GOPHERASAURAS : Minnesota’s Clem Haskins Does It Old-Fashioned Way, and First Trip to Final Four Won’t Change Him

Days before everybody else, with an almost valedictory mood, Clem Haskins raced here with his Minnesota Golden Gophers, as if it was one of the last things he’d ever do.

And maybe, in terms of basketball, it is.

Maybe, hunkered down in an airport hotel with his team to escape the jubilance back in Minneapolis, these are some of the last days of the dinosaur.

Haskins isn’t an old man, not at 53, even if he is 1 1/2 years, and about 20 pounds, removed from a major heart attack.

But at a time when players, television commentators, administrators and alumni want their coaches under 50, flippant and savagely political, he is a self-professed blue-collar curmudgeon not exactly made for the neon age.

He is coaching on borrowed time, he says so himself.

“My father was the inspiration of my life, and he taught me the values of hard work and being fair,” Haskins said this week. “My dad had a third-grade education and supported 11 kids on $3,500 a year.

“So, I don’t believe in earrings, in baggy shorts, those things. Yes, I have some guys who wear tattoos, earrings behind my back. I don’t allow those things.

“I guess my days are behind me. That’s probably why in just a few more years, I’ll be forced out of coaching.”

Haskins talks like a man who is so sure of himself, there’s no need for pauses between his words. Or his actions.

“I’m not a high-profile guy, one of those coaches they talk about all of the time on TV, with the funny one-liners and the wisecracks,” Haskins said. “I’m not one of those guys with a halo around his head and always listed as one of the top, top guys. That’s not me.

“And for a while, I was bitter about that, I admit that. I thought I should be mentioned with the rest of those guys, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t.

“But I understand now. I understand who I am and I’m at peace with that and I know that I’ve done a hell of a job for the University of Minnesota. And if I don’t get mentioned with all of those high-profile guys, I don’t care anymore.”

At different times in his coaching career, stung by criticism during some of Minnesota’s mediocre seasons or angry that last season’s team was the first Big Ten team with a winning conference record to be spurned by the NCAA tournament, Haskins has sounded bitter or frustrated.

But these days, coaching a team that dominated the Big Ten, has won 31 games and ended the regular season ranked No. 2, he sounds wistful.

“I have strong beliefs, very strong beliefs, and that’s what’s gotten me into trouble,” Haskins said. “My philosophies have gotten me into trouble throughout the years, but that’s fine, I’ll take it, because I will not waver from what I stand for or what I say or do in order to please anybody else.

“So I get into trouble, and some people don’t like me. So I guess that means I can’t run for president of the United States, and you know what, I don’t want to run for president of the United States.

“I get people mad. That’s OK, because I won’t change.”

Things have changed, however, for the man who went from a six-year coaching stint at Western Kentucky, his alma mater, to Minnesota, to become the state’s first major black coach, and proceeded to lose 37 games in his first two seasons.

Now, with his school’s first Final Four berth in his hands, and staring at a national championship with two more victories, Haskins has been hinting heavily that his long and eventful trek through this sport could be coming to a close.

“When you win a national championship,” he has said as the goal loomed ever closer before him, “what else is there?”

Earlier this month, he told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that if the Gophers won the championship, he’d be “50-50” whether to come back to Minneapolis or head for his beloved 500-acre cattle farm outside Campbellsville, Ky.

In 1961, Haskins was the first black student at Taylor County High in Campbellsville--where school officials refused to let him in the doors until police intervened--and wasn’t recruited by Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky.

Haskins plays down the fact that, at his coaching apex, his team is playing Kentucky, the symbol of basketball power and elitism during his youth, in Saturday’s national semifinal game, saying that time has passed and the wounds have healed.

“I think 30 or 40 years ago, it might have meant a great deal more to me,” Haskins said this week. “I’ve matured, gone through a lot since then.”

But that doesn’t mean he has forgotten the experience.

“Everything that Jackie Robinson experienced integrating major league baseball, I experienced at a different time away from the spotlight,” Haskins once told a reporter.

