Gophers' Haskins' job in turmoil

"Don't you know me, what I stand for as a man, as a person?" Clem Haskins said on the night he was confronted with accusations of academic fraud in his basketball program at Minnesota.

Last month's claims by a former tutor, and accusations since then that Haskins gave hundreds of dollars to a former player, have tarnished the character and threatened the career of an old-school coach who only two years ago was held up as a model for winning the "right way" in the murky world of big-time college basketball.

The investigation of Haskins' program is expected to take several months, but speculation is rampant that it could end with the university seeking a new coach.

AP PHOTO Minnesota basketball coach Clem Haskins has dealt with numerous problems this past season including a scandal involving several of his top players.

Haskins declined to return several telephone calls in preparation for this story.

"I hope somewhere in this whole thing the people of Minnesota remember he did a lot of positive things," said Butch Moening, who coached former Gophers star Sam Jacobson at Park High School and now is athletic director there.

Haskins came to Minnesota after another NCAA probe in 1986. While the program he left behind at Western Kentucky became the subject of another investigation in 1988, Haskins rebuilt the crippled Golden Gophers on the strength of his no-nonsense personality and his ability to coax the most out of his players.

But last month's accusations suggest plenty of gray area in the world of right and wrong that Haskins espoused.

"I'd be very surprised if this is true in its entirety," said Western Kentucky sports information director Paul Just, who has known Haskins since the coach starred as a player at the school. "But you never know what's in between. That's the catch on these things."

There never seemed to be anything in between with Haskins throughout his 13 seasons with the Gophers.

He inherited a program that had been hit with NCAA restrictions following an investigation of Jim Dutcher's tenure. The Gophers lost 21 consecutive Big Ten games early in Haskins' career, but the team regrouped. Haskins led Minnesota to the Final 16 in his third season and a regional final in his fourth year, where a 93-91 loss to Georgia Tech kept the Gophers from their first trip to the Final Four in 1990.

The Gophers sputtered for the next several years, but Haskins finally took them to the Final Four in 1997, where the best season in school history (31-4) ended two wins short of a championship.

But it is that era, the time between Haskins' biggest successes on the national scene, that has come into question.

At Haskins' request, the university allowed the academic counseling unit for the men's basketball team to be separated from the counseling units for the school's other teams and put under control of the athletic department. It was in this insulated environment that former tutor Jan Gangelhoff says she did research papers, take-home exams and other course work for at least 20 players.

"In the two years I was there, I never did a thing," former guard Russ Archambault, a little-used freshman on the Final Four team, told the Saint Paul Pioneer Press when it first reported the accusations.

Haskins has denied Gangelhoff's claims. He also denies later ones by Archambault, who said Haskins gave him cash - $200 to $300 at a time. Haskins kicked Archambault off the team during the second half of the 1997-98 season for violating unspecified team rules.

This is the second time in his coaching career that Haskins has been accused of paying players.

In 1988, two years after Haskins moved to Minnesota, eight former Western Kentucky players told the Courier-Journal of Louisville that cash, clothes, and other improper benefits were given to members of the team through boosters and coaches between 1981 and 1986.

Haskins, who coached at his alma mater from 1980-86, denied those accusations. In 1989, the NCAA determined there was no need for an investigation of Western Kentucky's program, citing insufficient reliable evidence.

University president Thomas Meredith also pointed out that no one named in the claims - including Haskins - remained at the school.

"I am firmly convinced that our current basketball program is operating within the guidelines set by the NCAA," Meredith said in his 1989 report to the NCAA.

When it came to school work, Haskins admits he had a shaky foundation.

He grew up as the son of a poor farmer in rural Kentucky and didn't start school until 8. He first attended a one-room school for blacks until the third grade, and he often missed large chunks of school to work on the farm.

But because of his enormous basketball ability and his hard work in the classroom, Haskins overcame that slow start. He has been a strong advocate for academics during his coaching career and believes in the importance of his players earning their degrees.

At Western Kentucky, Haskins set up the same type of academic counseling structure he later brought to Minnesota. Former Western Kentucky athletic director John Oldham, who coached Haskins in college and gave him his first coaching job, lauds Haskins for that move.

"I thought I did a good job by ... staying on top of (players) to go to class," Oldham said. "But coach Haskins was the one to put the money where his mouth was. He was the first to hire an academic advisor."

Oldham said Haskins would do whatever it took to see his players succeed in school.

"I think he would do anything he could to help a kid academically, because he wanted his kids to graduate," Oldham said. "I don't think he would cheat, but I think he would do everything but cheat."

But not many Minnesota players have been graduating. NCAA records showed the school's male basketball players have the worst record of earning diplomas in the Big Ten - about one of every four who entered as freshmen from 1983 to 1991 graduated, compared to a conference average of about one in two.

In 1997, the university returned oversight of basketball player counseling to an academic services unit instead of the athletic department. McKinley Boston, the school's vice president of student development and athletics, cited poor communication as the major reason.

Elayne Donahue, who often clashed with Haskins before she retired recently as director of academic counseling, gave another reason: She said the university was afraid the arrangement would jeopardize its NCAA accreditation.

Haskins' words from his 1997 autobiography "Breaking Barriers" suggest the tug between his values and the pressure to succeed.

"It's not how many games or championships I've won, it's the lives that I've touched along the way," Haskins wrote. "Along the way, of course, you need to win enough games in order to earn the respect of people.

"Respect. If there's one thing that I've always strived for in my life it's that I want to earn people's respect."

After the story broke last month, Haskins held fast to the moral high ground, even though the contrast between his words and the allegations against him leaves a cloudy picture of what matters most to him.

"We don't put winning and losing ahead of what's right," Haskins said. "Some people sell their souls to win. I don't do that. Never have, never will."

04-09-99