This Snake Ran Himself Right Out of Town

Jim Harrick’s bizarre flip-flop last week--first he’s going to Georgia, then he’s not, then he is--understandably left many in Rhode Island a little miffed.

“In the end,” Jim Donaldson of the Providence Journal wrote of the former UCLA basketball coach, “Harrick wound up slithering out of town. . . .

“Two-faced to the very end, he wouldn’t face his team; wouldn’t come in person to tell [Athletic Director Ron] Petro, who had given him a chance to coach when nobody else would, that he was turning his back on URI for the second time in 24 hours; wouldn’t explain to Ram rooters why he had toyed with their emotions and trivialized their loyalty. . . .

“Now he’s gone, and the prevailing feeling is good riddance, rather than goodbye.”

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Trivia time: Who has finished second the most times without winning the Masters?

What was your first clue? Cedric W. Dempsey, executive director of the NCAA, which estimates that $4.5 billion was bet, legally and illegally, on this year’s NCAA basketball tournament: “We are told there is much more money spent on gambling [on college campuses] than there is on alcohol--and we know that’s a lot.”

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Speaking of gambling: Meteorologist Bob Segreti, a sergeant stationed at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Okla., correctly picked every game from the regional semifinals through the title game of the NCAA tournament to take first place ahead of some 600,000 challengers in three major pools: the Sporting News’ Beat The Bracket, CNN-SI’s Hoops Bracket Challenge and ESPN’s Tournament Challenge.

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Said Segreti: “The guys I work with were kidding me about not being able to do this well with the weather.”

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On the hot seat: Boston’s top-rated radio sports-talk show runs a promotional spot where a woman tells Celtic Coach Rick Pitino, “Dr. Kervorkian can see you now.”

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He’s got a point: Larry Guest in the Orlando Sentinel, on Shaquille O’Neal’s claim that if the officials called every foul against him he would average 60 points a night: “More accurately, it only would mean he misses 60 free throws a night.”

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Coach K wasn’t available: Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News, on what’s gone wrong with the Denver Nuggets: “Well, we can start with Nick Van Exel. . . .

“The Lakers discarded Nick the Quick and eventually hired Dennis the Sick. What does that tell you? . . . The best thing he has done for the Nuggets was to help recruit [Antonio] McDyess. But if the Nuggets wanted to build around a recruiter, they should have hired Mike Krzyzewski.”

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Trivia answer: Tom Weiskopf, who finished second four times.

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And finally: Rhode Island President Bob Carothers, speculating on why Harrick left for Georgia, told the Providence Journal: “I truly believe that UCLA sticks in his craw. That he can’t get over what happened to him there. That, yes, he had made some mistakes, but they weren’t hanging offenses. And he wants to win big, and prove to them that they made a mistake.”