by Dennis Freeland
ix NCAA tournament
games at The Pyramid last week provided a refreshing antidote to a college
basketball season at the University of Memphis in which the focus was never
on the game itself. The two contests on Saturday provided the most intense,
emotional basketball I have seen this year. Purdue presented Kansas with
a serious test, which the Jayhawks, behind splendid point guard Jacque Vaughn,
passed with style. In the process, Kansas sent Gene Keady's team back to
Indiana and the looming shadow of an old man named Bob Knight. After winning
over the entire Pyramid audience (except for the several hundred fans from
Tucson), the College of Charleston faltered at the end as a stronger Arizona
team came from behind to win a nail-biter.
As the 1996-97 season plays out its final two weeks, we are about to witness the most extensive coaching shuffle in the history of the game. Openings at major schools such as Memphis, Ohio State, Tennessee, and LSU will lead to even more vacancies as those schools hire away coaches from other programs.
Coaching salaries are higher today, but so are stress levels -- pressure to win, sell seats, graduate players, and placate the media. Schools are impatient and coaches are willing to move. Unhappy with his situation at Tennessee, Kevin O'Neill abandoned a young team which could contend for the SEC title for the next two or three years. After making an inquiry at the University of Memphis, O'Neill settled for the job at Northwestern. Has O'Neill committed career suicide or has he simply bought himself three or four more years?
The four coaches whose teams provided The Pyramid with such scintillating basketball last weekend are a study in contrasts. Arizona's Lute Olson constantly competes for championships in a tough conference, the Pac-10. But because his teams have three times lost first-round games in the NCAA tournament, few of us remember that his teams also have been to the Final Four once and the Sweet 16 twice in the past four years.
Gene Keady had won three consecutive Big Ten championships entering this season at Purdue. He had an off-year in '96-'97 and finished second. But like Olson, people tend to remember the Boilermakers for their tournament losses. Until Keady or Olson win a national championship, they will not receive the accolades now reserved for Kentucky's Rick Pitino or Duke's Mike Krzyzewski.
Roy Williams of Kansas, with his Dean Smith pedigree, is on the verge of joining that elite fraternity. But, if his senior-laden Kansas team should slip during the next two weeks, Williams will fall back into the can't-win-the-big-one group with Keady, Olson and others.
"It's a fine line between winning and losing when you get to this stage," U of M assistant Tom Schuberth said Saturday. As he spoke, the big-screen TV at the High Point Pinch was showing Iowa and Kentucky playing in the West Regional. Iowa was leading, and for a moment it appeared even the great Pitino might be fallible.
College of Charleston coach John Kresse is cut from a different mold. Even though his team came to Memphis with the nation's longest winning streak, Kresse held no illusions of winning a national title. Kresse is happy to coach at the historic school in South Carolina. Kresse's team played with the abandon of kamikaze pilots. During games he focused his attention on the players, not the referees. After the game he spent most of his time lavishing praise on his four seniors. It was refreshing.
The NCAA tournament is a showcase for coaches. Those who have the ability to focus their team and play intense basketball one game at a time succeed, and in the process make a name for themselves. Athletic directors such as R.C. Johnson at the U of M are scouring the games in search of a new coach.
The hiring of a coach to replace Larry Finch continues to be a top-secret affair. Rumors fueled by talk radio and questionable TV reporting have provided the only "news" in this search. Johnson, who is seeking an established head coach, has kept the process quiet in order to protect the coaches.
Among the latest names to surface on the rumor mill are Phil Martelli, head coach at St. Joseph, a team in the Sweet 16; Larry Brown, the coach of the Indiana Pacers of the NBA -- who almost took the Memphis job in 1979; and Nolan Richardson, who, according to a reporter in Tulsa, is feeling the heat of NCAA problems in Arkansas and may be looking to move east.
But my best sources say that Colorado's Ricardo Patton, who has ties to the Memphis area, and Tulsa's Steve Robinson, who at 39 is already entrenched with the power coaches of college basketball thanks to his seven-year association with Roy Williams at Kansas, are still the leading contenders. In two years at Tulsa, Robinson has taken his team to two NCAA tournaments. Patton's coaching stock shot up last week when his team gave Bob Knight's Indiana team a thorough and painful beating in the NCAA first round. Both Tulsa and Colorado will fight hard to keep their coaches from leaving, and other schools will also court Patton and Robinson as the coaching carousel speeds up.
Johnson would like to hire a coach soon and move on to other matters, but he realizes this is the most important decision he has faced at the U of M. If he makes the right choice, Johnson could own the town. If he makes a mistake, he could be gone in a short time. That is the hard-core reality of college athletics in 1997.