. It’s just a part of life. I can deal with it without looking back, but I can also look back and smile that I was a part of something that was really, really special.”