Turning Point

It was checkout time. Jerry Tarkanian was ticked and tired, ready to toss in that towel he used to gnaw on.

It was Jan. 4, 2000, at Logan, after a 17-point loss to Utah State.

It was the night Tarkanian, the Fresno State coach, mentally walked away from basketball.

Danny, Tark’s son and a Bulldog assistant coach, was supposed to leave from Logan on a recruiting trip.

Jerry told Danny, “Don’t even go. This is my last year. If I could quit now, I’d quit, but I’d be too embarrassed.”

Fresno State fell to 9-6 with the defeat, but Tark had fallen deeper.

His return to Fresno State, the prodigal coach coming home to endow his alma mater with court credibility, had gone to hell in a bread basket.

It wasn’t so much the trail of trouble that followed Tarkanian to Central California. He could fend off the NCAA, allegations of point shaving, players brandishing samurai swords, even Mike Wallace dropping by from “60 Minutes.”

No, it cut deeper than that.

“Last year was the first time he’s ever been criticized for his coaching,” Danny says. “That was probably the most difficult thing he’s ever had to face.”

The off-court baggage?

“That stuff is a matter of philosophy,” Danny explains, “a matter of what you want to believe. There’s no sense to rehash that. But when you’re not winning, and you get criticism, well, maybe there’s some validity there.”

A New Day

Flash forward to Jan. 26, 2001. Tark is hunched at his cramped desk, in a long-sleeve shirt, cell phone at his palm, the afternoon after a stunning 52-point home victory against Texas El Paso.

Fresno State’s 13th consecutive victory has validated the Bulldogs’ ascension into the Associated Press top-25 poll.

The pressing defense Tark had employed in the victory over UTEP was akin to a dragnet.

“We’re as close to my [Nevada Las Vegas] teams defensively as any team around,” Tark says.

The victory was Tarkanian’s 750th. His all-time winning percentage of .805 had nudged him past UCLA’s John Wooden into third place.

No comment from Tark on the significance of that, although it was Tark who once said of an impending NCAA investigation in Westwood, “They’ll get so upset at UCLA, they’ll put Northridge on two years’ probation.”

Tark, on this Friday, is beaming.

What happened to Logan, to despair, to the end? What happened between Januarys?

Well, a point guard happened.

Tarkanian stuck it out last season. His paper-thin squad actually got hot in the end, won 24 games, and made the NCAA tournament before a first-round loss to Wisconsin at Salt Lake City.

Tarkanian still might have walked away if not for the promise of a better player.

Danny kept telling his dad, pushing 70, to wait for Tito Maddox, a freshman guard from Compton High.

“Danny thinks Tito is the best guard I’ve ever had,” Jerry says. “I said, ‘You can’t talk like that.’ Danny thinks the only guard better than him is [Duke’s] Jason Williams, but Danny’s full of it. He’s overboard on him.”

As an academic nonqualifier last year, Maddox could not practice or participate in Fresno State functions, but that didn’t stop Danny from talking Tito up.

“Greg Anthony, I think everybody would say, is the best point guard my dad’s ever coached,” Danny says of the former UNLV and current NBA player. “I think Tito’s better than Greg.”

Dad wasn’t buying it until Maddox hit the practice floor.

It was a long wait.

Maddox sat out the last seven games of his high school career because of academics, sat out his freshman year of college, and was docked the first eight games this season because of a plane trip he took to Las Vegas in September with USC’s Jeff Trepagnier, a trek that ultimately led to a meeting with an agent.

Maddox won’t talk about it.

“I’ve put it behind me,” he says.

Tark will talk. Watching him go on about the NC-two-A is like watching mercury rise in a thermometer.

How could the NCAA tack two more games onto Maddox’s suspension after Fresno State held the player out six?

“I honestly feel what happened to him was more unfair than anything I’ve been through,” says Tarkanian, who has been through a lot. “He didn’t do absolutely anything wrong.”

A matter of philosophy, right?

In 1998, the NCAA and Tarkanian settled their decades-long soap-opera feud, the organization paying the coach $2.5 million to make his lawsuit go away.

But, as Danny says, who needs to rehash all that?

At the Point

Maddox has turned the clock back on Tark and transformed a basketball team.

Before Tito, Fresno State lost to the likes of San Francisco and St. Bonaventure.

With Tito, Fresno State has become a national power, winning 13 of its last 14 games.

The Bulldogs are 19-3 overall, 8-1 in the Western Athletic Conference and have a No. 20 power rating.

A 13-game winning streak ended Feb. 1 with a 91-73 loss at Hawaii, Fresno State confusing a business trip with a vacation.

