Fuller Too Focused to Look Over His Shoulder : College basketball: New SDSU coach, undaunted by the speculation that surrounded the Aztec job, simply wants to make good on the chance of a lifetime.

The man who will be San Diego State’s next basketball coach was in a position unfamiliar to those who follow the Aztecs.

He was five hours from an NCAA tournament appearance.

Tony Fuller walked through the hotel lobby Friday afternoon, after another unsuccessful attempt at a nap, past the blue and gold balloons and by the blue and gold crepe paper.

The world was at his feet and the well-wishers were at his hands.

They slapped skin, hugged him, teased him, wished him well. Parents of UCLA players. Fans. Boosters. UCLA administrators.

Hours before UCLA would play Robert Morris, Bruin boosters were seeing Fuller for the first time since Wednesday, when he got the SDSU job.

“D-1 coach,” somebody said, offering a hand. “ Whew! “

As the No. 1 seed in the West prepared for another run at the NCAA tournament, UCLA harbored no bitterness toward an assistant coach bailing out before the opening game. And there were few questions as to why he will coach UCLA games but not practices.

Not from fans, and certainly not from UCLA Coach Jim Harrick. It’s as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

But there is one nagging question in San Diego.

Why is Tony Fuller not Jerry Tarkanian?

It’s odd. Tarkanian has never worked a game from the SDSU bench and yet, in an almost surreal way, thanks to a month of speculation and rumors, it’s almost as if Tark is the guy whom Fuller is replacing.

“It’s kind of funny,” said Fuller, 33. “I’m sure a lot of people wanted him because they know he would do a fantastic job. He’s done a fantastic job everywhere he’s gone. He’s a great coach. I respect him as a coach and for what he has done with his players.”

But.

“My main focus is the job at hand,” Fuller said. “Why that connection was not made, I don’t know. I just know the guy I met, (SDSU Athletic Director) Dr. Fred Miller, and I discussed what he wanted for this program.

“We discussed it at length. I told him what I could do. A decision was made, and that is my only focus at this point.”

Besides, Fuller’s task pales compares to what a cousin once faced. Filling in for a legend? The way you do the things you do?

Meet his cousin.

It was 1968, and Fuller was 10, growing up in East Detroit, when his cousin, Dennis Edwards, replaced David Ruffin as the lead singer for The Temptations.

“Growing up in Detroit, with Motown in the 1960s, you just can’t put into words what that meant to us,” Fuller said. “Everyone on the street corners was singing. . . .

“And Dennis would come driving by in his white Corvette convertible, and all the kids would come out screaming and hollering. I think back to those days. . . . Those were good times. Those were good times.”

But Fuller has been thinking about those days for a different reason lately.

“I was thinking, if Dennis could step in and take David Ruffin’s place in 1968 and take them to the heights they had in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. . . .” he said, without mentioning Tarkanian. “He would tell me that he would always wonder how the public would accept him, replacing a legend, and he would be afraid at times.

“But the other members of the group would tell him, “Don’t worry, just go out and sing.’ That’s what he did.

“If he could maintain his focus with the world watching, I should be able to maintain mine.”

Just go out and sing.

Fuller lived through it again in 1988, when he moved from Pepperdine to UCLA as Harrick’s assistant.

Not only was John Wooden’s shadow still covering Pauley Pavilion; the Bruins interviewed then-North Carolina State Coach Jim Valvano before hiring Harrick.

“That was 10 times worse than this thing in San Diego,” Fuller said. “Even today, we’re the No. 1 seed in the West, 25-4, ranked in the top 10 all season long, and (Harrick) still goes through the same thing. . . .

“I learned that my experience here at UCLA is invaluable, because I don’t feel intimidated at all. When I first came here April 12, 1988, (UCLA Athletic Director) Pete Dalis stood at the press conference and said that it was the most difficult basketball coaching job in the country. And it is.

“Now, four years later, after being in that environment and seeing what I’ve been a part of and having the opportunity to move on, I know it will be a smooth transition.”

