Help Wanted in Search for Coach

Help wanted: College basketball coach. Big bucks. Big house. Big expectations. Transients only need apply.

In the last week, while Michigan State, Duke, Maryland and Arizona prepared for the Final Four, programs all over America were looking for Mandrake the Magician, a great recruiter, a great game brain, a great coach.

And by the way, if Mr. Abracadabra sells tickets and graduates players, that would be good, too.

These people are not easy to find and when a school gets one, it usually hangs onto him. Mike Krzyzewski and Lute Olson, rooted at Duke and Arizona, are finalists for the Basketball Hall of Fame. Tom Izzo has been on the Michigan State bench since 1986, the last six as head coach. Gary Williams is in his second decade at Maryland.

That kind of stability is admirable in an unstable business.

Tennessee and Wisconsin made it to the NCAA tournament, but that wasn’t good enough to save the jobs of coaches Jerry Green and Brad Soderberg.

Green was 89-36 in four years at Tennessee with four straight trips to the tournament. When Dick Bennett decided to go fishing at midseason, Soderberg stepped in and helped the Badgers get another NCAA invitation.

Not good enough. You’re both outta here.

Kansas coach Roy Williams was outraged, particularly about Green’s dismissal.

“I was stunned, appalled,” he said. “It’s almost as if you don’t make the Final Four, you’re not successful. For seven years, that program did not win 20 games and was not in the tournament. In four years, he won 20 games every year and was in the tournament every year.

“He won. His players did the job in the classroom. That’s not enough for some reason. He did not win enough, apparently. It has come to that. You’ve got that anticipation because you live in the big house. The bar of success or failure has been moved to the last weekend.”

Purdue’s Gene Keady, president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, said college coaches are cornered by administrative expectations.

“Everybody’s an expert now,” he said. “You’ll be evaluated and criticized. If you fill seats and graduate players and win games, what is the criteria? That you don’t make the Final Four? A missed free throw, an injury, a bad call, things you have no accountability over, and you get fired.”

Sometimes, though, coaches move before their bosses do.

Steve Lappas may have heard some whispers that led him to leave Villanova for UMass. Lappas denied that, of course. The glamour of the Atlantic 10 was too much to ignore for a coach in the Big East.

A year ago, ‘Nova was so enchanted with Lappas that it granted him a four-year contract extension. So how come it fell out of love so fast? Maybe somebody better looking came along, somebody like, say, Jay Wright of Hofstra.

Rutgers was romancing Wright after firing Kevin Bannon, who was stained by the naked practice episode of a couple of years ago and then missed the Big East tournament--not easy to do when 12 of 14 teams make it. Suddenly, Villanova swooped in and snatched Wright away. In this business, hesitation can be costly.

Tommy Amaker attracted the best recruiting class in the country last year and then watched it disintegrate before he bailed out of the soap opera at Seton Hall to replace Brian Ellerbe at Michigan. Amaker and Lappas had one thing in common. Both were first-round casualties in the NIT, a place they didn’t want to be in the first place.