COLLEGE BASKETBALL / GENE WOJCIECHOWSKI : Worn-Out Coaches Prove This Job Is Not That Easy

It’s getting scary out there.

Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, supposedly Mr. Keep-It-All-In-Perspective, says he’s done for the season because of botched back rehabilitation and basketball-induced exhaustion.

Nevada Las Vegas’ Tim Grgurich, the first-year Rebel coach who flamed out after a couple of months of 20-hour workdays, was treated for a similar case of hoops exhaustion. And although he is back at work on a trial basis, so acute was the condition, that Grgurich’s wife wouldn’t even allow close friend Jerry Tarkanian to get closer than the answering machine.

George Raveling calls it quits at USC, partly because of a near-fatal auto accident and partly because he was tired of the whole coaching rat race, anyway.

Something is bubbling to the surface these days, but it isn’t anything you want to show the kids. When good men such as Krzyzewski, Grgurich and Raveling are reduced to long walks, doctor-prescribed rest periods or resignations, it’s time to admit that college basketball is cartwheeling out of control.

“It just doesn’t seem like there’s anyplace to hide,” said Louisiana State’s Dale Brown, one of 10 active Division I basketball coaches with at least 23 seasons of service at the same school. “If you’re on the bottom, you get fired. I’ve seen seven football coaches get fired at LSU and one of them had a 70% winning record. If you’re on the top, you either quit or burn out. If you’re in the middle, nobody’s happy and you don’t last very long.

“(Look at) Cliff Ellis at Auburn now,” Brown said of the first-year Tiger coach whose team began the week with a surprising 11-5 record. “He’s done such a nice job early, but they’re not going to be satisfied with that. Because now it’s got to get better. Now he’s going to go down. It’s like a roller coaster. We’ve just lost perspective--all of us. This is a game, but it’s turned into much more than that. It is a big, big, big, multi---I used to say million--billion-dollar business that we’re functioning with teen-agers.”

SELF-DESTRUCTING COACHES--PART II

Did you see Sunday’s Georgetown-Villanova game? Villanova Coach Steve Lappas grimaced and pinched his forehead so many times that he looked like the poster boy for cluster migraine research.

And his team won .

Meanwhile, Arizona State’s Bill Frieder looks as if he has been through the tumble-dry cycle by game’s end. Same goes for Princeton’s Pete Carril. And Kentucky’s Rick Pitino.

DePaul’s Joey Meyer was taking sleeping pills a few seasons back. Temple’s John Chaney made a raging beeline for Massachusetts’ John Calipari during a news conference last season. Northwestern’s Ricky Byrdsong embarrassed himself and his program during a 1994 visit to Minnesota.

Indiana’s Bob Knight throws his memorable on-court tantrums. So does Purdue’s Gene Keady. Alabama Birmingham’s Gene Bartow looked as if he was fueled and ready for takeoff during one recent incident with a referee. And California’s Todd Bozeman took a swing at a Northridge security coordinator a few days ago at a game.

The stress. The pressure. The attention. The big-money contracts. The media. The recruiting. It adds up.

“I think coaches have reached the point where they say, ‘I’m not going to tolerate this bull anymore. I’m going to get out of here,’ ” Chaney said.

So they leave. And if they stay, they sometimes start to compromise their ethics.

“As . . . coaches, we’ve got to start to making decisions: What price do we pay for success?” Rhode Island Coach Al Skinner said. “And what price do we want to pay?”

Example: Whom do you recruit first, the player with more talent or the one with more character?

“You got to understand, coaches are being hired and fired and sometimes they have to be willing to sacrifice personality for the sake of winning,” Skinner said. “Years ago, when I played, that was not necessarily the case. But it’s become so important to win that it’s made it hard sometimes to make that value assessment and still be able to retain your job. Sometimes you’re going to have to take chances or otherwise your job could very easily be on the line.”

And there’s the problem, LSU’s Brown said. Win or else.

“The profession has just done an about face,” he said. “It’s marching the other direction in all aspects. We coaches are a little to blame. The fans. The media. The administrators. Just the overall emphasis on greed, the lust for the gold medal. Nothing else means anything.”

THE GREAT KRESKIN

Tarkanian, the former UNLV coach who now does some USC telecasts for Prime Sports and some consulting work for Nike, said he has seen the future and its name is Stephon Marbury.

Marbury, the nation’s No. 1 recruit, is a 6-foot-1 point guard from New York who recently signed with Georgia Tech. The guy hasn’t played a minute of college ball and already the rave reviews are pouring in.

“I’ve never seen a better guard than him,” said Tarkanian, who changed his plans and stayed three extra days during a December tournament just to watch Marbury. “I feel next year he’ll be the best guard in college basketball. I don’t believe there’s a college guard in the country as good as him right now.”

Tarkanian likes him for three reasons: A long-range jump shot to die for, his tough defense and his willingness to pass.

And this from Tarkanian on basketball parity: “I’ve seen some college teams that can’t play with Mater Dei. I’ve gone up to college coaches after games and said, ‘Gawd, you guys are lucky you don’t have Mater Dei on your schedule.”

