The Michigan Daily - SPORTSMonday - Monday, March 7, 1994 - 3 Q&A:JOHNY OR Orr The former Wolverine basketball coach talks about his memories at Michigan After a remarkably successful ten- ure as head basketball coach atMichi- gan, where he is still the school's all- time winningest coach, Johnny Orr has since moved on to the Big Eight confer- ence to coach Iowa State. Among his careerachievements are an appearance in the 1976 national championship game, and having the nation's top-ranked team at the end of the 1977 regular season. Orr won two Big Ten titles during his 12-year stay, compiling over200 victories with teams featuring All-Americans Rickey Green, Phil Hubbard and Campy Russell. Recently, Daily Sports WriterDarren Everson spoke with Orr about the Cy- clones' season and Michigan memories. Daily: After three consecutive NCAA appearances, Iowa State ap- pears to be having a down year. What shape is the team in? Orr: We're okay, but we lost our center (Fred Hoiberg). We lost him right in the middle of the year which madeitkindoftough, butwe'replaying very well now. D: How does Iowa State's confer- ence, the Big Eight, stack up? 0: The thing about the Big Eight is that, from the top team to the bottom team, they play each other very close. They don'tbeat youby 20, 30, 40points like in theBig Ten, and that's the differ- ence, I think. No matter where you go here, it's goint to be a tough game. I don't care where the team is. When we were up at the top and played the last- place team, hell, that was a tough game. D: Is the National Invitation Tour- * nament (NIT) still a possibility for you this year? 0: Well, I think so, but we've got to havea winning record. I don't think the NIT would take anyone without a win- ning record. For us to have a winning record, we have to win at least two or three more games. So as long as you win, you've got a chance. D: And unlike the Big Ten, the Big Eight conference does have a season- * ending tournament. O: Anything can happen. Last year, Mizzou was seventh and they won the tourney. And if you win the tourney, you're in the (NCAA) tournament. If Mizzou wins it, then they haveachanceto be a number one seed, but anyone else, I think they'll be a number two seed. D: Let's talk a little about your career here with Michigan basketball. What was the reasoning behind leaving Ann Arbor? 0: Well, during the time that I was at Michigan, I wasn't making any money. I was the second lowest paid coach (in the Big Ten) - only the coach at Northwestern had been mak- ing less than I had been making - and Ihad been there as head coach 12 years, won two Big Ten championships and been to the Final Four. I had no outside income. I couldn't have a television show to make money or anything like that. Then all of a sudden I got the opportunity to come here and they gave me the opportunity to do all those things and change my life. So I took it. It's nothing against Michigan. Ilike Michi- gan. I think that sometimes you're in a place long enough, and I thought that was long enough, just like I think that I've probably been here long enough. This will be my 14th year here. At that time, it was good for me to make a change, I think. It kind of pepped me up again - starting a new program, seeing if Icould do itand get it going and everything, and I've never regretted doing that. I've missed Michi- gan-there's nodoubtaboutthat.Butthe thing is that when I do quit and retire, I'll be able to do things that lwould never have been able to do had I stayed at Michigan. D: Having been (ex-Michigan coach) Bill Frieder's predecessor, you probably had an interest in the events surrounding his departure in 1989. What's your view of what happened? life, and so is Juwan Howard. And I hope they win the Big Ten championship. I'm sure theteam and Steve don't worry about the skeptics. D: Speaking of skeptics, do you agree with those who criticized Fisher's punishment of the athletes involved in the shoplifting incident? The Detroit News'Joe Falls, for one, disagreed with the handling of the situation. 