Old Home Time for Harrick

Here comes Jim Harrick, yet again.

The UCLA days recede more and more, remembered mostly for the 1995 NCAA title and the aftermath of that dinner at Monty’s.

Harrick’s former nemesis, Pete Dalis, is on his way to retirement. Steve Lavin’s annual resurrection act has grown almost predictable in its sixth year.

And here’s Harrick, back to play Pepperdine with an 8-1 Georgia team in tow, three years after he brought an NCAA-bound Rhode Island team led by Lamar Odom to Malibu and lost by four.

It’s easy to forget how much wider than Westwood Harrick’s Los Angeles roots go.

But before UCLA, there was Harrick’s “Fine at the ‘Dine” era. He coached the Waves for nine years and made four trips to the NCAA tournament--including 1983, when Pepperdine blew a late lead against Jim Valvano’s miracle N.C. State team in the first round and lost in double overtime to the eventual champions.

“I told Valvano, ‘I made you. No one ever heard of you before me,”’ Harrick said.

“And he said, ‘I made you, too. No one ever heard of you till I turned UCLA down.”’

Years before Pepperdine, there was Morningside High in Inglewood, where Harrick began his career as a junior varsity and assistant coach.

The fellow on the other bench tonight will look familiar from those days.

Paul Westphal, in his first year as Pepperdine coach after his career as an NBA player and coach, was a much-ballyhooed scorer for old Redondo Beach Aviation High in the late 1960s.

“The first time I saw him, he shot a 25-footer and missed,” Harrick said. “The next thing I knew, he was up above the rim, tipping it in. I couldn’t believe it.

“Boy, could he play. I’d put him in the top 10 high school players ever.

“I remember the show he put on in the playoffs, against Compton. They probably had five Division I players and Aviation had just one. I think he got 40-something. He was awesome.”

Westphal would go on to star at USC, of course.

“Only mistake in his life,” Harrick said.

Westphal isn’t the only familiar face on the Pepperdine bench. Assistant coach Jim Nielsen is an old friend of Harrick’s from the high school ranks.

Gib Arnold, another assistant, “is like a son,” Harrick said.

Arnold’s father, Frank Arnold, then a UCLA assistant and later the coach at Brigham Young and Hawaii, helped launch Harrick’s college coaching career when he recommended him for an assistant job at Utah State in 1974.

“Frank got me into college basketball,” Harrick said.

From there Harrick went on to become a UCLA assistant, then coach at Pepperdine in 1979 before moving to UCLA in 1988.

“My memories of Pepperdine are just awesome,” Harrick said. “When you want to be a Division I head coach, there is not a better place to start. There’s not a lot of pressure. The thing I liked most is they liked you as a coach, a human being, a person.”

That mild shot at UCLA is the only trace of bitterness related to his 1996 firing these days, a distinct difference from even a few years ago.

“Another lifetime,” he said.

Tonight at the game, Harrick’s wife, Sally, three sons and six grandchildren will be in the stands, along with a crowd of other old friends.

Among them, perhaps, will be the Clippers’ Odom.

“He’s coming to the game, at least he says he is,” Harrick said, adding that he talks to Odom regularly and has conferred with him about his admitted use of marijuana and two suspensions for violation of the NBA anti-drug policy.

“We’ve talked about it endlessly,” Harrick said. “He’s a great guy. He never had a lot of guidance. He’s got to grow up and be a man.

“I’m hoping and praying he will.... I was with him for two years. I thought there could have been times he would do that. I never knew of any problem.”

The task tonight is Pepperdine, a team that has swept UCLA and USC--”I’m proud of ‘em. That’s great,” Harrick said--but has lost to UC Irvine, Utah, UC Santa Barbara and Oregon.

Harrick’s team, coming off an NCAA appearance that ended with a two-point loss to Missouri in the first round, has had to replace key players but has some good victories--including one over Georgetown, a top-25 team.

“We’ve beaten a Big East team, a Big 12, a Big Ten, an ACC,” Harrick said, adding Colorado, Minnesota and Georgia Tech to the list.

They’ve also lost to Lefty Driesell’s Georgia State team.

“They’re very good,” Harrick said.

He and Driesell have something in common these days. Along with Eddie Sutton, they’re the only coaches to take four schools to the NCAA tournament.

But this one, Harrick says, is the last.