“The plane trip back from Hawaii was horrible,” Maddox said.

Fresno State has rebounded with consecutive WAC wins against San Jose State, and gets to seek revenge against Hawaii on Sunday, in Fresno.

Maddox is averaging 14.7 points and his 9.4 assists-per-game average leads the nation.

He is the perfect point guard in Tarkanian’s system, a 6-foot-4 player who runs like a whippet and thinks pass first because he isn’t that sharp of a shooter.

“I had no idea we’d be this good,” Tarkanian says, “but I had no idea Tito would be this good. He gets the ball up court faster than any kid I’ve ever seen. He reminds me of Jason Kidd getting the ball up the court.”

Maddox and Tark.

Tito and the Man.

It’s another scene out of “Blue Chips,” a page from the Tark recruiting manual; a controversial Prop 48 kid leading the fastbreak in Tark’s fast lane.

Maddox definitely has an aura about him, a quiet, mysterious manner.

He was highly touted out of Compton, apparently headed for Arizona State before academic troubles scared schools off and set Maddox on a course up Highway 99.

Danny Tarkanian says Maddox had the core requirements to play Division I-A last year but didn’t pass the ACT.

Maddox considered his options.

“It was either [junior college], prep school, here or Saint Louis, but I didn’t want to go that far,” Maddox says of the latter option.

As a non-qualifier, Maddox technically is a playing sophomore, with three years of eligibility left but the chance to earn a fourth year back if he stays on course to graduate. The school reports Maddox is on that track, but few expect him to attend his junior prom.

Danny says Tito might already be an NBA lottery pick.

With Williams announcing he’s coming back to Duke next year, Maddox might be the top point guard prospect on the market.

Maddox is an interesting kid.

Basketball influences?

“No one,” he says. “I just play. I don’t really watch basketball. Nobody’s really influenced me. Nobody at all.”

He grew up wanting to be Jerry Rice until “somebody told me I could be a better basketball player.”

While sitting out last year, Maddox claims he hardly paid attention to the team, and was not impressed with what little he saw.

Fresno State boasted three of the best players in school history in Courtney Alexander, Larry Abney and Terrance Roberson, but Maddox said the team lacked chemistry.

“It was really like ‘me, me, me’ as far as on the court,” he says. “Everybody really wasn’t getting along. They made it to the [NCAA] tournament, but that was just off raw talent. It was like they weren’t even listening to the coaches, it was like they were just playing for themselves.”

Maddox set out to change that dynamic.

“As the point guard you’ve got to make everybody happy,” he says.

Although not as talented this year, Fresno State’s pieces have all come together.

With Maddox’s arrival, Demetrius Porter slid over to the shooting guard spot.

Junior forward Melvin Ely, plagued with a stress fracture in his leg last year, is sound again.

Chris Jefferies, a 6-8 transfer from Arkansas, has been mostly superb, so talented on defense he can be assigned to the opposing team’s point guard.

Tarkanian has also made good use of forward Shannon Swillis, a transfer from USC.

With more depth, Tarkanian has been able to hone his press defense with three-hour practices.

“I wanted to get out and pressure, and run, and coach the way I did at UNLV,” Tarkanian says, “but I haven’t been able to do that since my first year here.”

One Last Chance

Tarkanian never thought he’d last long enough in Fresno to coach a finished product.

“My friends in Vegas would say, ‘Come home,” and I’d say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there as soon as the season’s over,’ ” says Tarkanian, who resigned under fire in 1992 after 19 seasons as UNLV coach. “It wasn’t any fun for about three years here. There were a lot of heartaches. At times, it was embarrassing.”

There has been speculation that this will be Tarkanian’s last season, but don’t count on it.

Next year, Fresno State adds one of the nation’s top junior college players, Hiram Fuller, to what could be Tarkanian’s best lineup since his last days at UNLV.

Maddox and Ely have said publicly they would return if Tark stays.

“I hope he will come back,” Maddox says of his coach, “and hopefully everyone else will come back.”

Maddox’s opinion of himself might change after consulting with NBA scouts.

Danny says his dad is a cinch to stay as long as Maddox does.

Convinced a year ago his comeback was a failure--despite five 20-win seasons at Fresno--Jerry Tarkanian now sees a chance to write a different ending.

“If I thought we had a shot, a legitimate shot, at being a Final Four team, that would be fun,” he says. “I’d like to get to the Final Four one more time. That’s the highlight of anybody’s life. If I could ever get Fresno State there, that would be the greatest thing. Because this is my alma mater.”