FRESNO'S FOLLIES

Drugs, alcohol, arrests add up to chaos

Jerry Tarkanian called a player's mother after the latest arrests a week
ago, and felt the shock and bewilderment and helplessness in her soft,
sobbing voice. Here was another kid Tarkanian had given a second, third and
fourth chance, another of his reclamation projects gone bad, and now he had
to tell the mother that her son, center Avondre Jones, had been arrested
and kicked off the Fresno State team.

"She was all shook up, heartsick," Tarkanian said. "She still can't believe
it. Avondre would have graduated. He made the honor roll last spring. He
just screwed himself all up."

Even by Tarkanian's turbulent standards, the Fresno State team he takes
into the NIT semifinals tonight at Madison Square Garden has gone through a
hellish season.

Assaults and arrests. Fists, guns and samurai swords. Booze, drugs and
rehab. Six suspensions, one dismissal, and lingering suspicions of
point-shaving.

"It's been the most difficult year, by far," Tarkanian said, weariness in
his scratchy voice, rings around his raccoon eyes, lids droopy as ever as
he boarded a jet for New York.

Tarkanian knew tough times at Long Beach State and UNLV, each placed on
probation during his reign, and he survived a long legal joust with the
NCAA. He also knew his share of triumph, capturing the Final Four at UNLV
in 1990 and coming into this season with the best winning percentage among
active coaches at 667-145.

But nothing in all his years -- not even the infamous photos of former
Rebel players in a hot tub with a convicted gambler that led to his exit
from UNLV in 1991 -- compared to this 21-11 season of utter chaos and
surprising success.

"I don't plan on doing this very long," said the towel-chomping
67-year-old, who is in his third year at his alma mater (all with at least
20 wins and NIT berths) and has a contract through next season. "I would
just like to turn this thing around. I thought we could have done it by
now. I'm disappointed we didn't."

Tarkanian's recruiting style wherever he has coached has been to place
talent ahead of character and brains, to take kids who have had problems
with alcohol or drugs or the law and give them a way out through
basketball. He'll take kids from obscure junior colleges, or transfers who
were unhappy at major universities. Anyone who has The Game.

Unlike coaches at schools such as Stanford and North Carolina, who are in
the Final Four, Tarkanian hasn't been restricted to students who must have
high Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and good grades to be accepted. This
shark is a bottom fisher.

Sometimes his approach has worked, reshaping the lives of players like
former UNLV star Larry Johnson or Fresno standout Kendrick Brooks. But too
often players drift through his program with little education and no
degree. And no matter how they turn out, his methods can be perilous for
the schools involved. When comedians joke that Fresno State is California's
newest penitentiary, the school has more than an image problem. Alumni
scream -- at least those opposed to winning at all costs -- and good
prospective students may stay away.

"There's no question there are some risks that are taken," said Fresno
State president John Welty, who considered pulling the team out of the NIT
after Jones' arrest with freshman recruit Kenny Brunner for investigation
of assault and robbery with deadly weapons.

"In a perfect world, I would prefer we didn't have to deal with these
things," Welty said. "But if there's proper review and good assessment
made, it certainly can be very worthwhile. He's had a number of successes,
and in my mind it's far better to have an individual who gets a good
educational experience and becomes a productive person, as opposed to
someone that continues to have difficulty and really becomes a burden on
society."

After an outcry by some Fresno State faculty about the "shame" the
basketball team's "renegade program" had brought to the university, the
school last fall instituted one of the toughest codes of conduct in the
country for athletes to complement a rigorous drug-testing policy.

"If you tested every basketball player in the country the way we do on
marijuana," Tarkanian said, "a high percentage would have had the same
problem."

The school also passed a new recruitment policy, effective with the
incoming class, that requires special review of players convicted of
misdemeanors and, in most cases, bars those with felonies. That Fresno
State felt it had to create such policies -- they were spurred by the
recruitment of former Virginia player Courtney Alexander after he was
convicted of beating his fiancee -- speaks volumes about the school's
concern about the athletes it has been accepting and the damage they're
doing to its reputation.

"The community drove this institution to hire Tarkanian," said John
Shields, a professor of agricultural economics who proposed the code of
conduct for athletes as a member of the Academic Senate's executive
committee. "There was mass hysteria out there to hire Tarkanian. But there
are other people, including myself, who felt the winning at any cost was
not worth it."

Tarkanian brushed aside worries about the new restrictions on recruiting.
(Picture: Photo)

"I don't care about that," he said. "We haven't had a felony (recruit) all
year anyway. I think the program's working real well. Last spring, we had
the highest grade point average that they've had in the last six years --
2.7. This fall, we had a 2.3 with our guys, and that was the second highest
in the last six years."

