Former Rhode
Island coach Jim
lHarrick ended
y question of
where he will
coach next sea-
son Friday.
Harrick will be
the head coach
at Georgia next
season.
AP PHOTO
Missed Ir
Associated Press
In the final moments of the game,
with nothing more significant than a
national championship at stake, Khalid
El-Amin stepped to the foul line for
Connecticut.
He had been there hundreds, maybe
thousands, of times before, in school
y jis, in gyms, anywhere there was a
Ii hanging off a backboard. He had
been one of Connecticut's best free
throw shooters all season, making near-
ly 79 percent of the shots. Only six
times all season had he missed two foul
shots in a game.
And yet, earlier that night, the fire
plug of a point guard confidently
stepped to the line, eyed the basket, set
himself and ...
ank!
ank!
It happens all the time to players who
take foul shots matter-of-factly, which
hardly describes EI-Amin. Too often,
though, they prefer to refine their high-
light package, 360-degree, in-your-face,
reverse slam dunks.
A bad idea.
The fact is that one shot at a time,
points from the line do add up. El-
rEwa coach
fighting
deadly
disese
IOWA CITY (AP) - All the way
back to his youth, Bob Elliott's life has
been consumed by football.
. He watched his father coach, he
played the game, he became a coach
himself. Elliott seemed destined to
become a head coach, possibly of his
be ved Iowa Hawkeyes.
1 that has changed.
instead of rearranging depth charts
or tinkering with defensive align-
ments, Elliott will be going into the
hospital to battle a life-threatening
blood disorder.
- On Wednesday, the former top
assistant at Iowa will begin a week-
long barrage of chemotherapy and
radiation treatments to prepare his
b for a bone marrow transplant.
FI said I wasn't afraid, I'd be
lying," said Elliott, who turns 46 on
May 6. "There's significant risk of
dying in a bone marrow transplant. To
say otherwise is not realistic."
Elliott suffers from a blood disorder
called polycythemia vera. His bone
marrow is hyperactive, producing too
many white blood cells, too many red
cells, too many platelets.
Left unchecked, the blood disorder
cai turn into leukemia. It's also pos-
that, with too many platelets,
blood clots could form and lead to a
heart attack or stroke.
The blood disorder led doctors at
University of Iowa Hospitals to
remove Elliott's spleen in 1991
because of clotting.
"Since 1991, I've been in that hos-
pital at least once a week with those
d, vtors,' said Elliott, a defensive back
a a in the early 1970s and a coach
at the school for 12 years before step-
ping down late last year.
At the very least, the disorder could
lead to fibrosis in the bones, prevent-
ing the bone marrow from making
blood cells.
I
The Michigan Daily - SportsMonday - April 5, 1999 - 7B
A flip, then a flop, then a 'Yes'
ATHENS
recruiting t
hoping to p
of flip-flop
about his cc
Harrick
putting two
indecision
' Georgia job
c.. j,-'~"I'm ex(
<2 Harrick tol
called news
Harrick
Wednesday,
morning an
' he coached
Officials
back news
Harrick had
ing with his
H i"Georgiaa
ic director'
dent Micha
Athens onI
conferencei
ing position
"I got c
&ee throws plague
Amin's two early bricks were lost
opportunities that cost the Huskies a
couple of points in a game in which
points would be vital.
So with five seconds left in the game,
after being ,fouled by Duke's William
Avery, EI-Amin returned to the foul line
for two more shots, two more chances to
make a difference. He was in such a big
hurry to get there he practically ran.
"I wanted to redeem myself from
missing the two earlier free throws," he
said. "I wanted to be the one."
He never thought about the misses.
He simply stepped to the line, followed
the same routine he had his whole life,
the one that had failed him before. This
time, he cooly drained the foul shots,
the final points in Connecticut's 77-74
victory.
Nothing to it.
Well, in fact, there's plenty to it.
Otherwise, everybody could do it. There
were some dreadful attempts at the
Final Four.
Duke missed 13 of 27 foul shots in
the semifinal against Michigan State
but did not get hurt because the
Spartans cooperated by missing five.
Then Duke blew six more free throws in
a championship game that it I
three points.
Connecticut alum Ray Allen
leading practitioner of the art of th
shot in the NBA, where players mg
percent of their attempts. He is co
ing at 93 percent. Darrell Armstr
Orlando and Reggie Miller of It
are next, both at 91 percent.
Then there is the other end
chart.
Vin Baker of Seattle is at the b
managing only 41 percent. By cl
he ought to do better than that
shots, after all, come with no c
They are, remember, free.
Former Michigan baskeballl
Chris Webber, now with the Sacra
Kings, is having a strong season b
at the foul line, where he's at 47 pe
Then comes Antoine Walker of B
at 49 percent, Antawn Jamis
Golden State at 50 percent, and
pleting the bottom five, Sha
O'Neal of the Los Angeles Laker
of the 50 greatest players in NBA
ry, comes in at 54 percent.
Each of the bottom five is a bil
and Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim
theory about that.
S, Ga. (AP) - Jim Harrick is on the wrapped up in my family," Harrick said. "That's
rail as Georgia's basketball coach, all it was."
