The Punch

by John Feinstein

  The team continued to improve during Washington’s junior year. By now some of the recruiting work done by Young and Davis was starting to pay off. Davis had left to become the head coach at Lafayette, but the recruiting roots he had laid were starting to take hold. The team was built around D.C. area kids—Wilbur Thomas and Pete DeHaven from northern Virginia and Johnny Lloyd from D.C. And the star was from D.C. too.

  The Fort had now become the place to be whenever the Eagles were at home. During that 1971–72 season there were victories over Syracuse, Georgetown, Rhode Island, and Navy, and over George Washington twice. By season’s end AU was 16–8, the school’s best record since it had played Division II ball in the early sixties. There was talk around campus that the team might receive a bid to the National Invitation Tournament. In those days, an NIT bid was a big deal, since only twenty-five teams made it into the NCAA tournament and sixteen got into the NIT, many of them nationally ranked teams. (These days sixty-five teams make the NCAA field and forty go to the NIT.)

  “If it were now, we would have had a chance to go to the NCAAs that year, and we certainly would have been in the NIT,” Washington said. “But there were forty-one spots, not a hundred and five. That makes a big difference.”

  The Eagles went uninvited, which was disappointing. But all the key players, most notably Washington, were returning for another season.

  Maybe.

  The American Basketball Association had come into existence in 1967, and since the NBA did not then allow underclassmen into its draft (until the courts ordered them to, in 1973), the ABA did. Most of the players who left college early were academically suspect or were offered what was then considered mind-boggling money: multiyear contracts worth six figures a season. Washington had been spotted by scouts from the ABA and was coveted by Lou Carnesecca, the former St. John’s University coach who was then the coach of the New York Nets.

  This was before agents had become major factors on campus, luring players away from school. Even though Washington was now receiving national attention because of the numbers he was putting up, his life wasn’t anything like a comparable student-athlete’s would be now. If he were in college now, he would be surrounded by an entourage every time he left the locker room. He would have agents, or their bird-dogs, lined up to buy him dinner or a drink. He would be told repeatedly how he was wasting his time in college. Why play for nothing, he would hear constantly, when you can play for big bucks next year in The League? Even someone as level-headed as Washington might be tempted.

  Washington’s entourage most nights consisted of Pat, a couple of friends from the dorm, and Josh Rosenfeld, who had become a team manager as a freshman and was one year behind Kermit in school. He rarely stayed out late, and he didn’t drink or smoke. Occasionally his pals would encourage him to try a beer. He had no interest.

  “I never even considered it,” he said. “It didn’t fit in with who I was or with where I was trying to go.”

  By then where he was trying to go was clear: the NBA. “It became my obsession,” he said. “I had become a basketball player. That was what I was and who I was, it was my identity. I did well in school because I worked at it, and it never occurred to me not to get my degree in four years—back then, everyone did—but I never gave any thought after my sophomore year to doing anything after college except play basketball. It was as if my full name became ‘Kermit Washington, basketball star.’ That’s who I was to people who met me, and to myself.”

  At the end of his junior season, Kermit Washington, basketball star, had the chance to turn pro. The Nets called Tom Young and told him they would be willing to offer Washington a four-year deal for $400,000—guaranteed. Young knew that $400, much less $400,000, was a lot of money to Washington, and he would not have been the least bit surprised if Washington had been bowled over by such an offer. After all, the Nets were offering someone who had never had any money at all financial security beyond his wildest dreams to do the thing he loved best.

  He called Washington into his office one afternoon and told him what the Nets were offering. He said he would understand if Kermit felt he had to take the money. Washington looked at him as if he were from another planet.

  “That’s a great offer, Coach,” he said. “Please tell them thank you very much, I’m very flattered. But I’m not leaving school.”

  Young was stunned. He had expected that at the very least Kermit would want some time to think about the offer. He hugged him and told him he was convinced he was going to have a great senior season and be a high draft pick. He had not said that to him before his mind was made up because he didn’t want to appear to be trying to influence his decision.

  “It was a lot of money, no doubt about that,” Washington said years later. “But leave AU? There was no way. I had never been happier in my entire life than I was there. I knew we were going to have a good team my senior year, and I was excited about that. There was no way I was going to leave my friends behind. It actually surprised me that Coach Young thought I might leave.”

  “Looking back, maybe I underestimated Kermit’s maturity level a little bit,” Young said. “I knew what his financial situation was, and I thought that kind of money would tempt him. But he was always about things more important than money—even when he didn’t have any money.”

  Washington finished the school year with a grade point average of 3.4 and was chosen as an academic All-American. In the meantime, Marc Splaver was positioning him to take a run at being an All-American in basketball the following season. Splaver knew the chances of a player from a school like American making All-American were not great. Very few people outside the East Coast had any idea what American University was or who Kermit Washington was.

  Splaver knew he had to come up with something that would get people’s attention. Academic All-American was a good start, since very few players who were basketball All-Americans came close to being academic All-Americans. But he needed something more, something eye-catching. Aha! At season’s end, Splaver had figured out that Washington’s career averages were close to 20 points and 20 rebounds a game. There had only been a handful of players in history who had been 20-20 men.

