Frieder should be happy that his past has passed

Sporting News, The, Sept 22, 1997 by Mike DeCourcy

The first impulse is to figure Bill Frieder might like to take a mulligan on Michigan, not that he'd know what a mulligan is. Frieder is purely a basketball guy, immersed in the sport as intensely as anyone in the business.

It was back in 1989 Frieder made the puzzling decision to leave the Wolverines and accept the job of elevating Arizona State. He was lured by an expanded paycheck and the notion of driving through less snow on his way to work, but it seemed odd to leave a school with an embarrassment of talent for one mostly about nice buildings and potential.

Frieder's tenure at Arizona State ended when he resigned last week, but not before he had lost 108 games, two recruits following a sexual assault incident, center Mario Bennet as an early entry to the NBA draft and plenty of sleep over the FBI's investigation of alleged point-shaving in the Sun Devils program and the recent arrest of two players for allegedly stealing a CD player.

If he had stayed at Michigan, he could have avoided all that and perhaps been involved in the NCAA title the Wolverines won a few weeks after he accepted the ASU job was ordered to leave UM by then-atheletic director Bo Schembechler.

But that means Frieder also might have been around for the current dissection of the Michigan program by the Detroit newspapers and attorneys hired by the school, for the dismissals from the program of forward Albert White and guard Brandun Hughes and for the devolution of college basketball culture initiated and facilitated by the Fab Five.

It is amazing, the coincidence. Arizona State and Michigan lapsed into chaos along the same timeline, achieving success in the first half of the 1990s (moderate in the Sun Devils' case, spectacular for the Wolverines) and attracting intense scrutiny thereafter.

As easy as it is to look back on Frieder's move to ASU as an error in judgment, Michigan basketball has been no real bargain lately for his former assistant, Steve Fisher.

"This is a tough, tough business," Frieder says. "You're very vulnerable as a coach."

Firing and job-seeking, therefore, have become year-round avocations, even for the employed. ASU's first choice was Utah's Rick Majerus, but it's likely he is worn out by a summer of international travel (with USA Basketball and his Utes) and not the type to abandon his school so close to the season. The loyalty of George Washington's Mike Jarvis is unquestioned, given the number of jobs he has rejected, but he might feel more comfortable making the move.

If Jarvis does not want it, former Phoenix Suns coach Paul Westphal would be a great choice, or it may be best to find a solid interim coach and take another run at Majerus in March.

Frieder and Arizona State athletic director Kevin White called this a mutual decision. But the day before news of Frieder's resignation leaked, he was making the first home visit of the contact period. He was still fighting the point-shaving probe.

"If people are waiting for me to quit," he told Arizona Republic columnist David Casstevens in August, "they're out of luck."

They stopped waiting and justifiably so. It's important to remember most players who caused problems at ASU were not only marginal people, they were marginal players. The guy who lured Glen Rice, Loy Vaught, Rumeal Robinson, Terry Mills and Gary Grant to Michigan saw the talent pipeline go dry in the desert.

It's a lot like that at his old school, where the Fab Five attitude was acceptable when accompanied by Fab Five results, but quickly grew tiresome when the stage on which that act played was the NIT.

Young guns

The best college basketball team not competing in college surely belongs to Winchesdon (Mass). School. Coach Mike Byrnes' prep school roster includes several who signed with major programs last year: forward Tyrus Boswell (Mississippi State), point guard Rashon Burno and small forward Chris Seabrooks (Pittsburgh), guard Leon Jones (Michigan) and forward Jackie Rogers (Syracuse). Winchendon also has swingman Tavoris Bell, who committed to Rhode Island for next season, and 6-10 center Donald Little, who is being recruited by Cincinnati.

Mike DeCourcy covers college basketball for the Cincinnati Enquirer. E-mail him at decourcy@sportingnews.com and see his responses at www.sportingnews.com and on our AOL site (keyword: TSN).