Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 31, 1991 TAG: 9103310112
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL BRILL EXECUTIVE SPORTS EDITOR
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS LENGTH: Long
Here is one radical suggestion from one coach:
"In the NBA, the NFL and major-league baseball, teams that finish last draft first. Maybe teams that don't make the NCAA Tournament should have a recruiting advantage.
"Maybe they should be permitted unlimited recruiting visits while teams who reach the Final Four should be permitted only two visits with a recruit."
This same coach contends tournament money should be distributed equally among all conferences rather than by the present method that rewards previous tournament success.
Who is this mid-major coach? None other than Charles "Lefty" Driesell of James Madison.
You wonder what Driesell would have suggested if he still were coaching at Maryland, in the conference that gets more money, per school, than any other?
It's amazing how your perspective changes when you change jobs.
\ Roanoke native Steve Robinson, an assistant coach at Kansas, is expected to interview for the men's head coaching job at North Carolina-Greensboro next week.
Nelson Bobb, the school's athletic director, confirmed that Robinson would make the trip south within 48 hours after the NCAA championship game Monday.
UNCG is going to Division I next season.
There already is a Roanoke connection at the school. The women's coach is Lynne Agee, also a graduate of William Fleming.
\ Kansas sources say Jayhawks assistant coach Jerry Green may turn down the Virginia Tech job if it is offered.
One prevailing theory is that Green, who has been at Kansas for three years, wants to stay because he believes Roy Williams eventually will replace Dean Smith at North Carolina.
While Smith, 60, hasn't indicated when he will retire, UNC graduate Williams can only enhance his credentials with the Jayhawks, who have been to the Final Four three times in the past six years.
\ After the Capital Classic high school all-star game Wednesday night in Landover, Md., Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski got a phone call at home from legendary DeMatha coach Morgan Wootten.
"On your way out [to Indianapolis], drop by Washington and pick up Cherokee Parks," Wootten said. "You can use him."
Parks, a 6-foot-11 Californian, was voted the most valuable player. Signed by Duke in November, Parks is considered to be far more advanced than Christian Laettner at the same stage of his career.
\ If you plan to watch the slam-dunk and 3-point shooting contest on ESPN tonight, skip to the next item.
OK.
For those of you who want to know what happened in Friday's competition, the 3-point competition was won by East Tennessee's 5-7 Mister Jennings, and LaBradford Smith of Louisville was the dunking dazzler.
In the all-star game that followed, Jennings failed to score in four shots and Smith was injured in the first half and did not return.
\ Krzyzewski will be announced as coach of the year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches at today's annual awards breakfast.
\ On the way here, the Nevada-Las Vegas plane, fighting heavy head winds, made an unplanned stop for fuel.
Coach Jerry Tarkanian, who was asleep until the landing, woke with a start to find himself in Kansas City, home of the NCAA.
"You can imagine how I felt," Tark said. "I wondered what I'd done now."
\ North Carolina's Smith said Friday that he would love to have any one of the seven players who transferred to UNLV from junior colleges, but that it goes against his principles to recruit junior-college players.
Smith said in his 30 years as the Tar Heels' coach he had only one junior-college player, Bob McAdoo, who transferred from Vincennes in Indiana and played a season for North Carolina before leaving for the National Basketball Association in 1973.
"We didn't really recruit him," Smith said. "His mother called us to start it. She said all the other schools were recruiting him. Why weren't we?"
Smith said he did not go after junior-college players because their courses were sometimes not accepted by North Carolina. He believes junior-college players should sit out a year before playing for a new team.
Smith added that he did not think it was fair to a freshman or a sophomore who had practiced with the team and was ready to move into a starting position to be replaced by a transfer.
Forward Larry Johnson and center George Ackles are two UNLV starters who transferred from junior colleges.
Tarkanian said he regarded the recruitment of junior-college players as part of his mission to grant equal access to a college education to all segments of society.
\ Two elderly women from Seattle, lifetime basketball fans, were able to get tickets to the Final Four for the first time when their names were picked in the lottery.
But then the older of the Shuck sisters, Emma, 83, had an operation in February and the trip was canceled.
The sisters wanted to give up their tickets to somebody who really could use them.
They contacted an Indianapolis agency, which arranged for the tickets to go the handicapped.
The name drawn by lottery was George Callahan, a junior at Lawrence North High in Indianapolis.
Callahan has cerebral palsy and is wheelchair bound. He also happened to be the basketball manager last year for the Lawrence North team, whose star player was 7-foot North Carolina freshman Eric Montross.
The two friends were reunited before Friday's practice and Callahan cheered for the Tar Heels against Kansas.
Some information for this story was provided by The New York Times.
by CNB