Fresno State, governed by Western Athletic Conference standards, requires
athletes to maintain a minimum 1.7 average as freshmen, 1.8 as sophomores,
1.9 as juniors, and 2.0 as seniors on a 4.0 scale. Regular students there
must maintain at least a 2.0 average all four years.

Jones was a typically rogue recruit with a troubled past and a lot of
basketball talent that was going to waste. A 1993 McDonald's High School
All-America who cheated on his SAT test, according to self-described
"sports consultant" Nate Cebrun in a magazine article last year, Jones had
planned on going to UNLV until Tarkanian was driven out.

Jones, from Lakewood, Calif., near Los Angeles, then floated from Southern
California to Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and back to USC,
where his poor grades, class absences and misbehavior led to several
suspensions. His mother called Tarkanian, pleading with him to take her son
under his wing. Tarkanian agreed, brought him to Fresno State last year
without a scholarship for a semester, then put him on scholarship when his
schoolwork improved.

"It was his last chance," Tarkanian said. "I thought he would do real well."

When the Bulldogs won their first two games this season and were ranked No.
12, Tarkanian believed he might have his best defensive team ever and take
it to the Final Four. That idea began to fade when guard Chris Herren, who
had problems with drugs and alcohol as a teen in Fall River, announced he
was struggling again with substance abuse.

Herren, the team's leading scorer as a sophomore last year and one of the
players named in an ongoing federal grand jury investigation of
point-shaving, missed five games but came back clean, confident and on top
of his game.

"We've had a lot of guys over the years who have been really successful,
who just needed a second chance and some help, and things worked out well
for them," Tarkanian said. "Some people don't want to give them a chance. I
think we should."

Neither Herren nor anyone else from the team has been questioned by the
grand jury in the yearlong probe, and Tarkanian dismisses the allegations
of point-shaving as nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors that have
ceased to be an issue for him. But U.S. Attorney Carl Faller, in Fresno,
said the grand jury investigation is continuing.

Hardly a week has gone by this season when at least one of the Bulldogs
wasn't in trouble. Highly touted recruit Rafer Alston was suspended at the
start after his ex-girlfriend told campus police he grabbed her by the neck
and threw her to the ground. Alston also was convicted of misdemeanor
battery against two neighbors and sentenced to 40 hours of community
service.

Other Bulldogs to serve suspensions included Terrance Roberson, Daymond
Forney (twice), Tremaine Fowlkes, Jones and Brunner. Another player,
Winfred Walton, wasn't eligible until December because of transfer
requirements, and Willie Farley quit the team when Herren returned, saying
he didn't expect to get enough playing time. Only two of the Bulldogs' 10
scholarship players -- reserves Demetrius Porter and Larry Abney -- have
been eligible the entire season.

"We've had guys suspended 3-to-4 weeks at a time, and they can't practice
with us," Tarkanian said. "Then it takes them another 2-to-3 weeks to make
up for all the time they missed. And we've had injuries. We got three guys
with bad backs now. So we've just been out of sync through most of the
year."

Of all the unsavory incidents, Tarkanian said, the worst was the arrest of
Jones and Brunner. It came, incredibly, just 30 hours after the team's
problems were the focus of a "60 Minutes" segment, and a few hours after
the Bulldogs beat Memphis last Monday to reach the NIT quarterfinals.

Police arrested Jones and Brunner at 2:30 a.m. after a 22-year-old who
claimed to be a former student, Colin DeForrest of Puyallup, Wash., told
officers he was threatened with two handguns and beaten with samurai swords
at Jones' apartment before being robbed of $275 in cash and a $500 camera.
DeForrest said he and the players were drinking whiskey and talking in a
friendly way before an argument broke out.

"Avondre's arrest really hurt a lot because it absolutely made no sense,"
Tarkanian said. "Here was a kid who was on his last leg, and he's got good
parents. His mom and dad were at our game against Memphis in Fresno just
before that happened. Most people kind of believe him now that that was a
phony deal, that the guy who (filed a complaint) was trying to extort some
money out of him.

"I think that's all turning out to be a hoax. I mean the guy who made the
charges left town the next day, and they found out that he's had a criminal
record. Everybody in town says that thing will be dropped in the next day
or two."

Jones and Brunner, who were released by a judge on their own recognizance,
proclaimed they were innocent. But Tarkanian and Welty noted the players
shouldn't have been drinking and flashing guns and swords in the first
place.

Welty almost pulled the team out of the NIT, and said he will do it even
now if any player disgraces the school again.

"This type of behavior," he said, "is not going to be accepted."