Cougars mask their good hires

Like a Beckett play, the introductory press conference at Washington State University grows increasingly spare, to the point of comic nothingness.

The Cougars played musical chairs in the baseball program this week, launching the era of a new head coach with a grand announcement on … Memorial Day. Possibly it could have been done at another time even less likely to draw public notice to a positive development, but apparently the Cougs have other good news to hush up on the Fourth of July, Christmas and the Day After Tomorrow.

Then on Thursday, the school named its new volleyball coach at the first press conference in college athletic history at which not only was the coach an excused no-show – he had class – but the athletic director and his deputy headhunter were elsewhere, too. There was a telephone hookup that purportedly included all the principals, but for all we know it could have been another episode of “Crank Yankers.”

Will athletic director Jim Sterk sneak his next hire into Bohler Gym via the alley loading dock, inside a crate of “Cougar Pride” T-shirts?

If this seems like panning the wedding cake for having a pinch too much sugar, well, perhaps it is. But as the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression, and surely you do not want that impression reflected in a shrug.

Not that Donnie Marbut and Brian Heffernan aren’t good choices and good fits for Wazzu, two terms that are not necessarily interchangeable. There is plenty to feel good about with each hire – just as there are the usual regrets about timing and circumstance that accompany any coaching change.

Heffernan, the new volleyball hire, would probably pick up on that particular vibe were he not so thrilled about being a head coach for the first time.

Thus, the former University of Minnesota assistant stopped short of acknowledging that Cougar volleyball is at uneasy crossroads, coming off its worst season in 14 years and dealing with the departure of Cindy Fredrick, who oversaw the growth of the game into something truly special at WSU.

“A crossroads?” he said. “I think we’re at a point where we’re rebuilding, but that the nucleus of that is in place. It may take a little while.”

Or it may take longer.

A second plunge into the NCAA’s Elite Eight in 2002 masks it, but the fact is there were just as many losing seasons for the Cougs in the past six years as there were winners. And if last year’s 9-20 flameout was mostly a function of too much graduation, more unsettling was the fact that seven players bailed on the program between season’s end and the time Fredrick lunged at the opportunity to return to her native Iowa. That kind of unwelcome roster churn has, at various times in the past 15 years, resulted in debilitating competitive setbacks in football, basketball and other sports at WSU. Maybe the Cougs are actually at a point where they’re re-rebuilding.

Heffernan knows about the wounds, but thinks they’re scabbing over.

“I think the team is in a pretty good frame of mind,” he said. “Considering they’ve lost seven of their teammates and their coaching staff, they’re surprisingly very optimistic and ready to move forward and that’s a great, great sign.”

As the No. 2 man for Minnesota’s Final Four team of 2003, Heffernan’s pedigree is certainly impressive enough, yet it’s understandable if Wazzu – as has been speculated – first offered the job to Utah’s Beth Launiere, preferring someone with head coaching experience. Yet there are those in Big Ten country who wonder if Iowa shouldn’t have first asked Heffernan, who interviewed there, and not Fredrick. But that’s all eye-of-the-beholder stuff.

What Heffernan beholds in Pullman is a horizon expanded by what Fredrick accomplished, yet all the more challenging because the Pac-10’s profile as the nation’s toughest league gets even tougher when a former bottom feeder like Cal becomes a contender. Hence another reason for the 9-20.

“Cindy and Farokh did a marvelous job of building the program with the help of the administration,” he said. “What happens is, you can’t be great every year. Maybe some schools can, but you’re not going to be an Elite Eight team every year. What you can do is buy into the process, develop a team culture of being with and for each other and letting the results come from that. I just think we have so much to build on.”

That used to be what was said about baseball, too, but in the 10 years since the retirement of Cougar icon Bobo Brayton, the foundation crumbled. Steve Farrington presided over the first round of body blows and then turned things over to Tim Mooney, whose tenure saw not only more on-field humiliations but the added bonus of dirty laundry – charges of physical abuse and widespread player disenchantment.

Marbut stepped into that hornet’s nest last summer as Mooney’s fourth new assistant in as many years, and while all parties deny he was hired to wait for either Sterk or Mooney himself to pull the plug, the move couldn’t have been more transparent if they’d given him Mooney’s parking space up front. Consider only that Marbut signed a three-year contract as an assistant; Farrington, as the head coach for six years, never lived on more than a year-to-year deal.

With Mooney already having lost both his team’s respect and any semblance of support – to say nothing of the abuse issues – why the charade had to string out for another nine months is a mystery, though to Mooney’s credit the Cougars did make gains both in the won-lost record and relative dugout harmony. In that respect, at least when Mooney was on double secret probation he was a faster study than former women’s hoops coach Jenny Przekwas, the confrontation queen.

Even as he was slow to accept responsibility.

Indeed, he still hasn’t. At the Memorial Day changeover, Mooney essentially piled all his program’s problems at the doorstep of The Spokesman-Review, which had the temerity to bring the player accusations – with corroborations – to light. He called the August 2003 story “not an accurate look at the program,” even though 24 of the 27 players interviewed had contributed to the litany of complaints, and Mooney was given ample opportunity to counter with his version of events.

It’s an easy solace to pin your problems on the media boogeyman, and a common enough one, too (for WSU reference see Eastman, Kevin). It just doesn’t hold up when recruits, players and even assistant coaches are fleeing the program before one drop of ink is spilled in telling the tale.

And it couldn’t be more disingenuous for Mooney to proclaim that “we couldn’t get out from under that,” referring to the S-R story, when in fact with Marbut’s help the Cougars had an undeniably promising recruiting year and got within a sniff of the playoffs. But this is what Wazzu gets for not having this press conference on Labor Day – last Labor Day – instead of Memorial Day.

Sometimes, goodbye is enough said.