Harrick: Always a Question : College basketball: UCLA coach looks to the future, says ejection from Thursday’s loss to Oregon was unfair.

EUGENE, Ore. —  As is his custom, and curse, Jim Harrick has given life once again to all of the niggling, nagging doubts.

The victories pile up, the talented players enroll and graduate, but his UCLA career continues to be dotted with odd and disturbing moments of disarray.

Freeze the scene at the breaking point here Thursday night:

UCLA is shrinking toward defeat, the sellout Oregon crowd is shrieking beyond levels of normal human sound and Harrick is screeching arguments at referee Steve Wilson about a traveling violation called on Tyus Edney.

Stop the tape with the Bruins behind by four points with 37 seconds remaining, when Wilson, standing no more than 20 feet away, lifts his palms toward Harrick and makes a motion that seems to indicate his desire to have Harrick calm down and cease the bellowing.

Ask this question: If Harrick didn’t know he was about to draw two loss-clinching technical fouls, is that another indication of a man who sometimes gets lost in the habitual chaos of pressure-cooker basketball?

Another question: Is his team’s disjointed performance down the stretch Thursday night--and in other high-profile powder kegs of the recent past--at least in part reflective of its coach?

The questions come in the nightmare light of UCLA’s 82-72 loss to the Ducks.

A little warily, but to his credit, without much posturing, Harrick answered those questions, and others, Friday, with tired eyes but a firm voice.

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“I think to give you a ‘T’ in that situation is totally wrong,” Harrick said. “If you want my real opinion, it was totally wrong.

“And then to magnify it. . . . The official, he has to realize the magnitude (with which) it comes back to me, too.

“I never want (a technical foul). I think it’s embarrassing, and I never want to embarrass myself or the program or the team. I feel doubly bad because we got beat. Unless you’ve coached, you’ve never known the feeling.

“And you bring to light things like this (interview)--I don’t like that at all. It’s not what we’re about.”

Harrick, who insists that Wilson gave him no verbal warning before whistling the first technical, has been involved in other, similar situations, notably his eruption at the officiating crew at the end of a 1993 NCAA tournament loss to Michigan.

But, with some justification, he argues that it is patently unfair to draw conclusions about his mental discipline or that of his team--or the future of his program--from random scenes in a long career.

“I think I got two technicals last year,” said Harrick, whose last ejection came during a three-point victory over Arizona State two years ago. “I don’t listen to any criticism, and very little praise. I really have no comment to that.

“I do know that I didn’t lose control. I know when I have gotten really upset--I wasn’t really upset at all. I mean, I was arguing with the official.

“I just went down and questioned a call. You know, usually, when you get a technical, you show up the official or you swear at them and I did neither of that.

“I was about 15 feet away, and if he had just turned and walked away, then it would’ve been over. He couldn’t really, or could just barely hear me. I don’t know that he could hear me at all. I mean, you know how loud it was.

“I didn’t go on the floor, I didn’t go out of the box, I didn’t swear at him.”

Did he suspect he was close to drawing a technical foul, and, in a sense, conceding the game to the Ducks?

“Steve Wilson, I’ve known him for 20 years and I’ve never seen him call a technical,” Harrick said. “I’ve always known him as a poised, cool official that controls the game.

“I saw an incident at our place, my first year at UCLA, with Steve Wilson. Another coach walked from his bench all the way to our foul line and called Steve Wilson the worst names I’ve ever heard in my life. And he never gave him a technical, so I never thought he would do that.

“But I take full responsibility. Whether it cost us the game or not, you’ll never know. That’s pure speculation, but there were only (37) seconds to go.”

At the end of the game, for the second consecutive time at Oregon’s McArthur Court, the crowd poured onto the floor, forcing several UCLA players to fight their way into the locker room.

But Harrick was not bustled by the crowd and did not see the melee because he already had been sent away.

By the end of the interview Friday, Harrick was talking about tonight’s game against Oregon State.

“One thing we do in the program, we forget the past,” Harrick said. “Think about the future, and we go on.”

The questions, though, never seem to die.