Harrick Isn’t Ready to Rest Yet : UCLA: Coach isn’t satisfied with reaching Final Four. He wants Bruins to win it all.

In a thoughtful interlude between the surviving and advancing and screaming and celebrating, Jim Harrick spoke serenely and acted like the national coach of the year.

He was, as of Sunday, according to the coaches and media members who do the Naismith voting and verified officially by the shiny slab of wood he held in his hands and unofficially by a 17-game winning streak that shows little sign of quick termination.

Before this season, his seventh at UCLA, Harrick, who hasn’t lost a game since Jan. 28, had never been a Final Four coach, never won his conference’s coach of the year award, never come close in a national tally.

“A lot of things are coming at once,” Harrick said Sunday, a day after his UCLA Bruins earned a berth in the Final Four--the school’s 15th, but first since 1980.

“I hope that we aren’t satisfied with what we’ve achieved. We set goals for our team in the early part of the year, (and) we’ve achieved almost every one of them. We still would like to go to Seattle and finish the play.”

In the Kingdome on Saturday, UCLA will meet East Regional champion Oklahoma State, Sunday’s upset winner over the region’s second-seeded team, Massachusetts.

Earlier this year, Harrick took his team on an unscheduled tour of the Kingdome to give the players a picture of the final goal.

And a week ago, after the Bruins barely survived a tussle with Missouri in the tournament’s second round, Harrick lashed into seniors Tyus Edney and Ed O’Bannon and demanded that the team wake up and smell its national championship chance.

“You don’t have opportunities like this very often,” Harrick said. “If we had not won this weekend, you’ve got to go home and live another year, maybe another two years, or three years, before you get that opportunity again.

“Three years ago we were there in a Final Eight game (losing to Indiana) and didn’t get out of it. And I don’t want that chance to go by.”

After blowing past Mississippi State and Connecticut in the next two rounds, even with the Kingdome a reality, the pushing will continue, Harrick said.

“I know what attitude we’re going to have: We’re going up there to win,” Harrick said. “Going on the road to win two. And I don’t think our players would want it any other way. They’d look at me like I was a lunatic if I said, ‘Hey, you enjoy this.’

“We can have fun later in life. I’ve had a lot of fun. We’re going up there to play hard and play well.”

But Harrick, who Saturday called getting to the Final Four “a pinnacle” of his career, did not try to deny that he already felt a deep sense of personal fulfillment.

“It has something to do with driving to Los Angeles and not knowing anyone,” said Harrick, who grew up in West Virginia, “spending four years as a junior high teacher while you got your high school teaching credential and master’s degree at the same time; spending five years as a JV coach, teaching five classes of English; being the JV basketball coach and the JV baseball coach; teaching driver’s training on Thursday and Saturday.

“Working 19 years before you make $25,000, Taking a $12,000 cut in pay going from high school to Utah State. Those are the kinds of things . . . that make it very special.”

Harrick says he has attended every Final Four as a spectator--and as a National Assn. of Basketball Coaches conventioneer--for more than 20 years, going to the parties and dinners with his wife, Sally.

And sitting in the stands during the open practice sessions on Friday, hoping and wondering.

“I remember one time we were out with Mike and Mickie Krzyzewski, and Mickie said to Sally, ‘Oh, I wish we wouldn’t go this year, I would like to just go and enjoy the convention.’ Sally and I looked at each other said, ‘Holy mackerel,’ ” Harrick said.

“It’s going to be a different experience. We’re not staying anywhere near downtown. We’re out by the airport. We’re really not going to get into the hullabaloo, the fan jam and wild lobbies or anything.

“It’s something I’ve always looked forward to.”

One person who Harrick says probably won’t be joining the festivities is John Wooden, a one-man symbol of UCLA tradition and excellence. Wooden has rarely attended a Final Four since his wife, Nell, died in 1985.

“He and his wife . . . . went 35 straight years, and the last time they went was in Seattle,” said Harrick, who spoke to Wooden Saturday night. “And he said he’d think about it, but probably wouldn’t go.

“And I’ll be my resilient self and keep trying, be relentless and be relentless until he’ll finally raise his voice above a whisper and say, ‘No.’

“It’d certainly be a wish of mine that he’d go with us, but I’d certainly understand if he chooses not to.”

Harrick, who often booms his voice in media conferences, said those words in a near whisper Sunday, sounding very much like the man who, less than an hour after victory Saturday, was asked if he now feels that he has moved into a higher level of renown and respect--not nearly as high as Wooden, but, at the least, closer.

“Maybe there’s a secret club I don’t know about,” Harrick said quietly. “Maybe I’m in it now.”

Bruin Note

Forward Ed O’Bannon was not one of five finalists for the Naismith Player of the Year award despite his impressive season. Joe Smith of Maryland and Rebecca Lobo of Connecticut won the awards, given by The Atlanta Tipoff Club.