coaches' lunch notes

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SoCalHoops College News

College Basketball Previews:
Coaches' Luncheon Notes--(Oct. 8, 1999)

We went over to the LA Athletic Club in downtown Los Angeles yesterday for the annual John R. Wooden Award Division I Coaches Preview Luncheon. The crowd was surprisingly sparse, but there was a die-hard core group of basketball fans and a lot of media, including most of the local press; we sat and had lunch with Frank Burlison, Eric Sondheimer, Tracy Pierson, and lots of SIDs (Paul Goldberg from USC, Bill Bennett from UCLA, and lots of other schools SID's whose names we either didn't get or just don't recall).

We waited around the lobby and the dining area from about 11:30 a.m. until well after 12:00 noon for the coaches to arrive, but it gave us the chance to talk basketball with a lot of the other writers we hang with frequently at the tournaments; a good excuse to talk about hoops. When the coaches finally arrived, it was an impressive group: UCSB's Bob Williams, Long Beach State's Wayne Morgan, UC Irvine's Pat Douglas, San Diego State's Steve Fisher, USD's Brad Holland, CSUN's Bobby Braswell, CSUF's Bob Hawking, UC Irvine's Pat Douglass, LMU's Charles Bradley, Pepperdine's Jan van Breda Kolff, and UCLA's Steve Lavin. The only D-I head coach from the area who didn't show up for the event was USC's Henry Bibby, who sent Paul Mokeski as his stand-in. Bibby's non-appearance made for a couple of great gags and jokes, but mostly the attention of the pranksters fell on Steve Lavin, who went last but was the target of more than a few wisecracks by the other coaches about Armani suits, houses in the Marina, fast cars. . . you get the picture. Bob Hawking actually drew the biggest laughs for his comparison of the Fullerton program and his job with that of Lavin's, and the ironies were not lost on the crowd. Hawking said, "I was driving in today and thinking about Lavin's great job; his Armani suits, the car, the house in the Marina, all the endorsement deals; and then I thought, gee, look at all the reporters who will be lined up waiting to talk to him, and I can't even get on the wait list to get interviewed by the editor of the Daily Titan."

While the other coaches did their best to fill everyone in on their starting rosters, returning starters, recruits and their prospects for the upcoming season, the biggest laughs of the day were reserved for Steve Fisher of San Diego State, who didn't talk about a single player on his squad. After a short introduction where he led off talking about how great the weather is in San Diego and a sort of longish story about the Wooden Award banquet he attended with Chris Webber several years ago in the same room, Fisher started what seemed was going to be his talk about the team. "Well, when I came here, I knew we'd be in a rebuilding phase and I also knew that I was inheriting a very young team, with seven true freshmen, who only won 4 games and lost 22," Fisher began. "And as is often said, my view of this team is, as people often say, a 'good news-bad news' situation: The good news is that everyone from last year is back; the bad news is that everyone from last year is back."

Yeooowch. But Fisher is not one to mince words, and the message he was sending was clear: The returning player will have to produce, or else. Fisher, a coach with an overall 184-82 record at Michigan (a .692 percentage) is not going to tolerate for very long a team that only wins 4 games. At least that much was clear from Fisher's talk, and even if he didn't mention a single player by name, he clearly means business and didn't come to San Deigo State to retire to a cabana on the beach.

We'll be posting up the season previews for each of the teams that attended the luncheon. Stay tuned.