As for Grgurich, his friend and former UNLV assistant, Tarkanian said he was stunned by the recent turn of events.

“I knew he would go 100 m.p.h. but there aren’t any players who are in better shape than Tim,” he said. “I just thought this was going to be wonderful.”

THE RAZORBACK RISE AND FALL?

Coming soon to a Dick Vitale near you: Arkansas-Is-a-Mere-Swine-Shadow-of-Itself analysis.

Right now, it’s the safe way to go, especially after Alabama went to Fayetteville Tuesday night and beat the preseason consensus No. 1 Razorbacks by 18 points. Sluggish Arkansas (15-4, 4-3) dropped to third place in the Southeastern Conference’s West Division, though the Razorbacks lead the league in tattoos and nose strips.

Kentucky visits Sunday, followed two days later by LSU, the same team that beat Alabama at Tuscaloosa not long ago. You get the idea: The Razorbacks are in trouble.

Or are they?

“At this time last year we were probably in the same predicament,” Coach Nolan Richardson said. “I think our kids are aware of that. We’re aware of it.”

People forget that Arkansas was 17-2 after 19 games last year. This time it is 15-4. Not exactly a free fall.

Our theory: The Razorbacks have been pacing themselves. The SEC title? Arkansas don’t need no stinkin’ SEC title.

“The conference (championship) is not as important anymore,” Richardson said. “We’ve already accomplished that and we’ve got a goal that is so much higher than the conference. We don’t even mention that. We don’t even think about that.”

They might want to think about Kentucky and LSU. It also would be nice if Corliss Williamson quit with the out-of-body experiences and started playing like the “Big Nasty” of yesteryear.

We keep the faith. But it’s getting harder every day.

THE REST

It’s only a guess, but Kansas State Coach Tom Asbury must have some sort of quotability clause in his contract. First, the former Pepperdine coach calls Kansas’ revered Allen Field House “an old dump” and then, in his most recent weekly news conference, blasts Billy Tubbs, the former Oklahoma coach who has since moved on to Texas Christian. Said Asbury: “I don’t want to put a knock on Tubbs, except he’s a jerk, an idiot, a negative recruiter and a real . . . . Other than that he’s not a bad guy.” Yikes. Tubbs, who used to make fun of Manhattan, Kan., site of the Kansas State campus, was uncharacteristically mum about Asbury’s comments. According to TCU officials, Tubbs said he’d let his lawyers handle it.

Don’t expect Duke’s Krzyzewski to be burning up the cellular airwaves with advice to interim Coach Pete Gaudet. It isn’t Krzyzewski’s style and anyway, there’s not much he could do at this point. Unless the NCAA announces that it goofed, that Grant Hill actually has 10 weeks’ of eligibility remaining, the Blue Devils are NIT-bound--the first time since 1982-83 that Duke will miss the NCAA tournament. “We’ve talked to (Krzyzewski),” Gaudet said. “He thought the best way to handle this was to let us go with our own feel for what we wanted to do, instead of thinking, ‘How would Coach K do it?’ ”

Temple’s Chaney said Laker Executive Vice President Jerry West was “hoping desperately” to draft former Owl stars Eddie Jones and Aaron McKie “because they’re yes, sir-no, sir kids.” West has one of them; he got Jones. McKie went to the Portland Trail Blazers. . . . Richardson on the Razorbacks: “I don’t think we’re as great as everybody thinks we are, but let them think that.”

Connecticut has a chance (yeah, about the same as Coach Jim Calhoun developing a Southern accent) of making NCAA history. As the only remaining undefeated program in Division I, the Huskies could become the first team since UNLV did it in 1991 to finish the regular season without a loss. And not since 1976, when Indiana won the NCAA championship and completed a 32-0 season, has a team had a perfect record. Good luck. The Huskies have 11 regular-season games left, six on the road. Of those six, four are potential streak killers: at Kansas on Saturday, at Syracuse Feb. 12, at Georgetown Feb. 14 and at Providence Feb. 27.

LSU was supposed to be thinner than onionskin paper, but that was before redshirt freshman guard Randy Livingston began playing like Magic Jr. He’s averaging 10.6 assists, 15.3 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.9 steals. Now the Tigers (10-5) have a legitimate shot at the tournament. “Last year I kept on saying that the Dallas Cowboys were 0-2 without Emmitt Smith,” Brown said. “With Randy, I really felt we’d be back in the NCAA tournament (after) those seven close games we lost (last season). I think a lot of people might have smirked or laughed at that. But I think the more they see him, I think the more they realize how instrumental he is.”

Top 10

As selected by staff writer Gene Wojciechowski

No. Team Rec. 1. Connecticut 15-0 2. Massachusetts 14-1 3. Kentucky 13-2 4. UCLA 11-1 5. North Carolina 15-1 6. Maryland 15-3 7. Kansas 14-2 8. Arkansas 15-4 9. Arizona 13-4 10. Syracuse 14-2

Waiting list: Iowa State (16-2), Michigan State (13-2), Arizona State (13-4), Virginia (11-5), Wake Forest (11-3).