Fitz Feels Up Punch No Big Deal
Dan Fitzgerald is quick to make it clear that he is not a victim on the Monica Seles scale.
But the fact that a University of Portland student could come out of the stands after the game at the Chiles Center on Saturday and hit him in the back is enough to make a person stop and consider his vulnerability.
“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal,” the Gonzaga men’s basketball coach said of his initial reaction to the mild assault. “The foul call (that helped UP win) hurt me more than the shot in the back.”
Fitzgerald, 53, said he wasn’t struck hard, but it was nonetheless surprising.
“There was a security guy about a foot away and I asked him, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ and he said, ‘I’m scared.”’
It wasn’t until Monday that Fitzgerald heard that point guard Kyle Dixon had been hit, too, as UP students poured onto the court to celebrate the Pilots’ 67-66 win. “That’s what really upset me,” Fitzgerald said.
Buzz Stroud, UP’s assistant athletic director, said the student who hit Fitzgerald was immediately identified and detained.
“He’s been remanded to our student services judicial process,” Stroud said. “I’m quite sure he won’t be allowed into any future athletic events; we took this pretty seriously.”
Stroud said the school has never had such a problem. “We’ve had coaches chase officials around, but we’ve never had students chase coaches around,” Stroud said. “We’ll be more conscious from now on of the deportment of our students. Generally, one of the things about our students is they’ve been pretty blase, but because it was Gonzaga, the natural rivalry, they get more pumped up about things.”
“I don’t think that incident is symptomatic of that institution, but the reality of it is that you’re really vulnerable in those situations,” Fitzgerald said.
One way to diminish that vulnerability, Fitzgerald said, is to eliminate the postgame hand shakes.
“I think that’s stupid,” he said. “It’s better to let everybody calm down after the game; it seems kind of false sometimes.”
Several Portland coaches and administrators wrote to Fitzgerald to apologize.
“By our league standards, Portland has excellent game management,” Fitzgerald said. “This wasn’t that big of a deal, but I know on Monday that we went in and talked at great length about what we have to do about security for teams and officials.”
Showing some pep
After four straight league losses and the resignation of head coach Tony Fuller, the Pepperdine Waves pulled off road upsets of Santa Clara and Saint Mary’s - the league’s preseason favorites.
Interim head coach Marty Wilson took over for Fuller, who resigned on Jan. 20.
“I have so much respect and love for the school and the program,” Fuller told the L.A. Daily News. “Once I realized that it was time to go, even though it was something I always wanted to do, I knew I had to leave.”
The Malibu campus had been like home to him. Not only had he played there two years, he spent another six there as an assistant under Jim Harrick.
Tom Asbury, the Kansas State coach who was an assistant with Fuller under Harrick, said the team’s struggles had weighed heavily on Fuller. “He’s a very sensitive guy and he didn’t think he was doing the program a service. I know how much it affected him last year.”
The Daily News reported that personal problems also might have triggered the decision to resign. Fuller and his wife recently were divorced, with his wife getting custody of their 3-year-old son Preston.
WCC notes
Some talk has surfaced concerning WCC expansion and the possible addition of schools like University of the Pacific and Santa Barbara - currently Big West members.
The fact that Pacific - a private school that in many ways reflects the nature of current WCC members recently moved to drop football has stimulated some of the talk.
The protocol in the conference, though, is that the conference must invite prospective members to apply.
A conference spokesman said Wednesday that discussion of expansion is not on the agenda for the next presidents’ meeting.
, DataTimes