SECOND CHANCE; HARRICK TRIES TO FORGET SCANDALS.

Byline: Luke Cyphers New York Daily News

The famous man chomping on the free Chex party mix at the Final Four press table stood alone. Usually nosy media types walked by, smiled in recognition and kept walking. Two years earlier, he was the hottest story in college basketball, the man who restored Camelot by bringing the NCAA title back to UCLA. But there in Indianapolis, Jim Harrick was nobody.

In his half-year of exile, March was the cruelest month, Harrick said, dressed in a sneaker company-issue warmup suit. The casual wear belied the intensity he's brought to his new job - head coach at the University of Rhode Island.

``The regular season wasn't bad at all, but boy, when it got to the tournament, that was hard,'' Harrick said. ``To me, the NCAA Tournament is without a doubt the greatest show on earth.''

And Harrick, the ringmaster of the Bruins' 1995 national championship run, had been reduced to a sideshow, doing occasional television commentary and trying to recover a career destroyed by a scandal last fall.

Harrick got caught cheating at UCLA, falsifying an expense report to cover up a potential recruiting violation. He lied about the number of Bruins players he took out to dinner with recruits. A year and a half after becoming the first Westwood coach since John Wooden to win it all, he was fired.

He has landed at URI, journeying from the highest profile job at the No. 1 jock school in the country to a mid-level steppingstone in the smallest state in the union.

Harrick is 59 and in his 37th year of coaching after doing time in the high school, assistant college and head-coaching ranks.

By himself, Harrick has generated an instant buzz at this out-of-the-way, 105-year-old campus carved from the Northeast woods. ``What it's done is given us access to some recruits that we didn't have access to before, and allowed us to schedule games against schools we couldn't play before,'' said Rhode Island athletic director Ron Petro. ``And his name makes it more attractive for TV.''

Moreover, Harrick gives ammunition to a school eager to build a new on-campus arena to replace its current 3,900-seat facility and make a move into the big time, a la UConn and UMass.

The fax machine in Harrick's bare-walled office is a constant whirr, and an inch-thick stack of phone messages forms one of dozens of piles on his desk. At a time of year when other big-name coaches can play golf and begin collecting money from their basketball camps, Harrick is frantically selling his program to recruits, selling himself to URI boosters, selling his condo in California.

``We're really excited about the challenge that this job offers,'' Harrick says. ``Can you do it at Rhode Island?''

He says he has moved on from the UCLA firing, that what's past is past. Yet he can't disguise the bitterness he feels toward the school and its athletic director, Peter Dalis.

``They never talked to me, never gave me a chance to discuss anything,'' Harrick said. ``That you're in education and one human being can destroy what it's taken you 37 years to build. I had an enterprise, I ran camps, had a terrific speaking situation, and ended up losing everything because of that. They call you off the practice floor three weeks later, and they tell you it's over. It was orchestrated, it was planned, and you don't have any say in it.''

Harrick admits he lied. He doesn't think it should have cost him his job. ``My initial reaction was, don't I have any credits built up?'' he asks. ``That program was in the toilet when I got there. They'd been to two NCAA tournaments in seven years. We averaged 24 wins a year without a conference tournament. We capped it off with a national championship. We made huge amounts of money for the university. Huge! The bookstore made millions. That they couldn't come to a compromise was just really sad.''

He cuts himself short. He says, again, that he doesn't want to dwell on the past, or at least not the recent past.

On a 53-degree day in late May, he actually compares Rhode Island with Pepperdine, the posh Malibu school where he coached before UCLA.

``It's got the water nearby, it's got great kids looking for a good education, and a wonderful social life,'' he said.

He praised the team he inherited from Al Skinner - who left for Boston College - which went 20-10 last year, made the NCAA and returns four starters.

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Photo: With his success at nationally renowned UCLA, Jim Harrick already has injected excitement to the University of Rhode Island program.

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