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Show Sunday. April 2. 1995 THE DAILY HERALD, Provo, Utah, - Page C9 John Wooden offers perspective on coaches' complaints By BOB KEiSSER Newspapers Knight-Ridd- of anything his first LOS ANGELES John Wooden 'hears it all. He isn't some be20 nign little years separated from his rolled-u- p program, resting comfortably on ex-coa- the' softest laurels college basketball has ever known. He hears people whack Jim as they have whacked other Brain coaches, and refer to the terrible burden Wooden left behind at UCLA. It's not right, he says, and he doesn't like it. He hears coaches complain about the pressures, about how it's so much tougher now than, say, when Wooden coached. It makes him chuckle. He hears people call him a legend and a wizard, and he cringes. He's always considered himself 100 percent teacher and zero percent magician. He never ever pulled a basketball out of a hat. "I've never liked that wizard stuff," he said.' "It embarrasses Har-ric- - 1948 to 1975, and didn't win much 15 years on the job. He went to the tournament for the first time in 1950. He didn't get past the first round until 1962. His first Final Four came that same season, in his 13th year. He won - er burden he had when he first came to UCLA. Larry Farmer, Walt Hazzard and Harrick have coached the last 14 years in Pauley with those banners hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles. Tough life. Wooden's early Bruins played in a small, stuffy his first tide two years later the first of 10 over a period that put UCLA in the same sports hierarchy with the Yankees, Celtics, Canadiens and Notre Dame campus gym with subpar facilities. They often traveled to Santa Monica, Long Beach and Exposition Park, in the lap of USC, for home 12-ye- ar k, fey football. The Bruins trip to the Final Four this weekend in Seattle is their first in 15 years, more than enough time for the shine of the past to become a glaring spotlight on the present. Q, games. Wooden coached under those terms for 17 years, or until Pauley Pavilion was built in 1965. "We practiced in a gym that we shared with every other athletic team," he recalls. "We had no private locker room or shower Wooden detested comparisons when he was coaching and doesn't like them any better today. Any burden he left behind, in his mind, expired when his last recruit left UCLA. V "It's humorous that people still make something of it now, 20 years 7 H i rooms. There were two baskets in the entire gym. "Certainly, once we won a title there were things that came our way that were nice, like Pauley. We never would have recruited Lew Alcindor if we hadn't had Pauley. But we wouldn't have had Pauley if we hadn't won a couple of U later," Wooden said from his home in Encino, Calif. "I could understand it the first four years, with Gene Bartow and Gary Cun- me. He hears coaches whine about the difficulties they have in dealing with today's generation of athletes in an edgy, changing society, and it makes him chortle. He even hears revisionists try to sully some of his achievements by hinting that Saint John was no saint. This he deals with swiftly and sharply. "I can honestly say," said the Bruin coach who won 10 NCAA titles, "that I received more criticism after we won a championship than I did before we won one. "That's why I've always said I wish all my really good friends in coaching would win one national championship. And those I don't think highly of, I wish they would win several." Wooden coached UCLA from ff; ningham, because they still had many of the players I recruited. I could understand there might be expectations." Bartow went to the Final Four in 1976, the first year of the era. The first four teams won their league titles and made the NCAA field. They just didn't win the NCAA l-l- I I 1 I I 3 J ; 1 J titles." h$" Nolan Richardson, Arkansas' successful coach with serious problems, says it was easier for teams to get to the Final Four in the old days because the field was smaller. UCLA only needed to play four games to win nine of their titles. In now takes six. self-estee- m post-Wood- en post-Wood- en "There are advantages boih ways," says Wooden. "With seed-ing- s, title. A year later, Larry Brown took a young Bruin team that had finished fourth in the Pac-1- 0 to the NCAA tide game, losing to former Wood- AP Photo John Wooden, center, is pictured with two of his great centers in this 1972 photo. The two, Bill Walton, right, and Swen Nater helped UCLA dominate college basketball in that decade. e top seeds now should almost certainly win their first game. Look at my record and you'll see I always had trouble in the first round, because we were facing good teams that had won league titles." en assistant Denny Crum and Louisville. Right then, to Wooden, all expectations should have say they've never been away," Wooden says. "There have been a lot of achievements. The Bruins have been to the Final Four three times in the last 20 years, and very ceased. "When a reporter asks me, 'Do you think they're (UCLA) back,' I Halls named president of booster club few schools can say they made it more often. They just haven't won a national title." No one ever, Wooden says with a small laugh, asks what kind of had to go overtime with Michigan the following year. "The one thing Nolan didn't say was that you had to win the confer- ence back then," Wooden said. Arkansas, the defending national champs, tied for their SEC division title last season and this season. They lost the SEC postseason tourney each year, too. Maybe Richardson could use a sit down with Wooden. The former coach has counseled virtually every Bruin coach quietly, unobtrusively, and only when approached about dealing with today's problems and today's athletes. Only Brown kept to himself. Despite the difference of eras, there's a common thread to the problems. Wooden had his. "They think it's tough now," he said. "They didn't have to coach in the '60s. "You are never without problems. They change, but they don't go away. You just cope the best you can and try to diminish them. " Wooden recalls the difficulties colleges had dealing with World War II vets returning to campus after serving in Europe and Japan. g There were the scandals of the late '50s, and Wooden was not immune to those, either. Ron Lawson quit the 1960-6- 1 team after failing to report a bribe attempt. point-shavin- In the '60s, Wooden, a definite square peg from Indiana, had to deal with athletes caught up in growing drug use, heightened civil rights awareness, Vietnam wax protests, and the whole lishment tone of the times. anti-estai- The Bruins beat Seattle by five in 1964. They were tied with New Mexico State at halftime in 1968. Daytona took them into three overtimes in Round 1 in 1974, and they Wooden's authoritarian ways bothered many players, who responded by pushing his rules to the limit. Your Estee Lauder gift 7-pi- ece Local realtor Scotty Halls has been named president of the Utah 1 Valley State College Wolverine Club. The club is a booster organiza tion that supports i UVSC athletics. Halls will take the reins from current president Craig Carhle on July 1. Carlile, a Provo attorney, has been president the past two ft A i s5J M 1 years. Scotty Halls Halls is a rep resentative of Realty Associates of Orem. He has been a realtor for seven years. Last year he ranked in the top 10 percent in sales achievement in Utah County, amassing over $5 million in sales. "I'm excited to be associated with UVSC," said Halls. "It's a class organization that has set a precedence in Utah County for how an athletic program should be run. With excellent coaches and administrators, the program is flourishing. For me, UVSC is the school to support and the place to C J 7 Free as the breeze, be." Halls is a native of Salt Lake City. He and his wife, Karin, currently reside in Orem with their four boys, Tyler, Brian, Joshua, and Timothy. Halls is a graduate of Olympus High School, where he played basketball and soccer. 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