Friday, Dec. 26, 2003 | 9:59 a.m.
The real question ... will embattled coach Quin Snyder be the Missouri coach when UNLV plays at Columbia on Feb. 15.
(Honorable mentions: Saturday -- Missouri at Memphis. Sunday -- Maryland at Florida State, Harvard at Stanford. Tuesday -- Wisconsin at Alabama, Purdue at Colorado State. Saturday -- UCLA at Michigan, )
When he least expects it, the fantasy ending to 1994-95 keeps creeping back into the world of Mark Gottfried.
It happened again last Saturday night at the Thomas & Mack Center, where Gottfried had brought his Alabama Crimson Tide to play Oregon in the Las Vegas Shootout.
The game fit the name, as the Tide and Ducks locked horns in a splendid battle. Ultimately, Alabama took a one-point lead with 4.5 ticks remaining, and Oregon coach Ernie Kent called a timeout.
Gottfried didn't miss a beat.
Next season marks the 10th anniversary of UCLA's 11th national championship, when Gottfried served as an assistant on coach Jim Harrick's staff. Lorenzo Romar (now at Washington) and Steve Lavin (now an ESPN analyst) were Harrick's other lieutenants.
In a second-round game in Boise, Idaho, the Bruins trailed Missouri by one with 4.8 seconds left. When play resumed, pint-sized guard Tyus Edney went coast-to-coast for a banker that just beat the buzzer.
Then UCLA defeated Mississippi State and Connecticut in Oakland to get to the Final Four in Seattle, where it beat Oklahoma and then Arkansas for the championship in the Kingdome.
Flash forward to Saturday night, when Oregon was thrown a wrinkle or two in those final seconds, just enough to keep it from doing what it wanted. And a desperation lunge shot did not come close to shocking 'Bama.
Unlike Missouri coach Norm Stewart almost nine years ago, Gottfried defended the inbounds pass. He also made sure the Duck who caught it needed to secure the ball, stop and then hit high gear.
Edney was allowed to catch the ball in third of fourth gear, and he easily shifted to fifth for his spectacular play.
"Right away, I talked to our team about Tyus Edney," Gottfried said of his timeout talk. "I told them the only thing we can't let them do is catch it on the run. They've all seen Tyus' play. You have to make that guy catch it, turn and then go. You can't let him get it on the run, like Tyus did.
That next season will be the 10th anniversary of a crown jewel moment on his resume astounds Gottfried.
"It's amazing," he said. "It seems like it was yesterday. That was a special year."
The Bruins -- behind Ed and Charles O'Bannon, J.R. Henderson, Toby Bailey, George Zidek and Cameron Dollar, who turned in a stellar performance as the title-game replacement at the point for an injured Edney -- finished 31-2.
"What a great run," Gottfried said. "You never can tell, when you look at those times. You're hoping, when you're there, that they will last forever, but you realize they don't. It was a special time. A special time. A lot of fun."
That didn't last long.
It spring-boarded Gottfried to his first coaching post, at Murray State, where he stayed for three seasons before taking over at Alabama, his alma mater. This is his sixth season as the Tide boss.
Nineteen months after the victory over Arkansas, Harrick was deposed in an ugly public spat with then-athletic director Pete Dalis, the final straw being an erroneous expense-account report.
Harrick landed at Rhode Island, took the Georgia gig, double-backed to Rhody and then zipped back to Athens to say, yeah, he did want to coach the 'Dawgs. He was ousted at Georgia in the wake of bogus-class shenanigans by son Jim Jr.
Romar quickly jumped to nearby Pepperdine in Malibu, which launched him to Saint Louis and then Washington, where he has landed in some hot water via illegal recruiting practices by Dollar.
With the quick departures of Gottfried and Romar, Lavin was left standing after Harrick's firing from UCLA. Lavin hung onto the gig for seven seasons before being shown the door last spring.
Harrick is now a scout for the Denver Nuggets, courtesy of former Bruin and current Denver general manager Kiki Vandeweghe.
Rifts existed between Harrick and Lavin, and Gottfried and Lavin, for a spell. Now, Gottfried said all four members of that '94-95 coaching staff are friendly and on speaking terms.
The Tide (6-2) has been to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments, have won a Southeastern Conference title and owned the Associated Press' No. 1 ranking, for the first time in school history, for a stretch last season.
That was a hot potato early this season, but Gottfried gave his players perspective.
"I told them not to ever let anyone convince you that that was a negative thing," he said. "That's a great accomplishment for us. You have to keep building, and it was good for us. A milestone, and that cannot be a negative thing.
"It becomes such an issue for discussion. You start to believe that you're really the best team. In December, who can tell? Like this year, it's musical chairs. It raises the bar so high, and we didn't do a great job of handling that. Hopefully, we'll get there again and learn."
Alabama's chances of returning to such a lofty national perch took a hit when swift point guard Mo Williams ditched his final two seasons to turn pro, and he's now playing for the Utah Jazz.
Antoine Pettway, a former walk-on, now leads the Tide at the point.
"I thought he'd be a three-year guy," Gottfried said of Williams. "A lot of kids don't want to be four-year players. That's an insult. You have a first- or second-team All-American leave your program, it leaves a hole."
Which prompted in-depth conversation with Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, perhaps the Division I coach who has been most affected by early departures, last summer.
Izzo was once asked by the father of a recruit how the MSU program would help his kid finish his degree requirements after he spent only two seasons as a Spartan and after the kid's NBA career.
Izzo left that kid's house in Minnesota that night, stared at the Big Dipper and wondered what the heck he was doing in this business.
That recruit was Rick Rickert, who wound up being coaxed to the University of Minnesota by his parents. He left the Gophers after -- guess what? -- two years, was drafted in the second round by the Minnesota Timberwolves and is now playing in Slovenia.
Hopefully, Minnesota coach Dan Monson has a good plan set for Rickert to get his degree whenever he decides to return to the university.
"It just kills him," Gottfried said of Izzo. "He was talking like he's ready to get out of college basketball. It's just part of it. A McDonald's All-American, he's not coming to Alabama to sit if I already have Mo here."
Gottfried is 105-63 at 'Bama, 173-88 over his nine-year career.
"We feel like we've accomplished some things here," he said, "but we still feel like we can do a lot more."
archive
