Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 30, 1995 TAG: 9503300074
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: SEATTLE LENGTH: Medium
There's Big Country, a latter-day Big O', Rasheed and Corliss. Then there's the Kingdome roof ... uh, oh, let's just keep our fingers crossed.
Yes, there's a lot of looking up to do as the road to the Final Four has dead-ended at Puget Sound for the fifth time in 57 years, even though the biggest basketball story on the West Coast is Fresno State's mindless coaching romance with Jerry Tarkanian.
While they're waiting here for the Vancouver Grizzlies to play their way into an NBA border rivalry with the Sonics, the NCAA brings to town a $30.8 million economic impact and an estimated 50,000 visitors, many of whom will be seatless in Seattle this weekend.
The teams from North Carolina, UCLA, Arkansas and Oklahoma State arrive today. They'll find a Pacific Northwest with an NCAA hoops heritage that includes more than Elgin Baylor driving Seattle U. to the 1958 national championship game.
Dean Smith is one of only two coaches to play on and coach an NCAA championship team. He was on the 1952 Kansas squad that won the NCAA title at Edmundson Pavilion at the University of Washington.
The Jayhawks beat St. John's. Smith's mentor, Phog Allen was on one bench. Smith's future boss at UNC, Frank McGuire, was the Johnnies' head coach. That's isn't where Seattle's NCAA coaching legendry began, however.
In 1949 at Edmundson, Kentucky beat Oklahoma A&M for the title. It was the Wildcats' second straight crown, and another of Allen's pupils, Adolph Rupp, was in charge of the champions.
A&M, now Oklahoma State, was guided by Henry Iba, who really is famous for much more than coaching the first Olympic basketball loss in U.S. history.
Iba already had won NCAA titles in 1945-46, when star player Bob Kurland was the original Big Country. Later, Iba coached Eddie Sutton, who has his alma mater in this Final Four - the Cowboys' first since the late Iba's last, in 1951.
Sutton, the only coach to take four different schools to the NCAA Tournament, previously took Arkansas to the Final Four in 1978. When Sutton left to walk in Rupp's old footprints at Kentucky, he was succeeded by Nolan Richardson.
Richardson not only has the defending national champion here. He played at Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso), which became famous three years after his graduation for upsetting Rupp's team in an NCAA final that changed the racial portrait of college basketball forever.
Richardson played at Western for Don Haskins, who had played at Oklahoma A&M - for Iba. Haskins, in '66, coached the only NCAA title not won by UCLA in a decade (1964-73).
So, what does Bruins coach Jim Harrick bring to the final steps in the big dance besides his West Virginia roots? How about an 800-pound gorilla?
Harrick may be from almost heaven, but he's coaching in what's been a basketball hell since the Wizard of Westwood won his last title two decades ago down I-5 in San Diego.
Nothing less than a championship will satisfy the Bruin backers who still see the venerable John Wooden in the seats at Pauley Pavilion. UCLA is favored to win its 11th NCAA title, too.
Harrick said he's hoping to convince Wooden to travel to the Final Four, something the coaching legend hasn't done since his wife, Nell, died several years ago. Apparently, Harrick doesn't mind paying plane fare for the monkey on his back, too.
Even the two NCAA Final Fours played in recent years at the Kingdome added to Seattle's legend. The 1984 game had Patrick Ewing against Hakeem - then Akeem - Olajuwon, listed in the record books at Georgetown and Houston.
Then, there was the unlikely winner of the 1989 championship. Steve Fisher had been an assistant coach at Michigan four weeks earlier when Bill Frieder announced that at the end of the season he was moving to Arizona State.
Michigan athletic director Bo Schembechler said no, Frieder was immediate history - as was Fisher. Three years before his group of freshman starters went the Beatles one better in a nickname, Fisher's first six head coaching victories led to an NCAA title in Seattle.
Appropriately for Seattle, it's all stuff you can look up.
by CNB