Barmore Had His Eyes on Retiring

A few years ago, when she was the USC women’s basketball coach, Cheryl Miller was describing the composite perfect coach, taking characteristics from every successful coach she could think of.

” . . . And this coach would have Leon Barmore’s glare for the officials,” she said.

“It’s the best there’s ever been. He gets that scowl on his face and his eyes are like laser beams.”

So far, Barmore’s abrupt resignation at Louisiana Tech University last Friday has been the only real shocker of the women’s NCAA tournament.

The day before the tournament began, Barmore, 55, stunned even his closest friends when he announced he would end his 18-season run at the end of the tournament.

“This is a guy I’ve known well since 1962, and I didn’t have a clue,” said Buddy Davis, a Barmore crony who covers his team for the Ruston Daily Leader.

“He dropped his little bomb at the pre-tournament news conference, but I had a hunch something was up when he said to the writers before it started: ‘I hope y’all brought your tape recorders and note pads, I don’t want to repeat myself today.’ ”

Barmore, whose latest juggernaut is 30-2 as it moves on to meet Old Dominion in the Midwest Regional at Kansas City on Saturday, tried to do this once before.

In 1990, after he’d won a national championship, he wanted to switch to the men’s side, where there was a vacancy.

“The Tech president called me in and told me, ‘Nothing doing,’ ” Barmore recalled several years ago.

“He told me he was so happy with what I’d done with the women’s side he wanted me to stay put. The men’s job has opened up since, but I didn’t even bother to apply.”

Barmore had created a monster, one that had to be fed.

His record, 519-76 (.871), is the best in Division I basketball, men or women. In half of his 18 seasons, his teams reached the Final Four. His Venus Lacy-led 1987-88 team won it all.

His sideline demeanor is the most riveting of any coach’s in the women’s game.

Barmore, who favors dark suits or dark blazers, wears the look of a small-town mortician. His expression is that of a bloodhound, but his players learn to fear the volcanic temper, always smoldering just beneath the surface.

When he’s certain officials are paying attention, he often rips off his jacket, sometimes sending buttons flying, and throws it into the stands, sending student managers scurrying, hunting for blazer buttons.

His is also a face than can reflect great pain, and so it was on the 1994 April afternoon in Richmond, Va., when his brilliant 5-foot-3 guard, Pam Thomas, made an 18-foot baseline jump shot under pressure with 14 seconds left. It was a shot that seemed at that moment to have clinched the national championship. Tech led North Carolina, 59-57.

Seconds later, with North Carolina putting the ball inbounds under Tech’s basket, Barmore made an error that still haunts him. During a timeout, he called off pressure on the ball.

North Carolina ran a decoy drive down the paint and the lob pass instead sailed outside to Charlotte Smith, who made a three-point shot at the buzzer.

Afterward, Barmore was devastated. There were tears, just as there were when he announced his retirement.

“It was my fault, totally,” he said in 1994.

“It was a coaching mistake. I take full responsibility.”

So why leave now?

One major reason: Barmore is a white-knuckle flier. In the Sun Belt Conference, half of Tech’s road games are bus trips. In 2001, Tech moves to an all-airplane league, the Western Athletic Conference.

Also, he’s a golf addict and has pined for daily play for years.

As he told The Times in 1995, “I’m only going to do this but a couple more years.”

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The NCAA stacked the deck for a Connecticut-Tennessee championship game April 2 in Philadelphia, but here are a couple of dark horses to watch: Iowa State and Notre Dame.

Both have big-time inside and outside games. Notre Dame’s 6-foot-5 junior, Ruth Riley, is the best passing center to come along in the women’s game in years. Iowa State’s 6-4 sophomore, Angie Welle, is solid in the low post at both ends.

And almost every WNBA coach, most recently Houston’s Van Chancellor, has called Iowa State Coach Bill Fennelly about his senior point guard, Stacy Frese, who shoots 45% from the arc and has a solid floor game.

Notre Dame plays Texas Tech Saturday in Memphis, Iowa State gets Penn State at Kansas City, Mo.

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