HARRICK: MARCH SADNESS.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

Jim Harrick just looks like he did it. Couldn't look more guilty dressed in orange overhauls and picking up freeway trash. A walking mug shot. Not even sure what it is. Tightly set jaw, thin lips, beady little eyes. Something.

He won't be in the NCAA Tournament this year, yet he'll hover over it. Will not be in the Southeast or any other conference tourney, but he'll be a hot subject at every one.

He and Georgia, and St. Bonaventure and Fresno State and Rhode Island and Villanova and Michigan and the rest.

This is the time of year when we're supposed to be bombarded with those cutesy cliches. Hear March Madness, Cinderella and the Big Dance until you're nauseated.

When the focus is college basketball at its finest, at its most unpredictable.

Instead, we have Harrick being suspended and his assistant coach and son, Jim Harrick Jr., fired. We have St. Bonaventure president Robert Wickeneiser resigning and its coach, Jan van Breda Kolff, and athletic director Gothard Lane put on administrative leave. Fresno State riding that new wave in college athletics - the preemptive strike! - banning itself from the postseason.

There's academic fraud, phony classes, ghost-written school reports, changed grades, secret bags of cash, cars, illegal phone calls, sexual harassment and a welding degree.

Things are so sordid, Bobby Knight looks like a light of virtue.

``It's just terrible that it's happened at this time of the year, because it's taken away from all the luster of March Madness,'' said Oregon coach Ernie Kent, on the eve of the Pacific-10 Conference tournament at Staples Center. ``You get so excited about it, it's such a big time of the year, and this is tending to dominate the headlines right now.''

Harrick, the former UCLA coach, apparently has been found guilty enough to be suspended with pay, but not yet guilty enough to be fired. I'm not sure how this works.

AD Vince Dooley said there were findings of academic fraud, but ``there is no evidence at all that coach Harrick knew about what took place.''

This is where it should be pointed out the ``findings'' discovered were that Harrick's son gave A's to three players who never attended his supposed class. Not that Harrick Sr. would actually know about that.

Dooley did say that ``Coach Harrick ultimately has responsibility for his program.'' Which means they're counting the days in Georgia.

Not to pile on, but a secretary at his previous employer, Rhode Island, charged in a sexual-harassment suit that Harrick had grades changed for players, student managers write papers for players, and boosters arrange for lodging, cars and money. The suit was settled out of court last month.

Harrick has maintained former UCLA athletic director Pete Dalis was always out to get him, but now you have to wonder whether it wasn't for good reason, that the phony expense report that finally cost him the Bruins' job wasn't like nailing Capone for tax evasion. You get him for what you can.

Despite this sketchy background, Georgia president Michael Adams - a friend of Harrick's from their days together at Pepperdine - personally approved hiring him and waived the school's nepotism rule so he could bring along his son. Now he's in charge of disciplining him?

``A lot of stuff swirling around Jim has never been proven,'' Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said. ``It's kind of been a little innuendo about this and that. The thing at UCLA that got him in the end was not a major deal. I think (Adams) felt comfortable.

``Jim has obviously done a very good job. He's gone in there and coached basketball and got it up to a real high level. Jim's a very engaging person, and it would be hard to imagine that something like this would happen.''

Maybe he'll be vindicated, as he said straight into the camera last week, but he just looks like somebody up to something.

Pac-10 coaches all said you have to remember there are 326 schools, and despite the recent scandals, it's still a precious few of the total. Even when it expands to school presidents.

``It tells me some people are making some wrong choices,'' said Oregon State coach Jay John, a former assistant of Lute Olson at Arizona. ``Sometimes you have to make the hard choice. One of the principles I learned from coach Olson was you've got to think long term. If there seems to be a short-term fix, there probably isn't.''

Long term, it's a business of integrity. Short term, a dark cloud hovers over college basketball.