Final Four Coaches Already On Edge

Final Four coaches will be grateful to be in Seattle. They probably won’t be overjoyed at the sight of their unofficial welcoming committee - the media.

Three days before Saturday’s NCAA Tournament semifinals at the Kingdome, the four coaches had moments of testiness during a telephone press conference Wednesday. Nothing that will require audio to be beeped-out on ESPN, but even mild-mannered Dean Smith piped in with an occasional swipe at the media.

The veteran North Carolina coach was asked to detail the differences from his first Final Four in 1967 to his current one.

“We didn’t have as many press conferences,” Smith said, “and that was nice.”

All four teams, as well as many of the roughly 700 working media, are scheduled to arrive in Seattle today.

Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson, whose club faces North Carolina on Saturday, was irritated by a question dealing with respect, the theme of several Richardson dissertations at last year’s Final Four in Charlotte.

“The thing that irritates me is when they say, ‘I preach respect,”’ Richardson said. “I never preached it in my life. I think you earn it.”

Richardson, taking his third team to the Final Four and striving for the first repeat championships since Duke in 1991-92, clearly feels he’s earned respect.

“I’ve always felt we do not get credit for cerebral thinking of the game. We get great talent and we’re great motivators, but players win games. You hear it all the time.

“What’s motivated me and my team is to compete and play hard. You (media) people pick up a word (respect) and think that’s what wins basketball games…

“For the amount of time I’ve been on the scene, I’ll put my record up against any major college basketball coach in America. You earn respect. I think I’ve earned that. I thought I earned that before we won the national championship.”

On the topic of the high expectations their teams face annually, Smith offered that his team was involved in 21 games that were decided in the final 5 minutes.

“We could have lost those, but we still would have been a good basketball team,” he said. “You can’t really bother with somebody else’s expectations.”

UCLA coach Jim Harrick, showing perhaps the most restraint of the four, said he felt no vindication in getting the tradition-rich Bruins back to the Final Four after a 15-year absence.

“I learned from Coach (John) Wooden a long time ago, if you listen to too much criticism, it will hurt your coaching, also if you listen to too much praise,” said Harrick, who until this year was far more familiar with the former than the latter during his seven seasons at UCLA.

“The more people keep writing about that (vindication), the bigger it becomes and I’m trying to defuse that.”

Oklahoma State’s Eddie Sutton, who resigned under pressure at Kentucky following the Chris Mills-express package scandal, was asked about a comment he reportedly made when he was hired at OSU, essentially that he said some people may not welcome him back into the profession.

“If I said that, I don’t remember saying that,” Sutton said. “If I said that, maybe you misunderstood what we were trying to say. We’ve been treated very well every place we’ve been.”

Notes

UCLA visited the Kingdome during its trip to Seattle to play Washington in February.

“I have a friend who is the director of operations and he took us on a tour,” Harrick said. “Once we went there, we certainly started playing very good basketball. Whether that (tour) helped or not I don’t know, but it was a great educational experience.” …

Smith said that Michael Jordan, who helped Smith’s Tar Heels to the NCAA title in 1982, practiced with Carolina prior to his recent NBA comeback. “He played with our walk-ons. They beat our first group in a 10-minute scrimmage,” Smith said.