0: That's going to happen atMichi- gan. Anything you do as a basketball coach, they (the media) are going to be skeptical. I had a lot of problems with the press; not with all of them, just a few. I think Fisher did the right thing. I think he did what he felt was necessary for the team and that's his business. (The media)don'tknow. They don'tgo to practice everyday. That's something I think Jalen Rose is having the best year of his life, and so is Juwan Howard. And I hope they win the Big Ten championship. Johhny Orr Iowa State basketball coach 0: Well, I asked Bill when he called me and told me that he was going to Arizona State if he had talked to (then- athletic director) BoSchembechler. And he hadn't. He said he'd left messages at his office. I told him he'd better get right on the phone and tell Bo before it gets out. Well, he wasn't able to get to him, and of course then it got out, got mis- construed and everything. I don't think Bill wanted to leave at that time, but I think they (Arizona State) put the pres- sure on him, like if you're going to go, you've gotta come now or we're going to go to someone else. I think it was a heartbreaking thing forhim. Bill makes over $700,000 a year, so Idon't think it bothers him now. I think it bothered him then, because he felt he was going to win the national championship. And on the other hand, I can under- stand Bo's thing - he left, so why should he be coaching the team? I think if he had gone to Bo and talked to him and explained everything, it would have been a different situation. It just wasn't like that. I've talked to Bill about it many times, and I've also talked to Bo about it. I think they each have their own ideas about it, but Ithink it's worked out well for Bill and it's worked out well for Michigan. D: So your impressions of Steve Fisher are positive? 0: I like Fisher very much. I think he's a helluva coach. I think he's done an outstanding job at Michigan. I don't think anybody should question that; he's one of the great young coaches in the country. I like him - personally and as a coach. D: Having seen the Fab Five first hand, what was your opinion of them? 0: I've seen the Fab Five in all the tournaments, seen them on television, I talktoFishertwoorthreetimesayear,and I admirethem. Ithinkthey'regreat. I think Jalen Rose is having the best year of his that irritates me when they make deci- sions for me when they don't know. They don't know what's happened in practices oranything else, having never been there, and then they write things about my team. I've had guys do things; I had guys late for meetings this year, and I sat them on the bench. I had guys not make curfew, and I didn't play them in the game. But I think those things are hap- pening all over the country. I've read that in many places, not only Michigan. I've read probably 10 or 15 schools where guys missed curfews, they've missed a meal, they've been late, they haven't made practice on time, done various things. Because a kid makes a mistake, you can'tcondemn the guy, I mean doggone, man. I think what you've got to do as a coach, you've gotta do what you think is going to be satisfactory to the players on your team. And then if they did the same thing, you'd have to give the same punishment to them. And I think that's what you've got to do. D: Current Michigan point guard Dugan Fife's father captained one of your teams in the seventies. What are your recollections of him? O: I think Dan was on the freshman team when Icame, solhad him for three years. He's a great competitor and a terrific guy. Excellent basketball and baseball player. He was on my staff for a while. I remember little Dugan back when he was just a itty-bitty guy. D: Do you see any similarities in their play? 0: Oh, yeah. I think little Dugan is a better shooter-than his dad was. His dad was a great defensive player and competi- tor. He wasn't a great shooter but he could scorethe baskets, you know,he'dgetthem for you. He was a fierce, fierce competitor and he was a terrific guy to have on your team; hadagreatattitude. AndI'msurehis kid does, too. D: The '76 Michigan team - the one that made the national champion- ship game - would they have to be your favorite team? O: I think '77 is. We were No. I in the nation at the end of the year, and we got upset. We were in the final eight and got upset by North Carolina-Charlotte. '76 and '77 were the two best teams. In '74 we won the Big Ten championship with Campy (Russell); that was a team that also lost in the final eight, got beat by one point. That was a great team, too, and a very powerful team. The other teams were quick, they were super ex- citing teams. Rickey Green and Phil Hubbard are two of the all-time greats at Michigan. Hubbard, had he not gotten hurt, would have had all the records. He made the Olympic team when he was a freshman in college. He was a great player. D: When you played that '76 title game, you were facing Bobby Knight and his undefeated Hoosiers. Was getting the team to believe they could win difficult? 0: That wasn't any problem. They beat us in overtime on a controversial play at the end of the game at Indiana. It was whether the basket was before or after the buzzer. Had we been at Michi- gan it wouldn't have counted. But we were at Indiana, so it counted. That was a great basketball game. We led at the half (of the title game). We thought we could win that game. We didn't have any doubts we could win the game. D: Under any circumstances, could you ever fathom going back to Michigan? 