Baylor, Georgia turn around once-troubled programs

OMAHA, Neb. | National Association of Basketball Coaches executive director Jim Haney was here Wednesday, and seeing him reminded me of a meeting five years ago in Chicago.

More than 300 Division I basketball coaches were summoned by the NABC to discuss a game gone terribly wrong. Scandals piled up. Embarrassing incidents filled headlines.

Topping the list of infamy were Baylor and Georgia.

The Bears’ transgressions started with the murder of a player by a teammate and a coach who tried to hide violations in the program by portraying the deceased player as a drug dealer.

The Bulldogs were awash in academic fraud and extra benefits. NCAA head man Myles Brand described the coaches’ behavior as “a crime wave.”

But look where the programs are today, in Washington, D.C., preparing for play in the NCAA Tournament, in consecutive games, no less.

As an upset winner of the Southeastern Conference tournament, Georgia is a No. 14 seed taking on third-seeded Xavier in today’s first game at 11:20 a.m.

Around 1:50 p.m., 11th-seeded Baylor takes on sixth-seeded Purdue. If the Bulldogs and Bears win, they’ll meet in a West Regional second-round game.

“It’s good to see them where they are,” Haney said.

Instead of where they’ve been. The recovery wasn’t easy for either program. Shutting down basketball, or at least de-emphasizing the sport, was part of the conversation at Baylor.

Instead, the Bears cleaned house, starting with coach Dave Bliss, and started over. They took themselves out of one postseason, and the NCAA stripped away their nonconference games in another.

But coach Scott Drew strung together several top recruiting classes, which produced this season’s fifth-place finish in the Big 12.

“The great thing is you have so much work to do, you don’t really have time to think about anything else,” Drew said. “We knew the harder we worked, the sooner we’d be able to reach our goals.”

Jim Harrick and his staff were fired at Georgia after it was revealed a player got credit for courses he didn’t take, and it was revealed that Harrick’s son, Jim Harrick Jr., taught a sham class.

The Bulldogs hired Dennis Felton from Western Kentucky, and he immediately laid down the law. No facial hair below the lip, no gaudy jewelry when representing the team, coats and ties on the road, no headphones on road trips, no hats indoors, mandatory team breakfasts.

The discipline brought results in citizenship, but not on the floor. Georgia had been to the NCAA in 2001 and 2002 and was heading there when the scandal hit in 2003. The Bulldogs told the NCAA not to offer an at-large invitation, and they hadn’t been dancing since then.

Felton was on the verge of getting fired. Georgia lost 10 of its last 12 regular-season games and took no momentum into the SEC tournament. But winning four straight, including two in one day because of the tornado damage to the Georgia Dome, gave the Bulldogs an improbable title and likely saved Felton’s job.

The trip down memory lane five years ago isn’t pleasant. Iowa State coach Larry Eustachy was forced to resign after he was photographed at student parties. Missouri was dealing with the Ricky Clemons saga. But Baylor and Georgia, once partners in college hoop crime sprees, took their place Wednesday among the 64 teams remaining in the field.

“It speaks to the institutions and it also speaks to the players you bring in,” Drew said. “If you bring in the quality players that do the right thing and they’re high-character kids, good things are going to happen.”