‘DOG DAYS

A 62-year-old coach with a national championship ring ought to enjoy the late stages of his career enveloped in a cozy blanket woven of stability, strong recruiting, trusted assistants and loyal fans.

Jim Harrick is wrapped up, all right, but in a patchwork quilt of contradictions, ironies and monumental challenges.

He’s in his second season at Georgia, a struggling program in the rugged Southeastern Conference. The Bulldogs were 10-20 last season and are only marginally better now. A 20-victory season and NCAA tournament run--Harrick staples for two decades--are nowhere in sight.

Lacking is the tradition of UCLA, which Harrick took to the tournament every year from 1989-96, winning the national championship in ’95.

Lacking is the instant gratification of Rhode Island, which Harrick led to the Elite Eight in 1998 and back to the tournament in ’99.

Lacking is even the pressure-free exuberance of building Pepperdine into a winner, which Harrick did in his first college head coaching job.

This is 15-hours-a-day, roll-up-your-sleeves, build-from-the-bottom toil. There are image problems, eligibility problems and game-day clunkers like a humiliating season-opening loss to Georgia State, the rough equivalent of UCLA losing to Cal State Northridge.

Unsure he wanted the job to begin with, Harrick vacillates between relishing the challenge and ruing the circumstances that landed him in this small college town 60 miles east of Atlanta and 10 miles north of the Hard Labor Creek State Penitentiary.

“What I got here is bottom of the barrel, but we’re gonna get there,” he said. “It’s gonna take time. The journey is the fun part of it, seeing if you can turn a program around.

“UCLA had only gone to the tournament twice in seven years before I became coach there. Effectively we were a .500 team. Then from 1989-96 we had one of the top records in America.”

UCLA was Harrick’s cozy blanket and recalling his exit still makes him shiver. He was fired for falsifying an expense report and lying about it to administrators, but he mostly remembers eight years of clashing with Athletic Director Peter Dalis.

“He really is Peter Principle, that’s his name,” Harrick said in his patented exaggerated drawl that plays almost naturally in Georgia.

“Why he disliked me I’ll never know. All I did was work hard for him. The best thing that ever happened to me was getting away from deceitful, devious people.”

In the next breath he wishes aloud that the clock could be turned back five years.

“My family lived in L.A. for 36 years, my wife and I raised three sons there, basically it is our home,” he said. “Most definitely I would have liked to stay at UCLA. I’ll never get over it. The wounds heal but the scars never go away.”

Coaching well is Harrick’s way of proving UCLA wrong. It wasn’t enough to work miracles at Rhode Island. He must do the same at Georgia.

“It’s what wakes him up early in morning and gets his engine started,” said Jim Harrick Jr., an assistant at Loyola in Chicago who was on his father’s staff at Rhode Island. “He’s got an unbelievable burning desire to prove himself.”

No one ever said Jim Harrick couldn’t coach. Proving himself honorable, a person whose character is beyond reproach, has been a challenge since UCLA fired him.

It didn’t help that he double-dribbled the Georgia job offer, accepting it, then rejecting it, then accepting it again in a 24-hour period that happened to be April Fools Day, 1999. Luckily for Harrick, Georgia Athletic Director Vince Dooley was visiting a Civil War battlefield with his grandson and was unable to offer the position to anyone else while Harrick waffled.

And it didn’t help that Harrick tried to fill a pressing need at point guard this season by recruiting troubled Kenny Brunner.

Brunner, a product of Compton Dominguez High, nearly went to UCLA in 1996 but Harrick offered a scholarship to Baron Davis instead. Brunner bolted for Georgetown, left at midseason, landed at Fresno State and in two 1998 incidents was charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, grand theft and making terrorist threats.

All charges eventually were dropped and Brunner played last season at the College of Southern Idaho. Harrick, knowing Brunner could step in and start, cast himself as a modern-day Atticus Finch, coming to the aid of a young man he believes is misunderstood.

“As a teacher, I took a vow to educate all the public’s children,” he said. “I have three sons and I never, ever give up on children.”

The media didn’t buy it. Wrote Mark Bradley in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “[Taking Brunner] is a risky move, but some risks are worth taking, provided you trust the person in charge. Harrick has earned no such trust.”

Not even Georgia President Michael Adams could help, and he and Harrick go way back. Adams was a vice president at Pepperdine when Harrick was the coach in the 1980s. Their wives are friends and Adams played a key role in bringing Harrick to Georgia.

Adams initially supported bringing in Brunner, who has since enrolled at Salem International, a Division II school in West Virginia. But after the outcry, Adams appointed a three-person faculty committee that denied Brunner admission.

It was merely the latest in a string of disappointments for Harrick.

His first task upon taking the job was to convince forward Jumaine Jones, the SEC’s leading scorer in 1998-99, to return to Georgia rather than jump to the NBA. Jones jumped.