It would be smoother if he could sleep. Since Tuesday, it’s been nearly the same every night: He drifts off, dreams of something he has to do and then wakes right back up.

Or the phone rings.

Friends call because they have a player they think Fuller should take at SDSU. Or they call because they want to congratulate him. Or because they want his old job. Or because they want a job on his new staff.

Wednesday night after he was named as SDSU’s new coach, his fiancee, Kim Flowers, said Fuller’s home phone rang until 3 a.m.

“I told him, ‘Let the machine get it,’ but he’d still answer it,” Flowers said.

There is so much to do. Being involved with an NCAA tournament favorite is enveloping enough at this time of year, but Fuller is juggling that and starting his first head coaching job at any level.

“He’s certainly ready,” Harrick said. “He’s got the whole package--coaching, recruiting, dealing with the media, community relations, graduating players, fund raising, speaking to boosters.

“All those things can jump up and hurt your career if you’re not good at them.”

Fuller has been particularly adept at recruiting, serving as UCLA’s recruiting coordinator all four years under Harrick. He was heavily involved in bringing Tracy Murray, Ed O’Bannon and Tyus Edney, among others, to UCLA.

But he’s also said to be a good teacher and a strong motivator.

“He’s real knowledgeable about the game,” UCLA star forward Don MacLean said. “I really think the players down there will like working with him. It seemed to me watching San Diego State that they were not disciplined. I think he will get them disciplined.”

Said UCLA guard Mitchell Butler: “I was working a basketball camp one year and he came out to talk to the kids. He had the kids so fired up you would have thought they were playing for some kind of championship.

“And they were only 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds.”

Fuller is already on the recruiting trail, hoping to bring in a mix of community college and high school players. He also needs to hire one more full-time assistant and one part-time assistant, which he hopes to do after the Final Four.

And once next season arrives, he does not think his lack of head coaching experience will hinder him.

“You have to understand, basketball is a very simple game,” said Fuller, who received a master’s degree in education from Pepperdine in 1989. “It’s the most over-coached and under-taught game there is. I consider myself a fine teacher.

“When I look around and watch the NCAA tournament and see guys I’ve grown up with and played with, or against. . . . I don’t think there’s any magic formula. I’ve prepared myself a long time for this. If I didn’t think I was ready, I wouldn’t have accepted the job.”

But he did, and now there’s a move to plan, a new city to befriend and an opportunity to confront.

“Everything I’ve gotten in life has been because of basketball,” he said.

His education. His livelihood. Friends.

His fiancee.

Flowers was working an Eastern Airlines ticket counter in Detroit, and Fuller was recruiting Chris Webber. Flowers and Fuller chatted, he got her phone number, they talked, and one thing led to another.

You win some, you lose some. He got Flowers, but not Webber, who now attends the University of Michigan.

“Sometimes I get scared thinking there is some kind of omen guiding my life,” Fuller said.

Fuller and Flowers were supposed to be married May 1, but that is on hold for now because of the SDSU job. They hope to do it later in the summer.

“We haven’t even had a chance to discuss the wedding,” Flowers said.

That will come, step by correct step, exactly as most everything else has for Fuller. He played on a state championship team at St. Martin DePorres High in Detroit, then went on to play for Vincennes (Ind.) Community College and Pepperdine, before spending part of the 1980-81 season with the Detroit Pistons and another 1 1/2 years with Anchorage in the Continental Basketball Assn.

He worked at former Piston Dave Bing’s basketball camps during high school and college summers. He found he enjoyed working with kids, and his desire to coach intensified.

“From that point on, I started studying coaches and players,” Fuller said. “How they substitute, offensive strategy, defensive strategy. I started watching what happened and asking myself, ‘Why did that happen? Why did they choose to do that?’ ”

Yes, basketball has been a nice fit. How many players are drafted by their hometown team? Fuller’s entire family was there for his Pistons’ debut.

How many players return to their alma mater to start work on a master’s degree, get a job as a graduate assistant basketball coach and then work all the way up the ladder? Fuller was a graduate assistant, a part-time assistant and then a full-time assistant in 10 years at Pepperdine and UCLA.

