USC Coach Gets Praise; He Says Players Earned It

A coach’s intelligence can fluctuate wildly, though his IQ can usually be pegged to a summer’s recruiting. Goes something like this in college hoops: An ordinary, dull kind of guy happens to land a Patrick Ewing or Ralph Sampson between seasons. And MENSA’s suddenly inviting the yokel, the conference clown with the KICK ME sign on the seat of his pants, to the spring ball.

But how to account for Stan Morrison’s sudden gains in coaching genius? He’s got the same folks back from USC’s 11-20 team. No Ewings or Sampsons have come aboard. Nobody remotely like them. Just the same fine athletes who achieved last season’s eighth-place finish in the Pac-10. And here are Morrison and his Trojans, 18-11, all alone at the top of the league, with a sweep of UCLA, only the first one in 43 years. Plus, the near assurance of NCAA tournament play.

So how to account for that, short of a brain transplant?

Well, there’s no big lug sticking out of Morrison’s neck and his face is creased only by that same impossibly optimistic smile, not a neurosurgeon’s stitchery. Think of something else.

OK, how about this theory? Is it possible a guy can somehow get smart on his own? Take a self-improvement course, or something? Maybe one of those matchbook schools--”Can You Draw This Zone?” Ordinarily, no. Not in college basketball, where games are won in living rooms, not clinics. Anyway, Morrison is 45 years old. He would have thought of that before.

Other theories: A league can resettle around you and thus raise your coaching IQ. UCLA can go in the dumpster. Some kids who ordinarily spend their winters in traction stay healthy for once. Also: Those nine games you lost by six or fewer points last year? Say you win three of of them by a point this season, another by two in four overtimes. Luck is a good theory in Morrison’s case.

You want to see a coach get smart before your eyes? You should have seen Morrison when his 5-11 guard, not even looking, made a half-court shot to beat conference favorite Oregon State by a bucket at the buzzer. Something like that happens, a coach is suddenly qualified to teach the theory of relativity.

Of course, anybody that knows Morrison in particular and USC basketball in general, knows that luck does not apply. Not that kind. In the past, whenever the Trojans sniffed success somebody either transferred as soon as he could or he punched a cow--but that’s another story. Luck’s a bad theory.

So how about this one: He was smart all along.

Some of his colleagues line up behind this. “He’s the same coach he was four years ago,” said Washington State’s Len Stevens, the only conference coach to pick the Trojans to win the league this year. The consensus had USC in seventh.

“Don’t think there’s been any change at all,” said Cal’s Dick Kuchen. “To me, he looked his smartest last year. To get even that (11-20) out of last year’s team, with people hurt and one player losing his father, that’s what’s smart.”

While being careful not to say he was Adolph Rupp all along, Stan the man himself says he’s coaching the same as always. “It’s not me,” he says of the turnaround. “The players deserve the credit. I haven’t a single rebound or point this year.”

It figures that Morrison would say that. He doesn’t brag much. In the course of a recent interview he made reference to just a single aspect of his greatness. “I’m a damn good letter writer,” is what he said. Well, it’s something.

Morrison insists it’s just a coming of age by his players, plus the luck of good health. “The difference is, up to the Arizona State game, we started the same lineup every single game. A year ago, that was not the case. Cedric Bailey came down with asthma, Clayton Olivier had surgery. And Derrick Dowell had to deal with his father’s heart attack and eventual death.

“The difference is the maturity of the players, and their health. It’s not me.”

Oh, he agreed, he and his players might have been a little more driven at the beginning of the season. “We had a bad taste in our mouth, and we couldn’t wait to get it out,” he said.

There is also the possibility of personal urgency. Since coming to USC from University of Pacific in 1979, Morrison has been something less than a world beater, although he’s done fine against UCLA, previously thought to be the world, having split a dozen games. His 19-9 year got USC into the NCAA tournament in 1982. But his 11-20 year likely got him in jeopardy.

What did Morrison think, coming off a bad year with a new athletic director coming in. The last one, Dick Perry, had been a basketball coach himself and was disposed to give Morrison the benefit of the doubt. He knew what it was like at USC.

“Well, I wondered about it,” Morrison said. “I wouldn’t say I became preoccupied by it.”

Morrison had been down that road once before and knew that anxiety didn’t pay off. His last UOP team started 1-6 and his job was becoming what they call insecure. Then his team went 17-6 and won the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. What Morrison has learned is that athletic directors and fans want results, not reasons.

“No one is interested in injuries or any of that stuff,” he said. “They ask, ‘Did you win or lose?’ ”

As Morrison’s bottom line was bottoming out, there was sufficient reason to wonder what might happen should the Trojans go 11-20 again.

Then he met the new athletic director, Mike McGee. “He’s quick to act, but he’s fair,” Morrison said. “So I had no anxiety.”

Anyway, Morrison’s the kind of coach--the occasional 11-20 season aside--a university likes to have. Especially when that university is USC, which seems to have had problems integrating athletics and academics in the past.

Morrison pops up in classrooms to make sure his players are there. He cruises the players’ study table from time to time. He’s practically been a tutor for Larry Friend, a kid who came out of an environment that did not necessarily guarantee academic survival.

Said Washington State’s Stevens, an unabashed Morrison fan: “He stands for what the rest of us give lip service to. He’s a highly principled man, one of those truly sincere people who get involved. He’s very conscious of developing more than a player. His background has been to strive to develop the whole person. That’s the way he’s always lived.”