  Keeping 20-20 in mind, Splaver came up with the Kermit Washington Eye Chart, reminding people that Kermit was a potential 20-20 man. At the very least it would get people’s attention, more so than a mind-numbing page of statistics.

  While Splaver was plotting his PR assault, Washington headed off to Colorado Springs for the Olympic Trials. His play had been good enough to get him invited to try out for the 1972 Olympic team, which would be coached by the legendary Henry Iba, who had won back-to-back national titles at Oklahoma A&M in 1945 and 1946. Iba was now retired, but he had been given the Olympic job for a third straight time. The Olympics were considered a walkover for U.S. basketball. The U.S. team had never lost a game in Olympic competition, dating back to 1936, and had won the gold medal in 1968 in Mexico City even though many of the best collegiate players, including Lew Alcindor, had boycotted in protest of the Vietnam War. Led by a (then) unknown high school senior named Spencer Haywood, the Americans still won with ease.

  Times were different in 1972. More of the top Americans showed up for the tryouts, including Maryland star Tom McMillen and Doug Collins of Illinois State. Even so, a number of the country’s best college players refused to participate, notably UCLA center Bill Walton, who had just led the Bruins to an undefeated season and their sixth straight national championship. Washington arrived in Colorado Springs thinking he had a chance to make the team. He had surprised people in the past, there was no reason he couldn’t do it again.

  But when he arrived he found himself in an unfamiliar world, one he wasn’t at all comfortable with. Iba had assembled some of the top coaches in the country to run the tryouts. Joe B. Hall, who was about to succeed Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, was there. Bob Knight, who had just finished his first season at Indiana, was there. Dean Smith, who had just coached North Carolina in h
is fourth Final Four, was there. Iba gave the coaches marching orders that were direct: He wanted a lot of discipline on this team. He wanted tough kids who could deal with adversity. He wanted kids who would respond to being yelled at by getting things right sooner rather than later.

  Washington was tough and he was disciplined. But as Young and Davis had discovered early on at American, he did not respond to yelling. “I hated it,” he said. “Every day in drills, every day in scrimmages. Screaming and hollering. It didn’t matter who was coaching you, you got yelled at.” He smiled. “You want to know how bad it was? I thought Bobby Knight was one of the nicer guys out there.”

  Whoo boy. Washington was so miserable that he called Young to tell him he was thinking about coming home. “All they do is yell at me, Coach,” he said. “I can’t play when I get yelled at like that.”

  Young was chagrined. “I felt a little bit guilty,” he said. “I had been so gentle with him that when someone got on him he just couldn’t deal with it. Maybe if I had forced him to learn that sometimes coaches do raise their voices to make a point, it wouldn’t have been such a shock to him to be in that environment. But when you have someone who works as hard as Kermit every single day, you feel like yelling at him is almost redundant. But it probably would have helped prepare him for other things if I had gotten on him a little bit more.”

  Young called Knight, whom he knew well from competing against him during Knight’s days as coach at Army, to try to explain that this was one kid who was going to respond better to a kinder, gentler coaching approach. Knight, according to Young, told him he understood and he knew that every kid was different, but the coaches were doing what Iba wanted. “Believe it or not, Tom,” Knight said, “I’m getting on them less than a lot of the other guys.”

  Washington stuck out the tryout camp but, to no one’s surprise, didn’t make the team. And thus he avoided being part of the first U.S. team to lose an Olympic basketball game, the infamous “double-inbounds,” gold medal game, in which the Soviet Union was given what amounted to a do-over on a last-second inbounds pass and scored on the second attempt to win the game. The U.S. team protested, lost the protest, and refused to accept their silver medals.

  The game was played in Munich. By then Kermit Washington’s senior year at American had started. He was exactly where he wanted to be.

  In the fall of 1972, the AU campus brimmed with anticipation. The school had only been playing Division I basketball for eleven years at that point, and the 16 victories the previous season had matched the 16 wins the 1967 team had recorded as AU’s all-time Division I high-water mark. With all the key players and the superstar back, expectations were high.

  The schedule was ambitious: Syracuse, St. John’s, Duquesne, and Rice were some of the nonconference opponents. There would be the usual conference games with the three Big Five schools— Temple, St. Joseph’s, La Salle. And there would be the local rivalry games with Georgetown, George Washington (twice), and Navy. Maryland wanted nothing to do with the Eagles. Lefty Driesell’s program was about to kick into high gear, but he wasn’t taking any chances by scheduling Kermit Washington and company.

  The Eagles started 9–1 before a loss in the Palestra to St. Joseph’s brought them back to earth. “For some reason we always had trouble in the Palestra,” Washington said. “I think it may have had something to do with the fact that those teams were always good.”

  Chris Washington, who had just finished his rookie season as a member of the St. Louis football Cardinals, came home for a January game against George Washington. His brother responded with 18 points and 34 rebounds, but the Eagles lost, 85–80. “If you were any good,” Chris told his younger brother, “you guys would have won.”

  The Eagles didn’t lose very often after that. Splaver’s eye chart and Washington’s eye-popping numbers were bringing a lot of national media to the Fort. Every home game was a sellout. Washington was the Big Man on Campus both literally and figuratively. “It was,” he said, “the happiest time of my life.”

