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. 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