Harrick’s New Home Made Of Glass Rhode Island Coach Under Scrutiny, But All Is Well In Kingston, So Far

The office of the head basketball coach at the University of Rhode Island includes two walls that are mostly glass - one side looking down to the main court at Keaney Gym, the other out to the reception area.

Not that it matters to Jim Harrick, URI’s new coach. Given his 1995 national championship at UCLA, his dismissal 19 months later for lying about an expense report and the rumblings about impropriety that continue to emanate from Los Angeles, Harrick knows his will be a fishbowl existence of the first order.

Still, Harrick, 59, clearly is excited to be back after missing an entire season. Sitting recently behind his desk, sipping a Diet Pepsi, he talks about “renewed enthusiasm” and the excitement his presence has helped generate in the Ocean State.

He has toured the state, playing golf and sharing lunch with business and civic leaders. URI’s “Midnight Madness” was received like a rock concert, with 1,500 people being turned away. Harrick was passed down the bleachers, row to row.

The Rams have enough talent to win the Atlantic Ten championship, with a backcourt of all-conference selection Tyson Wheeler and Cuttino Mobley.com, a former Catholic League player of the year at Cardinal Dougherty.

They will improve dramatically if freshman Lamar Odom is eligible for the second semester. Odom, a 6-9 high school all-American from New York, signed a letter of intent last year with Nevada-Las Vegas before allegations surfaced that he had cheated on the American College Test. Now, his status at Rhode Island is uncertain.

It has been a little more than a year that Harrick, after eight seasons, 191 victories and one national championship, was fired by UCLA chancellor Charles Young, the culmination of an embarrassing series of events.

“I don’t want you to get me wrong,” Harrick says. “I had a great run there. I’m a better human being; I’m a better basketball coach; I’m a better man. I’m a better person for the experience I had at UCLA.”

But is he bitter?

“Needless to say …” his voice trails off. “Needless to say … only because I didn’t think it was fair and right.

“I know they say I get to talking too much. But there were nine different programs that had violations in the six months that I was off, and not one of their coaches ever got fired. And UCLA had had five previous times when they had been hit with violations since the ‘50s, and they never fired any of their coaches - much, much, much more serious. But …”

He pauses. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Harrick’s career was changed by a dinner he threw for three prospective recruits on Oct. 11, 1996. He invited three players from his team to serve as hosts, but he also brought two extra Bruins players, Charles O’Bannon and Cameron Dollar. And NCAA rules prohibited him from paying for them.

When he filed his expense voucher for the dinner, Harrick substituted the names of his wife and the wife of UCLA assistant coach Michael Holton in place of the two players, and asked Holton to lie when asked about it by UCLA athletic director Peter Dalis.

Feeling they could no longer trust their most high-profile employee, Young and Dalis fired Harrick four weeks later. Young likened Harrick’s deed to the Watergate break-in. Harrick called it “chopping off an arm to cure a hangnail.”

“I look back at my situation … and I see a part of college athletics that’s very distasteful,” said Harrick.

“There are so many guys that are heading athletic programs that have never been an athlete, that have never experienced winning and losing… . They don’t understand that you’ve got 18- to 22-year-old kids that your job relies on. They have no idea what it does to you and your family.”

Since Harrick arrived at Rhode Island, six more violations have surfaced at UCLA. The allegations involve making more telephone calls than allowed to prospective recruits and giving a youth coach a national championship ring. The probe also showed that players accepted free food and free tickets to Lakers games.

But Harrick’s supporters say UCLA has pressed the investigation, even after firing the coach, just to bear out its decision.

“I’ve been named in only one (violation),” he said. “A guy got a championship ring. His guardian played for me at Pepperdine, and he’s been a friend. He was really supposed to pay for it, but he didn’t.

“It’s no fun to walk on eggshells every day. Anyone who tells you they’re not walking on eggshells works for a great athletic director who can understand that young kids are going to go to a Laker game if somebody gives them a ticket. I have them 2-1/2 hours a day. That’s all I see them.”

Harrick was introduced as Rhode Island’s new head coach on May 5, agreeing to a three-year deal for an annual base salary of $125,000. The package includes a camp and television show that will double its annual value, though it’s well below the $440,000 he made at UCLA.

His hiring came at the end of a meticulous background check led by university president Robert Carothers.

“The FBI couldn’t have done a better search than they did on me,” Harrick said.

Carothers said he talked to Young, the UCLA chancellor. He also called UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, where he talked with a janitor and with one of the school’s assistant trainers.

“I tried to get as much information as I could,” Carothers said. “The man has had a distinguished career with very little trouble with rules and regulations. He made one significant mistake. It was a question of whether I could trust him and he could be consistent with the values we have here.

“I was told, even from people who didn’t like him, that he stood for ethics. We’re starting with the assumption that’s true.”

With Harrick around, the Rams will be anything but boring. URI officials just hope there is excitement on the court, not turmoil off of it.

Harrick remains insistent, almost defiant, about what he called a raw deal at UCLA, and is ready to resume his career.

“I have a clear conscience,” he said.