Next, touted freshman guard Ezra Williams became ineligible when it was discovered he had failed a state proficiency test required to graduate high school. Williams sat out last season.

A 7-4 start dissolved into a 3-16 finish. Four players left after the season, including starting point guard Moses White, who was ineligible after the spring semester.

Meanwhile, officials at Rhode Island, still seething over Harrick’s abrupt departure, gave evidence to state police that Harrick Jr. falsified expense reports totaling $900.

The summer was no better. D.A. Layne, Georgia’s leading scorer, considered going to the NBA and his eligibility was tenuous. Another recruit, John Toombs, was charged with assault and possession of alcohol one day after learning he did not qualify academically. Harrick bailed him out of an Athens jail.

“Every school goes through the same thing,” Harrick said. “Kids today is what you are dealing with. You lose some battles and you win some.”

Sure enough, victories trickled in.

Layne withdrew from the NBA draft and won an appeal to remain academically eligible. Williams appears to be as talented as advertised, averaging 11.7 points. Harrick signed Larry Turner, a 6-11 center from Milledgeville, Ga., and one of the nation’s top recruits. Georgia won two of three at the Puerto Rico Shootout, including a victory over ranked Utah.

And last week Harrick Jr. was exonerated. Rhode Island prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges, reporting that “unjustifiable reimbursements were knowingly pre-approved for payment by university supervisors.”

The unabashedly emotional Harrick lives and dies with every twist and turn. Getting cozy isn’t part of the equation. Expending the energy of a man half his age is.

“It’s kind of fun to build and it starts with recruiting,” he said. “We will build a mini-fence around this state. Nineteen of the last 22 NCAA champions had Georgia kids on their roster. Cameron Dollar from our UCLA team was from Georgia. There is a plethora of players in this state.”

Eight of nine high school recruits Harrick signed are Georgia products. The other is a point guard from South Carolina. Harrick took a private jet to see him play immediately after practice Friday and returned the same night.

Harrick’s budget is generous, thanks to SEC football and basketball revenue. Georgia takes charter flights to SEC games. Harrick is in the second season of a four-year contract that pays nearly $600,000 a year, double what he earned at Rhode Island.

“Mike Adams and Vince Dooley are very supportive,” he said. “They’ve convinced me they want to spend what it takes to get it done. Georgia made a great commitment to me. In turn, I’m going to make a great commitment to Georgia.”

Support from the Athens community is another matter. Many of the 6,055 fans who showed up Sunday to watch the Bulldogs play Pepperdine were still talking about Georgia’s loss to Georgia Tech a week earlier.

In football.

Pepperdine Coach Jan van Breda Kolff was at SEC rival Vanderbilt from 1993-99 and never found a visit to Georgia intimidating.

“There were only five or six thousand people and it was not a vociferous crowd,” he said. “It’s not as tough a place to play as Kentucky with 20,000 people or Florida with the crowd so loud and close to the court.”

The modest student section called Harrick’s Hounds has not begun to hound Harrick, but the concept of consistently rallying behind the Bulldogs is slow to catch on.

The indomitable coach insists it is just a matter of time.

“If you build it, they will come,” Harrick said, ignoring the fact that in 1983 Georgia went to the Final Four and attendance dropped the next season.

It’s as if Harrick is playing out a Greek tragedy, his binding obligation having led to an inescapable condition. In the face of this inexorable fate, can he reveal an unexpected dimension of grandeur and dignity?

In other words, can he get folks to trust him?

More than another bushel of victories or a tournament berth, that would prove UCLA wrong. It also would validate Georgia’s faith in him.

“It is a blessing from the Lord for me to play for this guy,” Layne said. “I love Coach Harrick. He’s a good guy and he’s very committed to turning Georgia into a winner.”

His players believe. Now for the rest of the world.

Not getting the benefit of the doubt carries a stiff price. A Georgia anti-nepotism law prohibited Harrick from bringing his son along from Rhode Island. However, Bulldog football Coach Jim Donnan found his son, Todd, a position in the Athens Association, a fund-raising organization separate from the university. And, oh, by the way, Todd coaches Bulldog quarterbacks in his spare time.

Harrick, who misses his sons and five grandchildren terribly, observed the situation with interest but made no move to find Harrick Jr. a similar position. He realizes it would never fly because he is Jim Harrick.

“You never know what life has in store,” he said. “I’ve had a marvelous run. This will be my last stop, absolutely. I will retire from here, but that’s a long way off.”

Athens isn’t Westwood, never will be. But Harrick, indefatigable, the eternal snake-oil salesman, appears devoted to making Georgia peachy.

He’s got no choice, really.

“I’m a basketball coach, that’s what I do,” he said. “I love the camps, I love to speak and recruit, teach and coach. I dearly love practice and I love the relationships with the players.

“This can be a wonderful, wonderful job. I hope to leave it 100 times better than I found it.”