Carril? Let’s Not Forget This Pair

No one denies what Coach Pete Carril did for Princeton, to UCLA, for this tournament, for college basketball, for ratings, for mankind.

But the notion that he was the only coach to teach fundamentals got somewhat out of hand.

Let’s take his signature back-door play. Is it not, along with the pick and roll, one of two plays being run every day in coachless playground games across America?

Carril wrung the most out of non-scholarship players of limited ability. But his men were also Ivy Leaguers, smart enough to calculate the odds of beating UCLA with no-look passes and slam dunks.

Carril never had to deal with a point guard who thought he was ready for the NBA after his freshman season, or the stress of an NCAA inquiry.

As Carril rode off into a CBS sunset, the two best tournament coaching jobs were actually being conducted by two men who have won three national championships between them and recruit prep All-Americans every season:

Denny Crum of Louisville and Nolan Richardson of Arkansas.

Getting the Cardinals and Razorbacks to the Sweet 16 this season took minor coaching miracles.

But, of course, it’s all about expectations.

This just in: Louisville and Arkansas are good. Again.

Reached at his office Tuesday, Crum said he had just sent a note of congratulations to Carril on his illustrious career at Princeton.

Few will know how difficult winning was at Louisville this year.

Crum doesn’t need your floral bouquet. He got his pat on the back in 1994, when he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Crum won national titles in 1980 and ’86.

But to a lesser degree, he’s going through what mentor John Wooden experienced when Crum served as a UCLA assistant from 1968 to ’71.

“If you win, it’s because you had the best talent,” Crum said. “They used to say that about Coach Wooden. I used to laugh at them. They’d say, ‘Hell, if I had that talent, I’d win too.’ They’ll never know. Coach Wooden did things with all kinds of teams.”

And so, now, is Crum. He began his 25th season at Louisville thinking he had his seventh Final Four team. Those thoughts ended quickly. Starting forward Eric Johnson suffered a season-ending knee injury in the second game. Likely starters Jason Osborne and Alex Sanders, ruled academically ineligible in September, were denied an appeal to return by mid-December. Center Samaki Walker missed 10 games late in the season as the NCAA investigated his father’s procurement of a car. Walker was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Star guard DeJuan Wheat began the NCAA tournament in a horrendous shooting slump and with an injured shooting hand.

But after an overtime victory over Tulsa and a second-round upset of Villanova, Crum is two mini-miracles removed from another trip to hoop heaven.

Sixth-seeded Louisville faces No. 2 Wake Forest tonight in a Midwest Regional semifinal game at Minneapolis.

“This team has been amazing,” Crum said. “Even I didn’t think it was possible.”

Outsiders are calling this Crum’s finest season on the bench. Crum will only concede it has been his greatest challenge.

“People think all you do is show up and coach the games, but there’s a lot more to it than that,” he said. “This has been a lot of fun for me. This group has worked so hard, overachieved, they’ve played so much better than they have a right to play. It’s fun to work with them because they give you everything they got. What else can you ask for?”

Richardson couldn’t have said it better. After consecutive NCAA title-game appearances, winning the championship in 1994, the Razorbacks appeared in a serious rebuilding mode. Arkansas was one of only seven Division I teams with no returning starters.

Then, in the last week of the regular season, two impact players, Sunday Adebayo and Jesse Pate, were ruled ineligible by the NCAA in a matter involving junior college transcripts, forcing Richardson to start four freshmen and one junior.

Yet, as the 12th-seeded team in the East, Arkansas beat No. 5 Penn State in the first round and No. 4 Marquette in the second.

Tonight, in Atlanta, Arkansas faces No. 1 Massachusetts.

“If they would go over and knock UMass off, it would be scary,” Richardson said. “Right now, our confidence is pretty high. These freshmen don’t know they’re not supposed to be here. Somebody forgot to tell them. It’s like the bumblebee theory. I tell our players the bumblebee is aerodynamically not supposed to fly. He’s got little bitty wings and a great big body. But he can fly. Somebody forgot to tell the bumblebee he’s not supposed to fly. It’s that way with our freshmen; somebody forgot to tell them.”

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Bracket Racket: The initial outrage over UCLA’s seeding in the tournament tore out of Brentwood, scaled the Rockies and whipped across the plains to Lawrence, Kan., where Bob Frederick sat at his desk.

