Picking Through the Ruins : Harrick Expects Young Bruins to Grow Through Their Pains

With tired eyes and the Bruin traveling party groggily assembling for departure all around him, Jim Harrick delivered an impromptu hotel-lobby eulogy Friday morning.

Then UCLA climbed on a bus and left town, completing its first-round fall from national-championship grace.

“In one respect, I was very, very happy for him, I really was,” Harrick said only nine hours after retiring Princeton Coach Pete Carril had scripted the Tigers’ 43-41 victory over UCLA in the NCAA Southeast Regional on Thursday.

“I’ve had my day in the sun. To see that happen to a guy like that is really rewarding.

“But I’m sorry it had to happen to us. And it shouldn’t have. It’s ridiculous [that] it happened.”

Ridiculous? Not really.

After the Bruins’ fumbling, two-defeat performance to open the season in Maui, the second-half meltdown at Kansas, the loss to Louisville in Pauley Pavilion, their near-collapse at Oregon State, the 19-point drubbing at Duke . . . after all that, was scoring no points in the last 6:13 and turning the ball over 16 times against Princeton really that shocking?

After a season of ballhandling problems and erratic outside shooting, should the stricken looks on the Bruins’ faces when the Tigers’ tricky matchup zone took away UCLA’s inside game have been that stunning?

Not after the ragged regular season, when UCLA kept striving for balance and consistency--and kept proving that its mainstay juniors and sophomores hadn’t grown up.

And wouldn’t grow up, not this season at least.

“I think any time you see things that continually happen over and over in the season, they are magnified by 10 in the tournament,” Harrick said. “This was a great growing year for us. Now, if we learn from our growing pains, then we’ll be much better next year. And I expect us to.”

Cautious, meticulous, non-scholarship Princeton was simply the worst kind of opponent for UCLA’s reckless ways.

But even if Charles O’Bannon had made one of his late layups or Cameron Dollar had made a free throw or Toby Bailey’s jumper had sent the game into overtime and the Bruins had won, the tournament end could have come from any disciplined team that forced UCLA to shoot jump shots, stalled the fastbreak and made the Bruins sweat.

“They looked shaken all night,” Princeton guard Sydney Johnson said. “When we went ahead of them, they didn’t know what to think. Last night, they didn’t have the heart of a champion that led them there last year.”

They got by on the fly through most of this season--with sheer talent, conditioning and late-game flurries--but Thursday night, presented with many of the same questions that stumped them all year, the Bruins flunked the final.

The Bruins won the Pacific 10 Conference title by three games, but were 1-5, including Thursday’s loss, against nonconference tournament-qualified teams. Maybe the NCAA selection committee was right in discounting the conference title in its seedings.

UCLA Athletic Director Peter Dalis said that after last season’s title run, he told Harrick that the coming year would be Harrick’s toughest.

“I just thought the expectations were going to be extremely high, a very young team, and that it was going to be difficult to manage,” Dalis said. “And I think it was.

“I didn’t think there was enough leadership, experienced leadership. We have great athletes and great quality kids, but the leadership means so much.”

So, for a team that all along quietly assumed that this was a transition year building toward a big-time run in 1996-97, what does a first-round flameout mean?

For one, Harrick will have to fend off the critics once again, which is familiar territory.

In Harrick’s absence Friday afternoon, Mississippi State Coach Richard Williams, who might be the next coach humbled after today’s second-round game against Princeton, criticized a reporter who repeated a question Harrick had faced the night before--was he outcoached by Carril?

“Are you the one who asked that question? I’ll tell you what; [Harrick] handled it a lot better than I would have,” Williams snapped. “I probably would have gone out there and choked that guy. That was the stupidest question I ever heard.”

Harrick and others have pointed to Ed O’Bannon’s furious reaction at halftime when UCLA was well on its way to a first-round loss to Tulsa in 1994 as the beginning of the Bruins’ march to a title the next season.

But Harrick said Friday he noticed no such turning points before, during or after the Princeton loss.

“I think there are areas we’ve certainly got to get better in; I think a lot of it is mental,” Harrick said. “Being immature about things is something I will address in the off-season. But young guys will grow up, grow and mature, and just the patience of waiting for them to do that is real hard.

“It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you just don’t have it year in and year out. You’d like it to be a continuous thing, but the tournament humbles you. Really, athletics humbles you. As long as you’re in the game, it’s going to happen to you again, probably.”

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Getting Planted

In Jim Harrick’s eight trips to the NCAA tournament with UCLA, the Bruins have defeated a higher-seeded team twice. Here are the seedings for UCLA and the teams it has played under Harrick.

1989--Southeast Regional, No. 7 UCLA defeated No. 10 Iowa State, 84-74, and lost to No. 2 North Carolina, 88-81.

1990--East Regional, No. 7 UCLA defeated No. 10 Alabama Birmingham, 68-56, and No. 2 Kansas, 71-70. Lost to No. 3 Duke, 90-81.

1991--East Regional, No. 4 UCLA lost to No. 13 Penn State, 74-69.

1992--West Regional, No. 1 UCLA defeated No. 16 Robert Morris, 73-53, No. 8 Louisville, 85-69, and No. 12 New Mexico State, 85-78. Lost to No. 2 Indiana, 106-79.

1993--West Regional, No. 9 UCLA defeated No. 8 Iowa State, 81-70. Lost to No. 1 Michigan, 86-84, in overtime.

1994--Midwest Regional, No. 5 UCLA lost to No. 12 Tulsa, 112-102.

1995--West Regional No. 1 UCLA defeated No. 16 Florida International, 92-56, No. 8 Missouri, 75-74, No. 5 Mississippi State, 86-67, No. 2 Connecticut, 102-96. National semifinals, UCLA defeated Oklahoma State, No. 4 in East, 74-61. National championship, UCLA beat Arkansas, No. 2 in Midwest, 89-78.

1996--Southeast Regional, No. 4 UCLA lost to No. 13 Princeton, 43-41.