State of the game

Jud Heathcote was in his usual seat at McCarthey Athletic Center last Monday, but Gonzaga’s game against Loyola Marymount wasn’t the only one on his schedule.

Back home, his television was set to record … Quinnipiac vs. Wagner?

Is the coach who landed Magic Johnson and steered Michigan State to the 1979 NCAA championship still that much of a college basketball junkie?

Well, the fact that one-time assistant Mike Deane is Wagner’s head coach had a lot to do with it. But the short answer is, yes, he still is.

Since bringing to a close in 1995 a 45-year coaching career that took him from West Valley High School in Spokane to Washington State, Montana and finally MSU, Heathcote has stayed close to the game. That includes being a Gonzaga season-ticket holder, trips back to East Lansing to check up on his successor, Tom Izzo, or tracking the many former assistants on what is college basketball’s most illustrious coaching tree.

Now in his 80th year and as outspoken as ever, Heathcote agreed to a state-of-the-game conversation that touched on topics as disparate as Bobby Knight, Jeremy Pargo and the disappearing 15-foot jump shot. Two things in particular stood out: He remains, as always, fiercely protective of coaches and not nearly as old-school as might be imagined.

Let’s start with a troubling new trend: firing coaches in midseason.

“There’s absolutely no call for that. Look at the LSU situation – two years ago that guy is in the Final Four. He’s been coach of the year two times. And now he’s having a down year so they fire him?

“Jim Brandenburg, my good friend and assistant at Montana, got fired at San Diego State (in 1992) with about four or five games to go. At that time, I tried to get the NABC (National Association of Basketball Coaches) to sanction schools that did that. The sanction would be that people couldn’t schedule them. The board said we’d like to, but we can’t – it’s an internal matter at that school.”

And USF firing Jessie Evans and bringing in Eddie Sutton, who openly admitted he was coming back solely to get his 800th victory?

“Isn’t that a joke? You know what health issues Jessie Evans has? None. How can an athletic department do that? I thought it was a farce.

“It’s not only the midseason firings I’m upset with, but coaches getting fired for flimsy reasons. What happened to Dick Davey at Santa Clara was a crime. Dave Odom gets forced out at South Carolina and (John) Brady at LSU. I look up those two teams and they each have one senior. Do you think things might turn around pretty quickly?”

Is that a trickle-down from the NBA mentality?

“Some of it is money-driven. You pay the guy so much now and you expect something in return, and when you don’t get it you make a change. Your success and failure as a coach is based so much on NCAA tournament participation. Conference championships and performance don’t mean what they used to and I think that’s terrible.”

Not all of the midseason changes were firings. Your thoughts on Bob Knight’s sudden walk?

“I talked to Bob and I don’t think he’s done coaching. Of course, if no jobs are offered, you’re done. And then again, he might go into something he pretends to hate and that’s TV. He would be very good at that – if he has a strong guy next to him.”

March Madness is a month away. The annual fistfight of bracketing middle finishers in the BCS conferences and the upstart midmajors – is the committee getting it right?

“It’s working, but it really favors the bigger conferences. I used to call Stew Morrill at Utah State and say, ‘You’re the automatic 13th seed every year, aren’t you?’ and he’d say, ‘No, sometimes we’re 14th.’ They win their conference and get a 13 while the middle of the Pac-10 teams are getting eights and nines – and probably deserve them. The lower conferences are going to get the lowest seeds, and you don’t often get a George Mason coming out of nowhere. You just had Butler in the Sweet 16 and there’s always somebody in the Sweet 16 you’re surprised got there. But they’re usually better than an eighth or ninth seed.”

Any suggestions for the tournament?

“I’d like to see some distinction for the teams who win a first-round game. Who named the Sweet 16? Some media guy. The Elite Eight came out of that. If you play a first-round game and win, you know what you are? The same as if you play a first-round game and lose. I’d like to see something like the Special 32 because otherwise you get no recognition whatsoever and winning a game in the NCAAs is a big deal.”

Talk of expanding the bracket was revived again last year. Is it time?

“I don’t think expansion is needed now, but it should be considered. My recommendation would be to double it – but then you still have 200 that don’t get in and I don’t know if you’ve solved the pressure on coaches or not.”

Are there too many Division I teams?