“I was very much aware of it,” Frederick said of the criticism.

As chairman of the Division I men’s basketball committee, Frederick signed off on the unprecedented move to ship Pacific 10 champion UCLA out of the West Region while giving conference runner-up Arizona a higher seeding close to home.

It was, in hindsight, the right call.

UCLA, the fourth-seeded team in the Southeast, lost to Princeton in the first round. Arizona, No. 3 in the West, has qualified for the round of 16.

A day before the loss to Princeton, UCLA Coach Jim Harrick met with Frederick in Indianapolis to vent his displeasure about the seeding process.

Harrick argued that winning the conference title had been totally devalued. Frederick listened intently and suggested Harrick could take the matter to the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches.

Frederick said the selection process is evaluated each spring, but he is convinced the committee made the right decision regarding UCLA.

“Given the way we operate right now, we would do the same thing,” Frederick said.

The UCLA decision was one of many difficult questions the selection team had to face.

So far, the committee is looking good. The top two seeds are still playing in every region except the West, where No. 1 Purdue was a second-round casualty.

The biggest mistake? Giving the Big Ten five invitations after the conference went 1-6 last year, advancing none of its six teams beyond the second round.

The Big Ten flopped again last week, finishing 2-5, with only Purdue and Iowa surviving the first round.

Enough already?

Frederick, leaving the committee this spring after a five-year term, said past performance is not weighed by the selection committee.

“But I’m sure to some extent everybody can’t help but wonder during the course of the year, ‘Is there a reason for this?’ and maybe put that into their mental mix,” he said of the Big Ten’s recent NCAA performances.

Purdue, clearly, did not warrant a top seeding in the West. Frederick’s school, Kansas, should have been the choice.

The best call? Giving 18-12 Arkansas an at-large bid despite the hoots that the Razorbacks were not deserving.

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Go See Cal? Name that enigma: They possessed some of the best young talent in the nation, had a standout freshman in the low post, played in equal stretches of brilliance and funk, were eliminated in the first round and had their coach criticized in the end.

The UCLA Bruins and Jim Harrick?

Well, yes.

But add to that profile the California Golden Bears and Todd Bozeman.

“Everyone talks talent, talent, talent, but if you don’t play as a team, it doesn’t matter,” Bozeman said after his team’s 74-64 opening-round loss to Iowa State in the Midwest Regional. “That’s what I was trying to get across all year.”

It didn’t work. Cal’s loss to Iowa State was not as stupefying as UCLA’s to Princeton, but it was close.

If not the coach, who is to blame for center Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who averages 22.4 points per game, taking only three shots (making none) in the first half against Iowa State?

“We got beat in the first round,” Bozeman said. “But we’re not alone.”

This week, Bozeman got a bit lonelier when sophomore guard Jelani Gardner announced he is transferring to Pepperdine.

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Loose ends: Yes, Harrick, you were outcoached by Carril.

Says who? Says Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino. “Everybody who coaches against that man gets outcoached,” Pitino said of Carril. “That’s a given. It’s nothing to be ashamed about. You just hope you have enough talent to overcome that. We’re all very happy when the announcement comes and Princeton is not in your bracket.”

--This week’s fun fact: Did you know NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue led Georgetown in rebounding from 1959 to ‘61?

--Iowa State’s Tim Floyd is a hot coaching prospect after leading the picked-to-finish-last Cyclones to a 24-9 season. Floyd has been linked to the Chicago Bulls because he is a close friend of General Manager Jerry Krause. If Floyd returns to Ames, he will have all five starters back.

--Utah Coach Rick Majerus actually thought he had a chance of recruiting Kentucky center Mark Pope after he transferred from Washington. “It’s like he had a vision,” said Majerus, whose team faces Kentucky tonight in a Midwest Regional semifinal. “It was like, hey, I’m going to Kentucky. What, are you kidding me? When I die and go to heaven, and get reincarnated, I hope I get recruited by Kentucky. It must be a great experience.”

--The most misunderstood conference? Try the Southeastern, dubbed second-class because Kentucky went 16-0 in league play. Look again. The SEC is 8-0 in tournament play and has four teams--Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi State and Arkansas--in the Sweet 16. “We play in a weak league and I guess we’ve just been getting lucky breaks,” Mississippi State Coach Richard Williams said sarcastically. “Kentucky and the 11 dwarfs.”