March 9, 2003

By Steve Richardson

UCLA was a NCAA Sweet 16 team last season and picked to contend for the Pacific-10 title in 2002-03. But the Bruins started the season by losing a home game to San Diego and have never been above .500.

Coach Steve Lavin has tried to implement full-court pressure and wholesale five-man substitutions to change the Bruins' fortunes. Nothing has worked. UCLA will suffer its first losing season since 1947-48. And Lavin, 38, undoubtedly will be fired sometime in March. Finishing in the top eight in the Pacific 10 Conference has been difficult. When they are talking about making the tournament in Westwood these days, they are talking about the Pac-10 Tournament.

Lavin understands the history of the UCLA job. Since the legendary John Wooden retired as coach in 1975 after winning 10 NCAA titles in 12 years, UCLA is on its seventh coach.

"I came in with my eyes open with the challenges," Lavin said. "...Every coach who has followed John Wooden understands the unique set of expectations and challenges on an annual basis. Any time the team struggles, there always will be a constant scrutiny of job status."

Being the coach at UCLA is not what it is cracked up to be.

"There's always a perception that when you are Kentucky, UCLA or Duke you have an advantage," said Alabama coach Mark Gottfried who was an assistant coach on the UCLA staff of Jim Harrick which won the UCLA's last NCAA title in 1995. "When you are in their shoes, you don't feel that way. Every game is a dogfight.

"After we lost to Tulsa in 1994 (in the first round of the NCAA Tournament), I had a meeting with the UCLA athletic director the following Monday and I thought I was going to get fired. There are times at UCLA I wonder now how much fun Jim Harrick was having, But that's all the part of that job."

Names for Lavin's possible replacement have surfaced among alumni and in chat rooms on the internet. Among those names are Missouri's Quin Snyder, whose Tigers beat UCLA in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 last season. Another coach mentioned as a possible Lavin replacement is Pittsburgh's Ben Howland, who has turned around the Panthers and has ties in the West.

Lavin has taken UCLA to the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 five of the last six years. But UCLA has struggled at times during the regular season. The Bruins had their lowest Pacific-10 finish in history (sixth) last season and have gone their longest stretch without a league title (five seasons) in more than 40 years.

Phelan Hangs It Up
Mount St. Mary's coach Jim Phelan has been a fixture at his school through 10 U.S. Presidents. He began with Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 and will end with George W. Bush in 2003. In between, he has been at one school longer than any other NCAA coach - 49 years. And he has coached more college basketball games than any other NCAA coach.

"The only thing I regret is I couldn't outlast Joe Paterno," Phelan said in jest about the long-time Penn State football coach. "But he runs his own show up there. I was here 12 years before Joe Pa started (as head coach). Right now I am among the oldest coaches. And when I started at 24, I was among the youngest."

Phelan, with 830 victories, ranks only behind North Carolina's Dean Smith (879) and Kentucky's Adolph Rupp (876) in career victories on any NCAA level. But Phelan is not in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Mass.

That's probably because he has done the majority of his coaching in the Division II and small college ranks. Mount St. Mary's only became a Division I school in the 1988-89 season. Still, his numbers are quite impressive: 19 seasons with 20 or more victories, 35 winning seasons, an NCAA college division championship in 1962 and four other trips to the College Division/NCAA Division II Final Four (1957, 1961, 1981, 1985).

Phelan has even taken two teams to the NCAA Division I tournament in 1995 and 1999.

"It is not going to happen any more at any level, 49 years at one place," said Phelan, who plans to still make presentations for the school. "It was a totally different era. The only thing is basketball is not terribly different. But patience wears thin. TV and radio (exposure) we didn't have before. Kids now select schools to go to by the number of TV appearances."

Mount St. Mary's, a school of 1400 undergraduates in Emmitsburg, Md., is far away from the glare of television cameras most of the time. It is the fourth smallest school in Division I behind Centenary, VMI and Wofford.

Phelan has coached only one player who played in the NBA any appreciable time. That was Fred Carter, who was the Philadelphia 76ers, Washington Bullets and Milwaukee Bucks. And 90 percent of Phelan's players graduated from the small Catholic school.

"We are very proud of it," Phelan said. "When you recruit players you anticipate that...You simply would call the parents to get them on their (players') case and usually they would respond." A former LaSalle player and one-year assistant coach, Phelan donned the bow tie his first season because his college coach at LaSalle, Ken Loeffler, wore one. Phelan's first team in 1954-55 went 22-3 at Mount St. Mary's.

"The bow ties stuck, except one year, 1971-72," Phelan said. "My daughters were 13 and 15. And they told me how gross the bow ties looked." Without his bow tie, Phelan's team went 6-17. He told his daughters that the bow tie was coming back.

Since he started coaching he says the players are bigger, stronger and faster. Coaching preparation has improved with the advent of video-tape. It revolutionized scouting because coaches had instant film to study. But college students will always be kids.

The school has renamed a street near Knott Arena "James Phelan Way." Students already have stolen the sign once.

"The only way to keep it there is to have it in-bedded in stone," said Phelan, who should know. He has been in one place nearly a half century.

Anderson Makes Mark
Mike Anderson, former Arkansas assistant coach, is doing one of the better first-year head coaching jobs in Division I at UAB. He says other coaches say his current team looks like Nolan Richardson's teams at Arkansas and Tulsa.

"We play hard and play defense," said Anderson, 43, who also played for Richardson at Tulsa. "Everything is predicated from the defensive side of the ball."

Under Fire by Degree
North Carolina coach Matt Doherty is under some fire in Chapel Hill because the Tar Heels could suffer their second straight losing season. But he says the situation of UCLA's beleaguered coach Steve Lavin is different from his.

"It's a little bit different. I have been here 2 ½ years as opposed to Steve is in his seventh year," Doherty said. "We are definitely in a situation, as far as our fans are concerned, I think they are a little more understanding and patient (than at UCLA)."

A foot injury in December ended the 2002-03 season of 6-9 freshman star Sean May, who was averaging 12.1 points and 8.6 rebounds a game. That injury has drastically altered the Tar Heels' season.