Buck Is Back With U.S. Club : Volleyball Team Meets Soviets in Match at the Forum Tonight

As fate had it, the only space available in the hotel across the street from Madison Square Garden in New York, where the U.S. national volleyball team was staying before playing the Soviet Union Aug. 17, was in Coach Marv Dunphy’s room. Craig Buck, in no position to be picky, gladly accepted the offer, just as he had gladly accepted his spot back on the roster.

Theirs could have been an uneasy reunion, for they had been at philosophical odds in recent months. They had disagreed first on whether Buck should have retired from the team March 1, then they had disagreed again on whether he should have been allowed to rejoin it.

Dunphy, who also had coached Buck at Pepperdine, said no both times. In March, the coach’s vote had not counted. This time, it did, though, and Buck was grateful that Dunphy had changed it.

“They were using me as an example, no question,” Buck said. “They wanted to make sure that no other players tried the same thing. It was not a conscious plan of mine to take time off and then come back.”

But there is another point to be made about the 38-year-old Dunphy, a 1974 graduate of Pepperdine who returned to coach the Waves to a 118-32 record and two national championships in six years: He likes to win. And this eight-city nationwide tour with the Soviets, ending tonight at the Forum, is especially important as a tuneup for the world tournament next month.

So when he lost Steve Timmons with a deep cut on his hand, and Steve Salmons with a lower-back sprain, Dunphy called Buck in San Diego and told him to catch the red-eye to New York. Buck, a member of the Olympic gold-medal winning team of 1984, arrived early the next afternoon, caught up to the team just before it left for Madison Square Garden, then started in the win over the Soviets in a USA Cup match.

It was a welcome-home he had never expected, simply because he had never expected to be back.

In April he had said: “I’m really happy with the career I’ve had, but I’m having a lot more fun working. I love doing my own thing. I feel really happy with my decision. I don’t have any remorse about quitting, or even any second thoughts about it.”

So why the change?

“Three months off,” he said. “I guess that was just the length of time I needed to be away. The longer I was away, the more I missed it. . . . The question is not whether I can play a short time with quality, but whether I can make a commitment to 1988, and now there is no question in my mind that I can.”

He still has his business interests--the marketing design firm of Buck and Associates, and a separate project to produce and distribute a recreation-type volleyball--but has found that he can combine his careers.

Buck had stayed in shape during his time away by swimming and running. When he decided to try the comeback, he played in Team Cup Volleyball at the Forum and commuted to the San Fernando Valley to compete in weekend tournaments at Pierce College. He also rehabilitated the right knee that had bothered him so in recent months.

Doctors said that running would only worsen the tendinitis that had developed in the previous 10 years, six of which had been spent with the national team, so Buck came up with his own treatment, by accident as much as anything. Riding his beach-cruiser bicycle around the parking lot of Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, he noticed that the short range of motion while standing to pedal up an incline helped his lower quadriceps, which took the pressure off the knee. It turned out to be better treatment than any machine could offer.

The Soviets, meanwhile, will be making their first Southern California appearance since 1977 tonight at 7:30. They are especially good at blocking this time around, led by 6-7 Raymond Vilde and 6-6 Alexander Savin. Buck, at 6-9, and 6-5 Doug Partie will have to offset them.

“The matches with the Soviet Union, we cherish those because not only is it an opportunity to play the best, but for us to be playing them on our soil,” Dunphy said. “We like that, and we like that it gives the American public a chance to see volleyball on its highest level.

Volleyball Notes From 1976 to December of 1985, the Soviet Union did not lose an international tournament, but the balance of power seems to be changing. The United States had won 13 of 17 meetings with the Soviets going into Tuesday night’s match in Sacramento, including two of three on this tour. The Americans also held a 7-2 advantage in 1985. “The teacher must be glad when the student exceeds the teacher,” Soviet Coach Gennadij Parchin philosophized after the United States’ 14-16, 17-15, 15-13, 10-15, 16-14 win Sunday in Palo Alto. “Now we must adjust.” . . . The Americans and Soviets set the record for the biggest crowd for a volleyball match in America last year in the Seattle Kingdome, 14,183. The Forum holds more than 18,000 for the sport. . . . The U.S. team consists of 18 players, among them the injured Steve Timmons and Steve Salmons, but six will not go to the world tournament. Two of the six, Scott Fortune of Stanford and Troy Tanner of Pepperdine, will return to school. . . . A victory in France next month would give America its first volleyball triple crown--the Olympic Games in 1984, the World Cup in ’85 and the world championship in ’86. . . . Department of Incidental Information: The entire American team consists of Southern Californians. The Soviet Union, by comparison, has drawn from 11 different time zones. . . . Wilt Chamberlain, Kurt Rambis, Reggie Theus of the Sacramento Kings, actors Dolph Lungren from “Rocky IV” and Tony Danza, and actresses Bess Armstrong, Susan Anton, Kristy McNichol and Adrienne Barbeau are among those who will play in a special celebrity match at 6:15 p.m. Pro beach volleyball stars Singin Smith, Andrew Smith, Mike Dodd and Tim Hovland will coach.