Morrison gets a lot of valentines like that. People like him, his enthusiasm, his optimism, his total involvement in a basketball program that gives so little in return. USC, face it, does not even have an on-campus arena. People like him, with the possible exception of a player here and there who tend to part somewhat bitterly.

Oh that. Since Morrison’s been at USC, four starters have either quit or been dismissed from the team. One or two, sure. Happens to every coach. But four? Suddenly charges of racism were revived, though hardly substantiated in any of these cases.

Then charges that Morrison, the classic overachiever himself, tended to go with over-achieving players in his game plan. The talent was getting lost in his system. Ken Johnson didn’t like his role, so he transferred to Michigan State. Gerry Wright didn’t like his and transferred to Iowa.

In a story more than a year ago, Wright said, “He has trouble keeping the talented players around. I don’t think he handles talent very well. He does a better job with players like (Clayton) Olivier and (Wayne) Carlander--guys that are limited in physical ability, guys that don’t have any other choice but to do thing his way. If you have talent, he takes your game away.”

So, no offense, Gerry, who’s had talent? Leonel Marquetti and Purvis Miller hardly hit the big time after jumping USC. And though both Johnson and Wright are having fine careers, it is interesting to note that they are doing so in the same positions they tried to escape at USC.

On the other hand, there may be something to the fact that Morrison likes well rounded over-achievers, as who wouldn’t. Stevens said: “The reason he’s winning now is he has players compatible with his philosophy. It happens to all of us, we recruit athletes without regard to whether they can play for us. What’s happened at USC is that he now has players that are as happy with him as he is with them. They haven’t had any turmoil, nobody’s left the program.

“Stan will always be a winner as long as he has his kind of people, the kid who believes in the same things he does, in going to school and playing basketball. Stan believes his role goes beyond basketball, off the court. You don’t want players you fight with off the court.”

So we have this image of some devoted blue-collar scrappers going on suicide missions for their coach. The image was made propaganda when USC made up a poster with Wayne Carlander standing alongside some blue-collar workmen. Some of the players even believe it.

Said Olivier, a center gifted more with enthusiasm than talent: “The changes in the program are that he’s getting players who want to play and win, rather than show their talent. We have a work-oriented team now. I don’t think this is our most talented team by any means. But it’s the hardest working. I think he’d rather have that kind of player.”

The thing is, that’s usually what USC has to settle for. The Ewings and Sampsons just don’t make trips to USC.

But to think that Morrison prefers blue-collar players, well, that’s something of a mistake. “I recruited Sampson,” he says. “Drove up the Shenandoah Valley and dropped in on a practice without an appointment. His coach said what was I doing there. I told him if I had asked for permission he wouldn’t have let me come. He said you’re right.”

News of the strange visit apparently unnerved some people. In any event, it was only a day or so later that Sampson signed his letter of intent.

Then, too, he was one of the 16 finalists in Ewing’s job search. This was amazing, since Morrison had fired back a letter saying he wouldn’t prostitute his university and wouldn’t agree to all Ewing’s demands. Although Ewing never did visit USC, Morrison thinks he made an impression on him. “I told him I was going to take off my clothes and do a handstand on the table,” he says. “I told him he’d remember the name Stan Morrison.”

Morrison thinks big, anyway.

No, Morrison doesn’t have trouble with talent. He likes talent. It’s just that talent is sometimes not worth the aggravation. Occasionally he comes across a player so gifted he can’t help himself. Recently one recruit asked Morrison where he’d play. And Morrison said, “Wherever you want.”

But more and more he’s recruiting players he thinks he can get along with. He’s walking out of players’ houses these days. Recently he went sour on a recruit who simply asked if he could have two steaks for lunch. Maybe the kid happens to be a big eater, needs a lot of protein. But it occurred to Morrison, sitting in the youngster’s living room, that the youngster might be a taker, the kind of kid who’d manipulate.

“I don’t know if I’m extra cautious or just extra aware,” Morrison said. “I’m more alert to tell-tale signs, more realistic about how far I’m willing to go. A kid is rude to his parents, I get up and leave.”

Still, Morrison goes after the talent. He speaks these days of the Philadelphia Flash and the Big Spaghetti Eater from the East, genuine talents, whoever they are. The one thing that really lowers a coach’s IQ is to discount talent. He just has to find the right talent.

Maybe that’s why Morrison is winning again, because he has the right talent. He says there can be no other reason. He hasn’t changed. Well, not entirely. He admits to loosening up some. His players will tell you that.

Says Ron Holmes, who has been with Morrison for five years now, “I feel he’s a little more lenient. In the past, if you were late, you weren’t going to play. He still puts his foot down, but he chooses when better, it seems. He doesn’t have to that much. We have no hoodlums on this team.”

Morrison hasn’t gone softy but he admits to trusting his players more. “When I first came, I’d hand out a notebook full of rules,” he said. “How to dress on the road, how to keep your locker. But now I pass out three. One, be on time. Two, don’t do anything to embarrass yourself, the team, the staff, your family or your university. Three, when you step on the court, be prepared to give 100%.”

It’s not the Pyramid of Success but, for the moment, it’s working just as well. Maybe Morrison, who was able to condense his notebook of rules into some common sense, is getting smarter after all. Anyway, he’s winning, which is the same thing.