Haskins went on to star at Western Kentucky, was the third overall pick (by the Chicago Bulls) of the 1967 NBA draft, one pick behind Earl Monroe and two ahead of Walt Frazier.

With the Bulls, Haskins developed a close friendship with fellow guard Jerry Sloan, now with the Utah Jazz, another occasionally ornery coach who preaches work-ethic basketball.

With the Gophers, a program that was scandal-plagued and in disarray when he took over in 1986, Haskins has assembled a 13-headed reflection of himself, and his favorite saying: Put some me in you.

On this team, the star, guard Bobby Jackson, swears there are no stars; the second-best scorer, Sam Jacobson, sits for long minutes at a time watching Quincy Lewis slice to the hoop, and the frontcourt players wham and slam in the middle as often as they can.

Then they all go to church on Sunday morning, because if they didn’t, Haskins wouldn’t want them around.

“Oh, he’s a father figure to me, definitely,” said Jackson, who grew up in Salisbury, N.C., without a father. “He’s made me a better man by pushing as hard as he has.

“He’s opened his home to everybody in this program, and he’s said from the beginning that school comes before everything else. What’s so great about Coach Haskins is that basketball is not the most important thing.”

Haskins treats the team as family--and has added to that atmosphere by bringing his son, Brent, onto the staff as an aide, and, during the early rounds of the tournament, had his daughter, Clemette, the head coach of the women’s team at the University of Dayton, sit on the bench and participate in strategy sessions.

“She had earrings on,” grudgingly acknowledged Haskins, the man who, as an assistant to Lenny Wilkens, got several Dream Team III players to remove their jewelry for team photos during last summer’s Olympics. “Well, I guess that’s OK. But my son, he better never even think about that.”

One hundred ninety-seven victories at Minnesota, 301 overall, and no jewelry.

Haskins has had very talented players at Minnesota--Willie Burton led the Gophers to a 1990 Elite Eight run and was an NBA lottery pick, and Voshon Lenard was a shooting star in recent times.

But bring up mega-egos and entourages of some of the top recruits of the last few years, and he shakes his head.

“That’s why I don’t get many blue-chip guys,” Haskins said. “I don’t want those things. My guys go to church on Sunday mornings. I believe in that. I have to be very selective in the guys I recruit because every kid doesn’t see it like that.

“I don’t recruit the high-profile guys--oh, maybe one or two--but I really don’t want those players. And that’s maybe not good if you want to win.

“But those blue-chip guys, they come in with their earrings and their gold jewelry and they think they’re already NBA players because they can dunk and they can make a jump shot--occasionally.

“What I tell them is if you’re thinking you’re only going to be here for two years, don’t bother coming here. I don’t want you for two years. You come here, you’re staying for four years. That’s the way it is.”

FINAL FOUR SATURDAY’S GAMES

North Carolina (28-6) vs. Arizona (23-9), 2:42 p.m.

Minnesota (31-3) vs. Kentucky (34-4), 35 minutes after first game

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Gopher Ball in NCAA Tournament

How Minnesota (12-6) and its coaches have fared in the NCAA Tournament:

* BILL MUSSELMAN (1-1): 1972--lost to Florida State, 70-56; beat Marquette, 77-72.

* JIM DUTCHER (1-1): 1982--beat Tennessee Chattanooga, 62-61; lost to Louisville, 67-61.

* CLEM HASKINS (10-4): 1989--beat Kansas State, 86-75; beat Siena, 80-67; lost to Duke, 87-70; 1990--beat Texas El Paso, 64-61, OT; beat Northern Iowa, 81-78; beat Syracuse, 82-75; lost to Georgia Tech, 93-91; 1994--beat Southern Illinois, 74-60; lost to Louisville, 60-55; 1995--lost to St. Louis, 64-61, OT; 1997--beat Southwest Texas State, 78-46; beat Temple, 76-57; beat Clemson, 90-84, 2 OT; beat UCLA, 80-72.