0: Goodness, no. No, I'd never come back. Once I'm gone, I'm gone. And I'm happy where I am; I love it here. It wasn't all money; it was the opportunities that they offered me here that I did not have at Michigan at the time. They didn't pay me that much more money, but they gave me the opportunities to make money that I did not have at Michigan. And then theother thing is thepeople here. I have some friends at Michigan; great friends. But here, man, we fill this arena- all the time- and we've done it now for seven, eight years. The fans and everything here, they're wild and crazy. Around the state here, I'm looked up to tremendously. I'm gonna live here when I retire, and I really like it here. I like the area, I like the size of the town and I like everything about Iowa. ]KEN SUGIURA Close But No Sugiura Camping fan must be in Crisler's front row Sitting in his Chevy 8-10 Blazer outside of Crisler Arena, protected from a light evening rain, Asher Stoller, a senior history of art major, is talking basketball. More specifically, he remembers back to the Jan. 3 Boston University game that preceded the Jan. 5 contest against Michigan State. "Right after the B.U. game ended, which was like 9:30, I camped out right away for the Michigan State game," he says. No one joined him in line, though, until the day of the game. "It was really disappointing." While "disappointing" is probably not the word that comes to most people's minds, know this about Stoller, known to Michigan hoop junkies simply as Asher: In order to sit in the first row of the first-come, first-served student section, Asher has camped out for every home game except one this year. And he missed it not because of final exams (accommodating professors have changed test dates for him), nor because of vacation (he cut his winter break short to attend the Boston University game). He missed the Feb. 16 Iowa game because, after waiting 67 hours for the Feb. 8 Indiana game (roughly 33 1/2 times longer than the game itself), his body decided to tell him what it thought of this waiting game. "I threw up for four days straight," Asher recalls. "I really feel bad about it, because it ruined the streak." So what kind of person decides that it is necessary to wait a combined three-plus weeks in order to get the best seat in the house (Section 3, Row 1, Seat 1) for every game? Asher says his friends would describe him as "loony," not surprisingly. His previous claim to fame comes from the time he ran laps in a high school gym class. His elapsed time wasn't so noteworthy as was the fact that he wasn't wearing any clothes. But he also says they would describe him as "very Jewish," not necessarily the first phrase that comes to mind when you think of a fan as obsessed as Asher. But you realize it is entirely fitting once you talk to this friendly, talkative premed from Omaha, Nebraska. He figures he has made about 100 friends through waiting in line. Fellow students constantly stop him to ask when he thinks ticket office employees will make their next line check or they come to sign the List, the document that helped spawn his minor celebrity status. Since the current seating arrangement was established in 1991, Asher says that there had been problems with students cutting in line, losing their place, or as was the case at the Duke game two years ago, getting crushed, as eager mobs of students pressed into the line ahead. To try to alleviate the problem for this year's Duke game, Asher drew up a list that students could sign to mark their place in line. (He had the time to do this since he was waiting in line for 75 hours.) The massive overnight crowd quickly warmed up to the idea. Saturday morning, ticket office workers called on Asher to line the students up in correct order. And Asher Stoller, LSA senior, became Asher, the guy with the List. "When we were about to go in, everyone started chanting, 'Asher! Asher!' My friends kind of looked at me in disbelief," he says. "People started slapping my back, yelling, 'You're No. 1!' and stuff like that. It was just really funny. I never thought it would be that big of a deal. But being first in line, everyone thinks it's important." Soon after, the ticket office deputized Asher to maintain the List. More honors followed. Steve Fisher wrote Asher a letter, thanking him for his support. Before the Indiana game, the coach invited him and his early- arriving friends to watch practice. Moe's Sports Shops gave him a sweatshirt for the game, inscribed with the message, "Bobby Knight, kick this." See SUGIURA, Page 4 Department of Recreational Sports INTRAMURAL SPORTS PROGRAM . 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