“Well, everyone wants a piece of the pie. There are 65 teams in the NCAA tournament and 32 in the NIT. That’s 97 and everybody says it’s too many. That’s out of 340. In football, there are 32 bowl games, so 64 of 117 teams make it, so in football you have a better chance of going to a bowl game than you do in basketball of making either tournament.

“When I was in the Big Sky, we’d always draw UCLA or Long Beach State or UNLV in the first round when they had great clubs, and your chances weren’t very good. So one year, Gene Visscher of Weber State proposed that we go Division II. ‘People don’t understand what we have to compete against,’ he said. ‘In Division II we could win a national championship.’ I said, ‘Gene, that’s a good suggestion. Just out of curiosity, who won Division II this year?’ He didn’t know. Not one coach in the room knew. And Gene says, ‘Maybe that isn’t as good of an idea as I thought it was.’ “

Your view from Section 114 at McCarthey Athletic Center?

“When we moved back to Spokane, Don Monson said, ‘You’d better get Gonzaga season tickets,’ even though you could pretty much just walk in then. It’s the best money I ever spent. Mark Few has done an unbelievable job – one that locals don’t necessarily understand. They just expect it now.”

So where do they go from here?

“Nothing ever sustains itself, but it seems like they’re getting better recruits than they got before – not Top 50 guys, but good players. I also say they’ve been lucky to get a Dan Dickau to transfer in or a (Ronny) Turiaf out of nowhere and a few players like that. But you make your own luck. They’ve taken good players and made them better.”

Give us a scouting report on Gonzaga’s Jeremy Pargo.

“He reminds me exactly of Mateen Cleaves, who played for me at Michigan State. He can do so many things, but he struggles to shoot it. Mateen gets drafted with the 14th pick and stays three years, but that’s all. I claim that to make that club really go, Pargo has to do more – take the ball to the basket and dish it off. Of course, I go out with this group and they say Pargo has the ball too much. So I give up.”

Is there another first-round pick in the neighborhood?

“I have an agent friend, Keith Glass, and a year ago I tell him there’s a guy at Washington State he should keep tabs on, Kyle Weaver. I don’t think he’s going to get much attention. He’s never going to have overwhelming stats, but he has quick hands like Micheal Ray Richardson and can do a lot of things. So then he makes the Pan-Am Games team and Basketball Times makes him an All-American. I tell Keith, ‘I think people know about him now.’ Somebody’s going to take him in the first round because of the defense he can play. But I watch the Cougars and say he and (Derrick) Low have to do more, too – they’re almost too unselfish.”

How about those Cougs?

“Dick Bennett was the right guy at the right time, and Tony did an unbelievable job last year. It’s amazing the maturity he has and you can see it in his comments and how he takes apart the game. Marv Harshman and I used to talk about this at Washington State – that we weren’t going to get players as good as USC’s or UCLA’s, but the players we do get have to improve with the chance to play. They’ve found those kinds of players.”

What’s missing from college basketball?

“I’d like to see the jump shot off the dribble come back. It’s a lost art now. You either take it to the hole or shoot the 3-pointer.

“Also, ever since the 3-pointer and shot clock were adopted, shooting percentages don’t reflect reality. If you shoot, say, 4 of 10, that’s 40 percent and you’ve scored eight points. But if two of those four are 3-pointers, that’s 10 points. I say there should be a ‘scoring percentage’ or something that reflects the importance of the 3-point shot.”

(Note: It’s not an NCAA-kept stat, but there is such a thing. Basketball analyst Ken Pomeroy has formulated what he calls “effective field-goal percentage” which gives 50 percent extra credit for 3s. Using that data, Boise State is the best-shooting team in the country at 57.8. WSU is 10th at 55.5, and Gonzaga 26th at 54.2.)

Anything impress you about the game right now?

“The ability of freshmen to come in and play significant roles immediately, when before they weren’t physically or mentally ready. Now with the AAU games they play in the summer and the amount of travel they have, nothing is so different that they can’t adjust to it. There are so many freshmen this year who are dominant players. And their physical strength is different. That doesn’t mean they’re better players. So many still lack in fundamentals.”

Does that trouble you?

“I’m not concerned about it, but I am aware of it, if there’s a difference. The way the game is played now, fundamentals aren’t as important as they used to be. Run and jump overcomes a lot.”