Hawking Answered Questions

So many reasons for Cal State Fullerton to be proud, so many questions for the Titans to ask.

Saturday’s 65-56 loss to Utah State in the semifinals of the Big West men’s basketball tournament brought an end to the season and a start to the guessing game.

What, if any, sanctions will come from an NCAA investigation of the basketball program?

And, in a matter that the school has direct control over, what is the fate of Coach Bob Hawking?

His contract expires March 30 and the administration doesn’t seem to be in a rush to cement his status.

“We still have time,” said Fullerton President Milton Gordon, who deferred most of the decision-making responsibilities to Athletic Director John Easterbrook. “It’ll be made in time.”

Just in case, I hope Hawking is renting, and keeping a copy of the classified section nearby.

But if Easterbrook was leaning toward firing Hawking, the task got harder this weekend.

First the Titans beat Boise State in the first round of the Big West tournament Friday. Then they put in a respectable showing Saturday against West Division No. 1-seeded Utah State, erasing a 14-point deficit before faltering down the stretch.

There isn’t much a coach can do when his team shoots 37%, as Fullerton did. And the Titans actually did a pretty good job of executing their plan to keep Utah State star Marcus Saxon from driving to the hoop; he just managed to hit 12 of his 15 shots, including five of six three-pointers, to finish with 31 points. He couldn’t have been attacking the basket too much, because he only took three free throws in 33 minutes.

As is always the case--even in the self-important world of college basketball coaches, who often think the sport and the universities revolve around them--it comes down to the players.

“I don’t know if we have--I guess we do have a lot to do with it,” Fullerton guard Chris St. Clair said. (Although he tied for team-high honors with 13 points Saturday, his seven turnovers had a lot to do with Fullerton’s defeat.)

“But it never came down to ‘This weekend’s going to be the determination,’ ” St. Clair said. “We never talked about it like that.”

Their play this weekend made a pretty good case for Hawking, and St. Clair was even more definitive in his statements afterward.

“I think the man’s awesome,” St. Clair said. “He works harder than anyone in the business. I’d put my life on that. He’s got a lot of things going against him.”

You try recruiting players when your home court is a dimly lit rec room, you are in the shadows of UCLA and Pac-10 teams such as Arizona consistently plunder the Southland’s talent.

Hard as it is to believe, Hawking’s four years of service make him the longest-tenured Division I coach in the greater Los Angeles area.

The main thing anyone wants to see is progress, and the program is in a better state than when Hawking took over a team that went 8-19 in the second year of Brad Holland’s brief tenure.

This year’s 12-16 record (6-11 in the Big West) doesn’t match last season’s 13-14 and 6-10, but it isn’t a huge step backward. And the school did win its first conference tournament game since 1990.

Then again, sometimes a coach can bring a program to a certain level, but it requires someone else to take it to the next level. Worth noting: the Titans lost five conference games by three points or fewer, including every loss in a 1-3 start to the Big West season.

“I think our slump didn’t have much to do with the coaching, the strategy, as much as it did with the individual players,” St. Clair said.

The team won three of its last five regular-season games to clinch the No. 2 seeding in the West Division.

“It says a lot about our team right now, how we finished the year,” St. Clair said.

When he reflects on this season, he said, “I’ll remember this weekend and the character of this team.”

Hawking better hope the administration thinks the same way.

Asked if this weekend’s games were enough to push his job-defense campaign over the top, Hawking said, “I would hope not, because I’m the same coach today I was five weeks ago. I’m no different. And that’s the funny thing we do in this world of college athletics: When you win you’re a genius, when you lose you’re a dunce.”

The subject of intelligence was a recurring theme in Hawking’s comments Saturday.

“Five, six weeks ago, I don’t think anybody with an IQ over 60 would think that we would make it to the Big West tournament,” he said. “We were dumb enough to think that we could.”

Now, will Fullerton be dumb enough to keep Hawking?