COLLEGE BASKETBALL : NCAA ISSUES AND THE MEN’S, WOMEN’S TOURNAMENTS : No Love Is Lost by Them : NCAA women: Her brashness, gender-equity issue leave USC’s Miller with few friends among coaching peers.

They are getting closer and closer--Tara VanDerveer, the Stanford coach, and Cheryl Miller, the USC coach.

Look out. Rumors of bad vibes between these two.

It’s Jan. 30, 1994, and USC has beaten Stanford, 81-73. The final horn has sounded and the coaches are striding toward one another for the traditional postgame whatever.

Will they shake hands? How about a little hug? A smile?

They’re only steps apart now. . . . And it’s a . . .

Well, it’s sort of a handshake. No smiles. No eye contact. No exchange of words.

Each keeps right on walking, right by the other.

*

As a player, she was a spectator’s delight. From 1980 through 1984 at USC and the ’84 Olympic team, she was the closest thing to Magic Johnson women’s basketball has ever had.

But for opposing coaches and players, Cheryl Miller wasn’t so delightful.

She talked, she strutted, she show-boated, she laughed. Most annoying of all, she almost always won.

A decade later, not much has changed. As a rookie coach, she has seen as many cold shoulders as she has felt pats on the back for a Pacific 10 championship and a 22-3 season that continues into the NCAA tournament.

In a first-round NCAA playoff game, her team plays Portland at the Sports Arena tonight at 7:30.

As a coach, she still exhibits the old Miller style. There are great leaps off the bench, wild gestures at her players and short, blunt conversations with officials that . . . well, they will never put a lapel mike on this coach.

Brash? Cocky? Arrogant?

All of the above.

Prime example: On Feb. 24, USC was blown out of the building at Stanford, 80-50.

Moments later, she walked into the media room and said that her team would not lose again, in effect predicting that her Trojans would win the national championship.

Reporters looked at each other, wondering if they’d heard her right. Not even Bob Knight would say that.

Claims that resentment of Miller is linked to her style as a player are probably overstated. It has been 10 years.

Instead, Miller finds herself a continuing focal point of the gender equity suit former USC Coach Marianne Stanley filed against the university after refusing to sign a contract extension last summer. USC then allowed Stanley’s contract to expire, and eventually replaced her with Miller.

“A lot of people were disappointed in Cheryl, that she did that,” VanDerveer said earlier this season. “But of course, someone was going to take that job.

“It said a lot about how USC perceives women’s basketball, not only by what they did to Marianne, but also that they’d give the job to someone with so little coaching experience.”

Was she saying Miller was unqualified to be a head coach?

“Yes,” said VanDerveer, who hired Stanley to be the Cardinal’s part-time marketing director.

Rene Portland, coach of fourth-ranked Penn State, agreed.

“Tara’s on the right track,” Portland said.

“My guess is USC went down a long list before they got to Cheryl. I hope Cheryl understands this has nothing to do with her as a person, that there would be (criticism) of anyone who fell into that position.

“Women’s coaches are stuck on the gender pay-equity issue, and how SC handled the whole thing.”

In reporting on the Miller-Stanley-USC imbroglio recently, an article in the Women’s Basketball Coaches Assn.’s magazine quoted Portland:

“USC has now threatened the future of the game by firing a previous national championship coach, and replacing her with someone with no college coaching experience.”

Threatened the future of the game? No coaching experience?

Miller was a part-time USC assistant coach from 1987 to 1991. She was a full time TV basketball announcer after that.

As for coaches who weren’t previously head coaches, who wasn’t?

UCLA promoted assistant Kathy Olivier to its head coaching job last year. She had never been a head coach, either, but no one has accused her of threatening the game’s future.

So is Miller something special?

Yes, according to Washington Coach Chris Gobrecht.

“A lot of people (in coaching) see this as threatening, but (Miller) isn’t just another former player,” she said.

“Cheryl is special, one of the greatest players ever. And that’s her school. It’s a unique situation. Everyone should calm down.”

As for Miller, she knows a cold shoulder when she sees one and she has heard the whispers. If she’s troubled, she doesn’t show it.

“No one has come up to me and said anything to my face,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s all just a bunch of mumbling behind my back.

“For anyone to believe I’ve betrayed women’s basketball . . . that’s a bunch of BS. I’ve dedicated my life to this game.

“I really believe a lot of the criticism stems from when I was a player. I knew I was good, and I talked the talk and I walked the walk. But I don’t think I ever did it in an arrogant way--I wasn’t a selfish player.”

Miller was asked if she knew of any coaches out there who actually liked her.

“Well, I think Kathy (Olivier) likes me (Miller and Olivier were once on the same USC staff), and Leon Barmore at Louisiana Tech likes me,” she said.

“Leon was the only coach who sent me a congratulations card when I got the job. Now, if any coach should bear animosity toward me, it should be him. We beat him for the national championship one year.”

Said Barmore: “It’s beyond me why people resent Cheryl.

“To resent her because she got that job without much coaching experience, that’s a bunch of crock. Cheryl Miller had a basketball in her hands before she could spit. She was a great choice for USC.

“Those who’re criticizing her, she shouldn’t worry about those people.

“Sure, when she was a player she rubbed you the wrong way. In 1982, we’d won back-to-back national championships and were 30-1 and going for three in a row.

“But she beat us. She was cocky and she kind of rubbed me the wrong way at the time. But looking back on it, it was simply a great performance. Did I hate her at the time? Yeah, maybe I did--at the time.”

Of Miller’s prediction that her team would win the national championship, Barmore said, “I personally wouldn’t have said that. But if she is going to say stuff like that, she’d better lace up her boots and get it done.”

Asked to assess Miller’s coaching style, her part-time assistant, Frank Scott, gives her high marks.

“After one of her locker room speeches I told her, ‘Cheryl, you missed your calling--you should’ve been a preacher.’

“It doesn’t always work, though. She gave one of her best speeches before the Oregon State game (last Sunday).

“She told them they’d been through a lot, gone over a lot of roadblocks, and that she was happy to have had the opportunity to lead them, that no one in the country can beat them. The volume kept going up.

“Then they went out and played lousy.

“She’s very spontaneous as a coach, but she’s also patient. The players know they have a free rein, that they won’t get yanked for a single mistake.

“She was frustrated at first. I think part of her wondered why her players couldn’t do the things she could, because she was such a great player. She’s still a great player, and she shows them every time she gets in there and mixes it up.”