Learning a lesson

Harrick saga could end the good times before they start

More in this column: • Gators gear up for Kentucky • Commish goes on offensive • Worth noting: Ringing the Bell

ATHENS, Ga. -- Every basketball-playing school in America dreams of scenes like the one Tuesday night at Georgia’s Stegeman Coliseum.

With the Bulldogs on the verge of a third straight NCAA tournament appearance -- a first for UGA -- a sea of red enveloped the arena, pouring onto the floor after the home team knocked off third-ranked Florida 82-81.

"We won 10 games my first year -- you can’t imagine how it was," said fourth-year Bulldogs coach Jim Harrick. "The biggest thrill I’ve had is walking in this arena [tonight], as I was coming back from pregame meal. There were five guys painting their bodies red. That’s what it’s all about."

Environments like these had been few and far between at this football-crazed campus before Harrick’s 1999 arrival.

But they come at a cost.

During pregame introductions, Georgia students took part in the popular ritual of pretending to read the newspaper during the announcement of the opponent’s starting lineup. These papers, however, carried headlines on the front involving serious allegations against Harrick.

Similarly, on the other side of the country, Fresno State is enjoying unprecedented basketball success. Enthusiasm is so high that the Bulldogs will move into a new state-of-the-art arena next fall. Fresno State would likely have reached its third NCAA tournament in four years later this month.

But that was before Monday’s announcement that the school was banning itself from the postseason upon finding truth to the allegations of academic fraud during former coach Jerry Tarkanian’s tenure.

Just a day earlier, after Fresno beat Nevada in double overtime to clinch the WAC title, the Fresno Bee had described the Bulldogs’ season as "magical."

Everybody loves a winner, no more so than in collegiate sports, where the potential windfalls of athletics can be extremely beneficial to a university.

To that end, two previously struggling programs went out and hired two extremely accomplished coaches who have succeeded everywhere they’ve been.

Unfortunately, those coaches only know one way to do it. And that way -- as Fresno State has learned and Georgia may soon find out -- often brings as much shame as glory.

"I’m a lot smarter now than I was seven years ago," said Fresno State President John Welty, the man who hired Tarkanian in 1995 despite his three-decade history of run-ins with the NCAA.

Tarkanian retired last season, and has not been directly implicated in the recent sanctions involving the writing of players' papers. But they’re essentially an epitaph to an era that will be remembered less for the winning and more for that infamous 1997-98 team documented by Fox Sports Net and 60 Minutes, the one with substance-abuser Chris Herren, samurai-sword wielding Kenny Brunner and six other arrested or suspended players.

Ironically, Harrick in 2000 tried to bring Brunner -- a point guard who had already attended four schools and done jail time for armed robbery -- to Georgia. It was just one of several questionable recruiting decisions during Harrick's time in Athens, the most notable being troubled point guard Tony Cole, who now accuses Harrick’s program of everything from paying players to manipulating grades to bestowing him with gifts.

Cole, who has attended seven high schools, prep schools and colleges and carries a rap sheet as long as his list of accusations, is hardly credible. But then, neither is Harrick, a man whose questionable ethics got him fired at UCLA, who recruited Lamar Odom when no one -- not even UNLV -- would touch him, and who is the subject of similar allegations at Rhode Island as part of a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Since the Georgia story broke last week, he has lied about at least one thing, the source of the $300 Cole received (as documented by a Western Union receipt) to pay a phone bill. Harrick allegedly told school officials it came from the non-profit Dale Brown Foundation, then claimed Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Mark Schlabach misquoted him after Brown denied any involvement.

Like Tarkanian, who always blamed his woes on a conspiracy by the NCAA, Harrick has been pushing the envelope for so long that he’s convinced himself he’s clean as a whistle.

"I’ve never had a [NCAA] violation," said Harrick. "I will admit, I made a poor decision in recruiting this guy. But that’s not a violation. I’ve probably made some bad choices. You can’t go 30 years and not make a mistake.

"I might have been trying to build a program too quickly or made poor decisions, but there’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t do work for people, nor do we give them money. I’m very confident in what we do down here.

"Have we made mistakes? Yeah. Will they find something minor? Maybe. I don’t know."

Minor or major, if anything comes to fruition from the Cole mess, both Harrick and Georgia’s ride could come to an end.

The one thing holding them back may be senior guard Brett Nelson, whose struggles have been well-documented. He’s shown signs of snapping out of it, but against the Bulldogs he was 2-of-9 while the rest of the team shot 55 percent.

Commish turns lobbyist

But unlike the WAC, which on Tuesday removed Fresno State from its tournament field, the Wolverines will still play in the Big Ten tourney. Theoretically, they could end up bursting one or more of the league’s own bubble teams.

Worth noting

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