IT seems like yesterday that Charles Harris, then the athletic director at Arizona State, called Bill Frieder and basically said, "I want you to be my basketball coach. You have 20 minutes to make up your mind or I'll go with someone else." You have to give
the Devils their dueFrieder, who was the coach at Michigan, took the job on what was virtually the eve of the NCAA Tournament.
Naturally, that didn't sit too well with Frieder's boss, Bo Schembechler, who let Frieder know that he should leave Crisler Arena soon and not let the door hit him in the rear end on the way out.
Three weeks later, the Wolverines were 1989 national champs, Steve Fisher was the toast of Ann Arbor and Frieder was glad-handing anyone and everyone in Tempe.
Amazing how things go in circles sometimes.
Fisher and Frieder ran afoul at their respective institutions of higher earning, neither coached a game this season, and both Michigan and Arizona State are playing the game quite nicely, thank you.
For the Sun Devils, the past few years have been a roller-coaster ride, to say the least.
They've had NCAA bids and point-shaving scandals and practically everything in between.
It is nothing short of amazing that the Devils are playing tonight. This is a team that was picked dead last in the Pac-10 Conference. But interim coach Don Newman has taken a talented if somewhat rudderless ship of players and turned them into believers.
Off guard Jeremy Veal is a big-time scorer and point man Ahlon Lewis leads the nation in assists. Anthony Carter and Alika Smith will need to have their sneakers laced tight, and their cohorts will need to give some serious defensive help or the Sun Devils will be tearing up Mill Avenue Friday night, and the Rainbows will be turning in their capes and Bat Belts for the last time.
As for the NCAA tournaments, are any of the teams - other than Prairie View and Florida State - just happy to be playing? Or is it a case of whine before its time? Goodness gracious.
Close to home, the Wahine were rolling two weeks ago and making noises about having a power rating good enough to play host to a sub-regional.
But New Mexico ended their WAC Tournament in the first round, the Wahine got seeded eighth in the West region and now have to play in someone else's arena. I still can't see any logic in their argument about getting no respect.
On the one hand, they are big and bad enough to host a sub-regional. But when that falls through, they're suddenly just little ol' Hawaii, thrown into the lion's den at Stanford.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the Wahine have to eventually, sometime, beat someone good away from home in this here tournament to gain the respect they say they earned? You can't be the cat and the mouse.
Farther away from home, I never thought of Mike Krzyzewski as being a whiner, but he's even griping - something about being sent to a South sub-regional in Lexington, Ky., instead of getting to play in Atlanta.
Let's see, the flight from Durham, N.C., to Lexington is routed (conveniently, it turns out, for this column) through Atlanta, according to a spokeswoman for Delta Airlines. It's an hour and 21 minutes from Durham to Atlanta. That's like, what, the time it takes to fly from Lihue to Hilo and back?
The flight from Atlanta to Lexington is an hour and two minutes. So that's about two and a half hours in the air with a 40- minute layover in Atlanta. And that's if the Dukies are flying commercial, which they probably are not.
How do your guys manage under such adverse conditions, Coach K?
Go, Carolina!
