COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S FINAL FOUR : Harrick Is Most Unusual : Final Four: UCLA coach is a first-time participant at 56 years old, but none of the schools are without titles.

It’s rare the new kid on the block is 56 years old. UCLA’s Jim Harrick is both.

He is the only first-timer among the coaches in this year’s Final Four, a group that has an average age of almost 57 and a combined 90 seasons of Division I head coaching experience.

Only once (1993) since the tournament went to 64 teams in 1985 has there not been at least one rookie among the Final Four coaches.

It is the fourth Final Four in 57 NCAA tournaments in which all four schools have won at least one national title.

Saturday’s matchups have UCLA, the champion of champions with 10 national titles, against Oklahoma State, the first repeat champion in 1946, and the two most recent winners, North Carolina, one of four schools with at least three titles, and Arkansas, the defending champion.

“From my standpoint, we don’t change anything we do,” Harrick said. “It’s one of the biggest social events in America, but I don’t think the teams are involved in the social part of it.”

Oklahoma State’s Eddie Sutton led Arkansas to the Final Four in 1978 and his current Cowboys come in as a No. 4 seed. Since 1985, only two teams seeded lower than third-- No. 8 Villanova in 1985 and No. 6 Kansas in 1988--have won it all.

“When I went there in 1978, I thought it isn’t that hard,” Sutton said. “But it has been hard to get back to the Final Four. I’m just very thankful that I’ve had an opportunity to come back for a second time.”

This is Nolan Richardson’s second consecutive trip with Arkansas and third overall. The Razorbacks are looking to join the 1992 Blue Devils as the only repeat champions since UCLA’s seven-year title run ended in 1973.

That Arkansas even got this far is impressive. Since the field expanded to 64, only the Duke repeat champions and the 1991 UNLV team, which lost to Duke in the semifinals, have reached the Final Four as defenders.

“Everybody is expecting for us to go undefeated, I suppose, and everybody is expecting for us to win by a large margin,” said Richardson, the first coach to have all starters back from a national champion since UCLA in 1967. “That’s because we have created a monster and now we have to feed that monster. Sometimes you run out of food. So we’ve just got to try to take it one day at a time and try to enjoy this game.”

Only John Wooden, the architect of UCLA’s dynasty, took more teams to a Final Four than did North Carolina’s Dean Smith. This is Smith’s 10th Final Four, two less than Wooden.

A national title would make Smith the fourth coach to win at least three championships. And victories in the semifinals and finals, would give Smith 10 in the Final Four, one more than Adolph Rupp of Kentucky and 11 less than Wooden.

“I know that I feel very fortunate to have been there at any time,” said Smith, at 64 and in his 34th season at North Carolina, the dean of the current Final Four coaches. “It’s not a given, even if you think you’re a good team. Maybe sometimes we weren’t deserving. I don’t know about this year.”

This is only the third Final Four since 1985 not to have at least two schools from the same conference. In 1986, Louisville won over a four-conference field and North Carolina did the same in 1993.

The last three national champions came into the Final Four as No. 1 seeds and UCLA is the only top seed still going this year.