)ut behind him an embarrassing day Harrick said his first priority was making
3s that surely will raise questions contact with potential recruits, who can sign let-
ommitment to the Bulldogs. ters-of-intent on Wednesday. He planned to
returned to Athens on Friday after attend a high school all-star game in Detroit on
schools through a tortuous day of Friday night, then return to Atlanta for the
before he finally settled on the Naismith awards banquet tonight.
after all. Next week, Harrick will meet with Georgia's
cited and ready to go to work," returning players. He also hopes to convince
d reporters at yet another hastily sophomore Jumaine Jones, the team's leading
conference. scorer and rebounder, to make a flip-flop of his
originally accepted the job on own and give college another season.
then changed his mind Thursday Jones announced he will enter the NBA draft,
d flew back to Rhode Island, where but that decision was made before Ron Jirsa was
the last two seasons. fired as coach after two mediocre seasons.
at that school planned a welcoming- Harrick, showing a tinge of defiance as
conference Thursday evening, but reporters probed for details about his decision,
I another change of heart after meet- never explicitly apologized to either Georgia or
family. Rhode Island for putting the schools through
agreed to take him back after athlet- such an ordeal.
Vince Dooley consulted with presi- "If I had it to do over again, I would probably
ael Adams. Harrick flew back to handle it differently" he said. "But hindsight is
Friday for the Bulldogs' third news 20-20. Everybody in this room has said at some
in three days concerning the coach- point, 'I wish I had that to do over again.' I can
1. say this has been an experience I don't want to
aught in my emotions. I was all go through again."
basketbali
ost by "Usually, big guys are not good foul
shooters," he said. "They score from
is the inside, around the basket. Even with 3-
he foul pointers, outside shooting is down. If
ake 72 you're a 33-percent 3-point shooter,
nnect- that's good. If you're a 33-percent free
ong of throw shooter, that's bad."
ndiana Boeheim believes that shooting gen-
erally is down and the free throw prob-
of the lems are a consequence of that.
Years ago, Boeheim's teams were
ottom, going through a tough stretch shooting
hance, foul shots, sometimes paying dearly for
t. The the misses.
harge. "We had a big, strong, physical team,
guys like Rony Seikaly and Derrick
player Coleman;' he said. "Because we were
mento so physical around the basket, we shot
)ut not twice as many free throws as anybody
ercent. else. We made more free throws than
3oston some teams took."
on of Eventually, the frustration of all those
com- missed foul shots caused Boeheim to
quille import some help. He hired a profes-
s, one sional free throw guru to work with his
histo- team on concentration, technique, fol-
low through, all the elements of foul
g man line success.
has a And what was the result? Connecticut point guard Khalld El
"Our percentage went down,"he said. secure the national championship
Hockey East takes
over NCAA final
Center Robb Dryden, one of the players who
will be back next season, said he was "shocked
and a little sad" when he first heard that Harrick
wouldn't be taking the Georgia job. He was
equally stunned when he heard the coach had
changed his mind again.
"I guess it was a tough call for him," Dryden
said. "It probably hit him all at once."
Dryden, who attended the Wednesday news
conference when Harrick was originally hired,
believes the players can recapture the excite-
ment they felt about getting a coach who has
been to 14 NCAA Tournaments and won the
1995 national championship at UCLA.
"I think it will work out. I'm confident it
will," Dryden said. "I don't think there will be
any doubts in any of the players' minds. We pret-
ty much understand what he was going through
from his standpoint."
Harrick doesn't think his indecision will have
an impact on potential recruits, even though
other schools are certain to point it out.
"I can handle whatever recruiting is required,"
Harrick said. "If some people want to use this as
a negative, fine. But I've never talked about
other coaches or other schools, and it always
seems to work out for me."
-Amin celebrates after his free throw helped
against Duke last Monday night,
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP)-- The win-
ner was Hockey East.
The Maine and New Hampshire cam-
puses are only 200 miles apart, but the
regular-season conference champion
and runner-up had to travel thousands of
miles for one final showdown.
After splitting four games in snow
country, Maine took the one that count-
ed most, coming to California to down
their conference rival 3-2 in overtime
and win the NCAA Championship.
It took the Black Bears 10:40 of an
extra period to do it, with Marcus
Gustafsson knocking in a rebound of his
own shot to finally wrap it up.
The only Frozen Four team not from
the conference was Michigan State,
which was overpowered 5-3 by New
Hampshire in the semis.
The Bears won the NCAA title in
1993 and lost the final to Boston
University in 1995. The team was then
banned from the tournament for two
years for violating NCAA recruiting and
other rules.
The school suspended coach Shawn
Walsh for a year. Last year, the Bears
stumbled to a sixth-place finish in the
conference.
So seniors like Steve Kariya had spent
a frustrating three years at the school
before this season.
"It hasjust been a wonderful journey;'
Walsh said. "The seniors, our players are
all going to graduate, and I told them in
the locker room that our whole team is
going to go to graduation to honor them.
"We had a team dinner and the only
toast we had was to our seniors, and it is
fitting that Marcus Gustafsson (a senior)
scored the game-winner."
The Bears also redeemed themselves
for one-sided losses to the Wildcats in
their last two meetings before the tour-
nament, 6-1 and 4-1.
"People had been questioning us
coming into the tournament being 4-4 in
our last eight games and losing some big
games to UNH and BC," Kariya said.
"But I've just been confident in this
team since day one. We got the job done
and it's an unbelievable feeling."
New Hampshire coach Dick Umile
had no complaint with. his players'
effort.
"It was a great college hockey game,"
he said. "These were two teams that
deserved to be here. Unfortunately, they
just got one more goal than we did.'
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AP PHOTO
Maine and New Hampshire had some exciting regular season games, but it was
their final meeting that meant the most, as the Black Bears won the NCAA title,
3-2, in overtime.
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