`HOPE' FOR HARRICK; RHODE ISLAND GIVES HIM SEAL OF APPROVAL.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

To appreciate how Jim Harrick has been able to renovate his image as if it were a battered summer cottage in Rhode Island's Coastal Lowlands, it helps to know this: After his University of Rhode Island team upset Kansas on Sunday, a few hundred fans showed up at the airport at 3 in the morning to welcome the Rams back from Oklahoma City.

Also, this: On Wednesday morning, before the Rhode Island squad left for St. Louis and their Sweet 16 game on Friday against Valparaiso, the student body bade them goodbye and good luck with a pep rally.

And finally, this: The state motto in Rhode Island is ``Hope.''

The fans on the Kingston campus have embraced the Rams' postseason success - and by extension, Harrick - in the same way they would a 70-degree day in March. They're not accustomed to early springs or late NCAA Tournament exits, so they are savoring this Sweet 16 date, rolling it around their tongues like a piece of hard candy.

It was so different for Harrick at UCLA, where advancing past the second round of the NCAA Tournament was considered part of the main course, perhaps, but certainly not some rich dessert.

It continues to hold true. For Bruins fans spoiled by so many five-star seasons under John Wooden, it isn't enough to get a taste of success. Year in and year out, they expect to gorge on wins.

Denny Crum, the longtime coach at Louisville and a player at UCLA in the late 1950s, once said he never seriously considered coaching in Westwood because the fans' appetite for success is insatiable (and in these days of increasing parity, unrealistic).

Never mind shoe contracts, UCLA head basketball coaches should be shoo-ins for antacid endorsements.

To look back on Harrick's record at UCLA is to wonder what all the whining and wailing was about. Unlike Walt Hazzard, Larry Farmer and Larry Brown, his three immediate predecessors at UCLA, Harrick-coached teams never won fewer than 21 games. They advanced at least as far as the NCAA Tournament Round-of-16 three times in his eight-year tenure.

The Bruins wore the title in 1995 and yet a year-and-a-half later, Harrick was deposed by athletic director Peter Dalis for falsifying an expense report and then lying about it.

Dalis was the same man who had lavished Harrick with a generous contract extension after the championship season. But by the fall of 1996 the jewels were off the crown. UCLA officials never could forgive Harrick for not being a clone of the other big coach on campus - the glib, glad-handing, ex-gutty little Bruin himself, Terry Donahue.

Whatever it was that kept Harrick from conforming to the image expected of him - slick and sleek in style, words and appearance - ultimately was his undoing.

We're not condoning Harrick's dishonesty in trying to cover up that fateful recruiting dinner. Nor do we mean to make light of integrity, even if the virtue is hard to find these days in no less an exalted place than the Oval Office. We've simply seen enough to wonder whether or not Harrick would be in St. Petersburg today with the Bruins (his Bruins) instead of in St. Louis with the Rams if he had been better at the game played off the court, where school officials and boosters have ``next.''

We were there in 1993, when the Bruins were upset at Washington State, 67-56. Afterward, in trying to explain the inexplicable, Harrick said, ``. . . They're 18- to 22-year-old kids, running up and down the court with my paycheck in their mouths.''

It would take Harrick a long time to disengage his foot from his mouth after that. For those looking for the beginning of the end for Harrick at UCLA, that's as good a place as any to bookmark.

On Sunday, Rhode Island's backcourt of Tyson Wheeler and Cuttino Mobley took Harrick's base salary of $125,000 and nearly doubled it. Wheeler and Mobley disarmed No. 1-seeded Kansas' pressure defense, combining for 47 points in eighth-seeded Rhode Island's 80-75 upset. The win activated incentives in the contract Harrick signed last May and earned him a date Friday against his son and namesake, who is an assistant coach at Valparaiso.

For Harrick, there was a magical undercurrent to the Rams' red-carpet ride last week. Last year, with no where to go and all season to get there, Harrick and his wife, Sally, set out on a five-week vacation to colleges where Harrick had good friends coaching.

It was a recruiting trip of sorts; Harrick wanted to see if the game could sell him into coming back. Among the places he visited was Murray State, where former UCLA assistant Mark Gottfried provided encouragement, and Valparaiso.

The trip convinced Harrick that he still had a few good coaching years left in him. Fittingly, his road back to respectability weaved its way through Gottfried's Racers (97-74 in the first round) and has landed on the steps of Homer Drew and his Crusaders.

To look closely at the Rhode Island state seal is to notice that the symbol for hope is an anchor. That, too, is fitting; Harrick, after all, certainly seems to have found his moorings.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) UCLA fired Jim Harrick for lying, but his image has been revitalized at Rhode Island.

Tim Sharp/Associated Press

(2) Jim Harrick leads the Rhode Island Rams out of a team rally held Wednesday at the university in South Kingston.

Paul Connors/Associated Press