Paul Westphal

Paul Westphal will walk into the past today when he watches USC play Arizona State at the University Activity Center in Tempe. He will see former UCLA guard Henry Bibby, now the Trojan coach, and will talk with Jim Hefner, an assistant coach during Westphal's three seasons at USC and now the analyst for Trojan radio broadcasts.

The Seattle SuperSonics said they had some interest in Phil Jackson as their new coach. Instead, they decided to hire Paul Westphal to replace George Karl. "We interviewed four outstanding candidates for the job and the speculation that we were waiting to talk to a fifth candidate [Jackson] was accurate, but the further we got into the process the more evident it became that Paul was the right man for this job," President Wally Walker said Wednesday in Seattle.

Paul Westphal planned to be an author this year, sitting on the sand near his Manhattan Beach home and writing a book about his life as an NBA coach and player. His autobiography, if he ever gets back to it, just got better, one of the chapters all but written when Pepperdine, in Westphal's third game as coach, stunned UCLA on Wednesday at Pauley Pavilion.

In a surprise move Wednesday, USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett fired basketball Coach Charlie Parker and named first-year assistant Henry Bibby to the position for the season's remaining nine games. Garrett denied in a news conference that former Phoenix Sun Coach Paul Westphal had been contacted to return to his alma mater as coach next season, but USC sources said Bibby has been asked to remain as Westphal's top assistant in the event he is hired. Bibby denied that.

Paul Westphal would rather discuss Pepperdine's strong start than the coaching situation at his alma mater, but he's linked to USC and the position is open. That's a new twist on a familiar subject for Westphal, one he acknowledged he couldn't ignore. "You hear your name out there, I'm not oblivious to that, but coaches love to minimize distractions," Westphal said in his campus office. "I'm going to do the best in my ability to just focus on playing UCLA....

Paul Westphal was busy winning a basketball game Friday night. The court his team was playing on was only a few miles away from Veterans' Memorial Coliseum, but it seemed like light years away to Westphal. Westphal, a five-time All-Pro guard, hasn't played in a National Basketball Assn. game for a couple of years. He has also given up playing the NBA arbitration game, trying to get the Phoenix Suns to pay him the year's salary he feels he is owed.

Talk about a transition game. Go from the NBA to college basketball, the way Paul Westphal has, and one of the first things you're confronted with is the labyrinthine NCAA rulebook. When Westphal took the Pepperdine job in April, five months after having been fired as coach of the Seattle SuperSonics, he was familiar with the ability of only one player on this season's team. His son, Michael, is a walk-on junior guard.

The fall of Westphal: Game over. Cuckoos win again. Paul Westphal, a nice easygoing guy and one especially beloved by his coaching peers, was axed by the Seattle SuperSonics last week and the only question was: What kept them? Westphal's team was supposed to be better, but he had a mutiny on his hands, with Vin Baker blaming him for everything that had gone wrong with his career and Vin's buddy, Gary Payton, pining for Westphal's predecessor, George Karl.

Despite a temporary glitch, it was a picture-perfect Sunday in Malibu for the Pepperdine men's basketball team. With clear, blue skies outside, players and coaches beamed sunny smiles inside the university's Heritage Hall when it was announced on television that the Waves will play Wake Forest in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Thursday at Arco Arena in Sacramento. Tipoff is at 11:30 a.m.

Will Kimble leaned forward, touching his chest just below his left shoulder. "If you want to feel it, you can," he said. There, implanted beneath his skin but easily felt through his shirt, is a defibrillator, designed to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm if it detects an irregular heartbeat.