Tide’s Murphy had a shot at Huskies head job

TUSCALOOSA | If Patrick Murphy had elected to pursue the position, he might be coaching the Washington Huskies against the University of Alabama this weekend in the NCAA Softball Tournament.

Instead, it’s the other way around.

Murphy, now in his ninth season as head coach of the fifth-ranked Crimson Tide, was approached after the 2004 season about the head coaching vacancy at Washington. After some consideration he informed the school he was happy at Alabama, and the Huskies hired UW graduate Heather Tarr to take over a scandal-ridden program.

Murphy and Tarr converge this weekend at Husky Softball Stadium on the UW campus in Seattle, where 11th-seeded Alabama will meet sixth-seeded Washington in a best-of-three Super Regional on Friday and Saturday. The winner will advance to next week’s Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City, Okla.

“Basically it was about four phone calls and that was it," Murphy said of Washington’s overture. “They wanted me to come out and everything."

What turned Murphy off most of all was the possibility of NCAA sanctions against the program. Head coach Teresa Wilson was dismissed after 13 years in the wake of a scandal that involved the team’s physician and an athletic trainer handing out large doses of painkillers and other powerful drugs to players without prescriptions, as well as allegations of Wilson exceeding NCAA limits on practice time and having her players spied on away from the field.

Dr. William Scheyer, known to UW players as “Dr. Feelgood" and “Candy Man," pleaded guilty in 2005 to illegally obtaining prescription narcotics, and athletic trainer Craig Moriwaki was also dismissed.

“You didn’t know what the NCAA was going to come down with," Murphy said. “I said to myself I’d never go anywhere where there were NCAA sanctions. It didn’t make much sense at the time."

Tarr took over in 2005, leaving her position as associate head coach at Pacific. She has the Huskies in their third straight Super Regional, and wants to take the program back to the WCWS to regain the respectability Washington had before the scandal.

“I definitely think that any time you can get to the World Series it puts your program back up on the national pedestal," Tarr said. “For the last two years we’ve been one or two games away.

“To get this far you’ve had a great season and achieved a lot, but you’re an out or an inch away from being on that pedestal."

Tarr, who participated in the WCWS twice as a player and once as an assistant, had to change the program’s mentality and attitude.

“They had gone to the World Series [in 2004] under a lot of controversy," she said. “In the last couple of years we had to get back to the basics of what this program has always been about.

“The fuel that fired the program when I took over was fuel from outside. I wanted the motivation to come from inside, from hard work and the offseason program and fundamentals. We’ve gotten back to the basics in that respect."

Tarr followed the coaching search that targeted Murphy and Oklahoma’s Patty Gasso from afar until the high-profile candidates withdrew from the process.

“I think I remember reading his name in the paper early in the process," Tarr said of Murphy. “I was in the state of California coaching, watching it play out with all the big names. I was obviously in competition with those via the newspapers.

“It’s interesting how the ball bounces."

Reach Tommy Deas at tommy.deas@tuscaloosanews. com or at 205-722-0224.