Professionally, at least, maybe the most important person in his life has been Harrick.

“Coming from Detroit, I didn’t have a whole lot of positive male role models,” said Fuller, who lived with his mother after his parents were divorced. “I really didn’t know how to present myself; I didn’t understand the importance of presenting myself in a positive way.

“He taught me to be nice to people, speak to people, write thank you notes, say ‘hello,’ ‘please,’ and ‘thank you.’ He taught me to be more outgoing.”

At his introductory SDSU news conference, he thanked Harrick--along with each of the other coaches he has had throughout his lifetime.

About the only person he failed to thank was his mother, but there was a reason. He was afraid he would become too emotional.

Fuller got the assistant’s job at UCLA in April, 1988--and his mother, Sallie, was found to have lung cancer the next month.

“The first time I saw her after I got the job, they were wheeling her in to get her lung taken out,” Fuller said.

She died in February, 1989.

“It was downhill all the way,” he said. “She was suffering the whole nine yards.”

Now, the boy has become the man.

Dennis Edwards is older now, living in Los Angeles and still singing. In October, Fuller went to a concert at The Strand in Redondo Beach featuring Edwards and Eddie Kendricks, another former Temptations lead singer.

“We were just standing there talking,” Fuller said. “I’m standing there with The Temptations. . . . I see what he meant to me and how proud I was to say my cousin sang with The Temptations.

“Twenty years later, I’m a grown man, he’s singing his old records and saying, ‘Yeah, my cousin is the basketball coach at UCLA.’ ”

And now, a Division I basketball coach at SDSU.

Like Harrick, Fuller is a product of the Wooden system. He believes in conditioning, fundamentals and team play.

“Basically, we’re starting from scratch,” Fuller said. “I want to make sure we build a strong foundation. We’ve got to have good kids, good people, good basketball players and good students. Because you want guys to graduate.

“That’s what’s important to me personally, and that’s what’s important to the people there. If we won every game and nobody graduated, I couldn’t look myself in the mirror.”

Those who know him say Fuller will go out of his way to help others.

“We were talking about me working this summer,” UCLA’s O’Bannon said. “He said he’s going to try to set me up with a nice paying job, but not just for money. A job where the experience I was going to get would help me out after playing basketball.

“He’s cool. He’s a unique guy. I think the San Diego players will become close with him.”

Those who know him also say he is adaptable to all kinds of people and situations, which should help him deal with San Diegans who may have had Tarkanian on their minds.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Harrick said. “The button-guy (SDSU President Tom Day) never had (Tarkanian) on his mind.

“Tony Fuller understands the mission of a university and what it stands for. He’s going to run a program that graduates players; that never has a question about any rule of the NCAA; the players will not socially be in trouble; there will be high moral values. . . . He will run a system based on great integrity.

“How much he will win, I can’t answer that. But he understands the mission of a university.”

After their current tournament drive, Harrick and Fuller probably will be hooking up again. UCLA is not on SDSU’s schedule next year, but the two might play soon.

“I wouldn’t mind playing them in the future,” Harrick said. “I’d like to open their arena in about three years. That’s what I’d like to do.”

Both Fuller and Harrick said they don’t foresee any conflict of interest between Fuller’s UCLA and SDSU obligations. Harrick said he isn’t worried about Fuller stealing any recruits because the Bruins plan to bring in only one more player.

Said Fuller: “Coach Harrick always told me and his staff to have two recruiting lists--one for UCLA and another in case you get another job.”

Fuller has followed that advice. And when asked if there were even one or two guys Fuller would attempt to take from UCLA, he said, “No way. No.”

He promises to remain ethical. He swears he will graduate players. In 10 years with Harrick, he has been a part of nine winning seasons. Those are what he intends to deliver to SDSU. Those are what he and Aztec officials discussed.

What he and Miller didn’t discuss was Tarkanian.

“Never,” Fuller said. “I never asked him about it.”

Maybe all the guy is owed in return is a fair chance.