  The race for postseason and for 20-20 went down to the last game of the regular season. The Eagles had won their twentieth game with an 88–79 victory over La Salle and thought they were in good position to get invited to the NIT. Washington was averaging just over 20 rebounds a night, but he was slightly under 20 points per game. Splaver did some calculating: to finish the regular season at 20-20, Kermit would need 40 points and 19 rebounds in the finale, which would be in the Fort, against Georgetown.

  “I knew I could get the rebounds,” Washington said. “But forty points—against a good team—that was going to be tough.”

  Washington had been joyriding most of the season. Now, for the first time, he felt pressure. He felt as if the eyes of the entire campus were on him. “I felt as if not doing it would be a letdown for so many people,” he said. “I had never been nervous about a basketball game the whole time I had been at AU. You were always a little bit nervous before a game, anticipating it and all, but this was different. My stomach hurt, my head hurt, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I just felt as if everyone was counting on me, and I didn’t want to let them down.”

  There wasn’t an inch of room in the Fort that night. Everyone from AU was there. Everyone from the old neighborhood was there. Kermit’s dad was there too. Everyone in the place knew, even the Georgetown players and coaches, exactly the numbers Washington needed. This was John Thompson’s first team as coach at Georgetown. It was a very young team, one whose nucleus would take the Hoyas to the NCAA tournament in two years, but not the national power Thompson would later build. Still, it was a team made up mostly of D.C. kids who knew Washington and weren’t about to let him make history without a battle.

  Splaver, on the ball as ever, had already let the media know that Washington would be only the seventh player in history to achieve the 20-20 if he did it.

  Five minutes into the game, it appeared as if all of Splaver’s research, all the eye charts, all the effort, were going to be for naught. “I couldn’t do anything right,” Washington remembered. “I couldn’t catch the ball. I couldn’t shoot it. I couldn’t do anything. I was so nervous I could hardly breathe.”

  Young called time out. “Kermit, what’s wrong?” he demanded. “Calm down and just play.”

  Something happened during that time-out, Washington’s not sure what it was. “I felt, all of a sudden, as if someone had thrown a warm blanket over me. All of a sudden I was okay. The nerves went away. To this day I can’t tell you why. But when we went back on the court, I was fine.”

  He took over the game. Every shot started going in. He was taking—and making—shots he never even practiced, much less tried in games. The game turned into a rout, the Eagles building their lead steadily in the second half. They were running every play through Washington. He was already past the 20-rebound mark with ten minutes left in the game. He still needed more points. He got to 38 with a little more than two minutes to go on a rebound basket. The next time down the court, he caught the ball on the left wing, took one step to his left, and threw up a left-handed hook.

  “First one I ever took in my life,” he said.

  It went in.

  Pandemonium. Everyone in the place knew what had happened. The game stopped and Young took Washington out; he wasn’t going to leave him in during the last two minutes of what would be a 90–68 victory once he had his points. There wasn’t a soul in the building who wasn’t on his feet cheering—including the Georgetown bench.

  “I don’t like the idea of anyone scoring forty points on us,” John Thompson said later. “But if it had to happen, I’m happy it happened for Kermit. I can’t think of a more deserving player.”

  The victory, the achievement, the entire night, set off a campuswide celebration back at AU. If the Eagles had won a national championship, it is unlikely the student body would have celebrated with much more zeal. There was a cake and a party that lasted most of the night. “The thing I remember the most about it
was people thanking me,” he said. “They thanked me for making basketball so much fun for them.”

  As he retells the story of the euphoric evening, Washington shakes his head, a faraway look in his eyes, and says for about the tenth time in his recounting of the AU years: “It was the happiest time of my life.”

  There was, as it turned out, one game left to play. American had finished the season 21–4 and received an invitation to the NIT, the school’s first bid to postseason in Division I. In those days the entire sixteen-team NIT was played in Madison Square Garden, so the Eagles found themselves in New York matched against Louisville, a team that had reached the Final Four a year earlier in the first season of Denny Crum’s Hall of Fame head coaching career, a career that ended up lasting thirty years.

  Louisville was a legitimate national power, one of those schools that would easily have been in the NCAA field under today’s rules. They had size and quickness that was on a different level from the teams AU had faced throughout most of the season. Even so, the Eagles hung tough. They were within 3 points midway through the second half, before a Louisville spurt put the game out of reach. The final was 97–84. Washington, needing 20-20 to maintain his 20-20 for the season, came up with 29 points and 24 rebounds. Since that euphoric spring of 1973, no college player has averaged 20-20 for a single season. Washington nearly made it to 20-20 for his career, finishing his three years at AU averaging 19.7 points and 20.2 rebounds a game.

  The next couple of months were a whirlwind for Washington. There were all-star games to play in, including a trip to Hawaii to play three games out there. There was schoolwork to finish. There were agents to interview, since he was now considered a surefire first-round draft pick by most scouts. He was far enough ahead in his schoolwork that the time away from class didn’t cause any major academic problems for him. Still, he was glad when the all-star games were over and he was back on campus.