Man, Coach Harrick looks great. He got a raw deal in Athens. No way he and our program should have been treated as they were.

One of , if not , the worst getting screwed moves in college basketball history!! Michael Adams set UGA Basketball back 20 years at least!! Jim Harrick was the best overall basketball coach we EVER had!! He was a player's coach, a fan's coach and ran the John Wooden UCLA system which was fun to watch and we were on our way to some great years at UGA!! Thanks Michael Adams!!!

sooo... I guess doing stupid **** and getting caught had nothing to do with it??

So true, Allan. Harrick was a helluva coach. I'm still so mad at Adams I could spit. It was a total screw job to our basketball program. After 15 years, we are only beginning to recover. I have a friend who sat in front of Adams at a game and overheard him say that, if he had to do it over again, he would not have withdrawn that team from post-season play. That sure doesn't make me feel any better. The jackass overreacted. The media was gunning for Harrick from the time he got to Athens. The school asked Harrick, Jr., to teach a PE class. Since when do full-time assistant coaches teach classes? The media blew that whole PE class thing out of proportion and it wrecked college careers of several of our players who were damn good people. Now, Harrick never should have recruited Cole, but he felt he needed a back-up PG. A look at tape would have shown him he was not SEC caliber and a talk to some involved with him would have made clear he was not UGA material. It was a mistake, but they did kick him off the team. To blow up the program over it all was just unconscionable.

Chuck, Harrick recruited 1 bad kid, which blew up in his face. He kicked him off the team, and Cole wanted to get back at him, making all kinds of spurious allegations. Why give a kid like that any credence? He had no credibility. ESPN's Schaap tried to have Harrick in a "gotcha moment" that Harrick didn't handle well, nor did he handle his interview with Vitale well. But all this stuff was soooo minor. We should have done a quick internal investigation, which would have found very little, and we should have defended Harrick and the program to the NCAA. Harrick was punished because of the PR hit the school took; he deserved better. And our program has paid for it ever since. I wish Harrick nothing but the best at Northridge. Really happy to see him back on a college bench. No, he's not perfect, but who of us is?

Schaap is another one who has made his career off his daddy's far superior name and reputation. Jeremy is a little jerk.

Was he a great coach?

Or a coach the really had to cheat to win?

No one will ever reallly know. What is known is that he thought the rules did not apply to him. He showed no remorse or contrition in the face of overwhelming evidence.

IMO, he did not get screwed. He screwed himself with his acts.

Without a date a doubt, Harrick is a great coach. All you had to do was watch his teams play. Just beautiful basketball.

Exactly what did he do that was so wrong? What was that overwhelming evidence? I don't recall it being much myself.

Monk, give us a break!
He did his deed, his son did his deed. It gave UGA a severe black eye . No matter how we all spin it, it was breaking the rules.
Adams wasn't the only decision maker in the deal either. The whole football coalition had some mighty influence to make that problem go away as well.
He did what he did no matter how severe?

Now, I still think he's a hell of a ciach and great BBall mind. Unfortunately he's got the black eye that doesn't go away. UGA wasn't his first black eye if I'm correct?

The cheating didn't help win. The broken rules added nothing, not one bit. Did he cheat for Jonas, Jarvis, Damien, Rashad, Chris, Ezra, or Steve?

That was his biggest off court issue. That he ever needed Cole in the first place thanks to a dozen other recruiting misses. Aside from those transfers and that one class of three, the rest of the players Harrock brought in made Dennis Felton a significant recruiting upgrade.

In the grand scheme of things, what Harrick did was nothing. Look at some of the stuff going on around college basketball in the last few years. Harrick's stuff was petty in comparison. The administration should have stood up for him and his team. Even Adams said a few years ago that they never should have withdrawn the team from tournament play - that is he had to do it over again, he would not have done that. I have a friend who sat right in front of him and heard him say it. If the allegations were so bad, Adam's never would have said it.

I guess they vacated all those wins without proof.

Thirty wins were vacated. He had seven years of show cause which was twice as long as a Pearl's.

His official record here was 33-31.

The only way to make his time here honorable is to color it in burnt orange and navy letters.

I will take a pass. I loved him when he was here, and hated it the minute he embarrassed my University.

Monkdawg said:

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Chuck, Harrick recruited 1 bad kid, which blew up in his face. He kicked him off the team, and Cole wanted to get back at him, making all kinds of spurious allegations. Why give a kid like that any credence? He had no credibility. ESPN's Schaap tried to have Harrick in a "gotcha moment" that Harrick didn't handle well, nor did he handle his interview with Vitale well. But all this stuff was soooo minor. We should have done a quick internal investigation, which would have found very little, and we should have defended Harrick and the program to the NCAA. Harrick was punished because of the PR hit the school took; he deserved better. And our program has paid for it ever since. I wish Harrick nothing but the best at Northridge. Really happy to see him back on a college bench. No, he's not perfect, but who of us is?

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He can only blame himself. He was told NOT to do the Vitale interview and he did it anyway. That sealed his fate.

That was a big mistake. I'm sure he didn't think his buddy Vitale would be tough on him.

Adams himself said he overreacted. He was protecting his image because he was trying to get the NCAA job. Those 30 wins were vacated voluntarily; it was not an NCAA decision. We dropped out of postseason play voluntarily, not by some edict from the NCAA. All the penalties we accepted we imposed upon ourselves. We completely overreacted and should have fought the NCAA to protect our program, but it wasn't important enough the administration to do that. UNC had 2 decades of a program basically handing out grades to student athletes. Did they roll over and play dead? No. They fought and defended themselves. Bruce Pearl still has a job, despite huge NCAA rules violations by an assistant. Why? Because Auburn defended themselves from the FBI and NCAA. Louisville skated on many allegations for a long time because the fought the NCAA. We didn't. We just caved. The whole notion of this PE class as some academic fraud was ridiculous. It boiled down to $300 for some Tony Cole expenses, $1,500 in player long distance phone calls, the "academic fraud" PE class and telling a couple of kids to lie about something related to it all (I don't remember that part). Harrick's show cause was more likely related to the fact that he had an issue at UCLA and at Rhode Island. It was not for the severity of the issues at UGA.

You are living in a land of BS.

I wish him well.

I also wish the UGA had never been in a position that they felt like they needed to hire him. We had basically a half century of not being sure we wanted a hoops program followed by one that was poorly lead. The only high points were a couple Hugh years and a couple Tubby years.

We desperately hired a guy whose action got him chased off from other schools. His reputation was poor.

He got here and legitimized that poor reputation. I blame the next dacade and a half on him and his actions., not the school for lacking backbone.

The class was a farce, it was academic fraud.

Tony Cole was his poor judgement.

He was arrogant and obviously less intelligent than he believed. He was caught, threw his kid under the bus and embarressed himself and UGA by treating everyone like they were stupid.

You prove it worked.

ugapitcrew writes: "The class was a farce, it was academic fraud."

LOL, an easy PE written exam that the bb players didn't need for academic eligibility. I had plenty of those back when, and was still granted a degree. Adams really hoodwinked you back then, didn't he!