A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  Lopes laughed. “Maybe they knew something. Before, I used to walk on water. Now, I’m sinking, sinking, sinking …”

  Stan Sherriff, the Hawaii athletic director who hired both Arnold and Wallace, insists Lopes has done nothing to offend anyone at his school. “I just think coaching a Chaminade and coaching a Hawaii are two very different things,” he said. “I might be wrong. Merv might do a great job. But Frank Arnold was a proven winner [at Brigham Young] in our league [the Western Athletic Conference] when we hired him. His problem is he never understood what the hell Hawaii is all about. Riley Wallace does understand because he was an assistant here for eight years.”

  All well and good. And Riley Wallace may get the job done at Hawaii. But if you judge a coach by how hard his team plays, it is hard to find any fault with Merv Lopes, regardless of record. On opening night of the Chaminade Classic, the Silverswords, backed by that screaming throng of maybe four hundred people, play Dayton to the wire.

  Chaminade is still leading 66–64 with eight minutes left before the Flyers finally wear them down and win, 84–75. Considering the fact that Lopes is down to eight able bodies, this is a more than respectable performance. Chaminade’s best player is a slender sophomore forward named Arthur King. In the box score he appears as King Arthur.

  Dayton-Chaminade is the final game of a first-day tripleheader. There are six teams in the tournament: Dayton, Chaminade, Virginia, Oklahoma, LaSalle, and Georgia. Because the mainland teams wanted to play three games here, Vasconceles set up a round-robin that isn’t really a round-robin because each school only plays three of the other five schools. But it doesn’t matter. The teams just want the games.

  Virginia, returning to the scene of The Upset for the first time, has an opening-day experience about as miserable as The Upset. The Cavaliers, struggling at 4–4 coming in, run into Oklahoma to start the tournament.

  The Sooners have been destroying people by embarrassing scores during December, which isn’t unusual. Coach Billy Tubbs is famous for running up the score on the Georgia States and Centenarys of the world. As always, the Sooners have a lot of athletes, but they are the kind of team that, historically, Virginia has been able to slow down and often beat.

  For almost sixteen minutes, this is the case once again. A lay-up by freshman Kenny Turner brings the Cavaliers to within 31–27 with a little more than four minutes left in the first half. An Oklahoma mini-run ups the margin to 45–36 at halftime. Still, nothing to be panicked about.

  And then came the second half. “The longest twenty minutes of my career,” Holland will say when it is finally over. For the first 8:08, Virginia does not score. The Cavaliers can’t get the ball across mid-court against the Oklahoma press, much less to the basket. In the meantime, Oklahoma is scoring easy basket after easy basket. By the time the Cavaliers score, the Sooners have ripped off 25 straight points. They lead, 70–36. “The only good thing about it,” Holland said, “is that almost no one in the world saw it.”

  Oklahoma never lets up. The final is 109–61, easily the worst defeat in Holland’s fourteen years at Virginia and easily the worst loss any player in a Virginia uniform has ever suffered. “Totally humiliating,” point guard John Johnson said. “I don’t think any of us has ever been through something like that before.”

  Outside, it is 85 degrees and the sun is shining brightly. Inside the Blaisdell Arena, Virginia and Holland are wondering why everyone thinks Hawaii is such a great place.

  The Chaminade Tournament ends up drawing about one thousand paying customers (at $3 a ticket) for three days. During the Chaminade–LaSalle game on Christmas Eve, a halftime head count produces ninety-seven people in the stands, including the five security guards. If there had been a fire, everyone in the building would have had his own exit.

  “We have to get a sponsor for next year,” Vasconceles admitted. “I think we will. As long as we can keep the program above water the rest of the year we’ll be all right. Merv will find a way.”

  Lopes isn’t that sure. “I’d like to rebuild and I truly believe we will,” he said, “if I stay.”

  Lopes does have one more brush with glory before the tournament is over. On Christmas Day, the last-round matchups are Dayton–LaSalle (Dayton having been beaten 151–99 by Oklahoma on the second day), Oklahoma–Georgia, and Virginia–Chaminade.

  Oklahoma–Georgia is easily the best game of the tournament. Oklahoma, as it will prove over and over again throughout the season, is not just a run-and-shoot bandit squad that beats up on bad teams. In Harvey Grant and Stacey King it has as overwhelming a low-post twosome as there is in the country. And with Mookie Blaylock and Ricky Grace making life miserable for opposing guards, the OU press can dismantle people—as Virginia can testify.

  But Georgia, which had been routed by an embarrassed Virginia team on Christmas Eve, handles the press and stays with the Sooners right to the finish. Oklahoma has to make its foul shots down the stretch to win, 93–90.

  Tubbs is a man known for his braggadocio, which will shortly go into full gear back home as his team begins to get more attention. But for now, he is trying very hard to be low-key.

  “We’ve still got a long way to go to be a real good team,” he said. “Our defense still makes us vulnerable on the boards. We don’t shoot foul shots that well. We aren’t that big.”

  He smiled. “But you know, if we get a little better in those areas we’ve got a chance to be pretty good. Even pretty damn good.”

  Someone asked Tubbs if he was surprised to be undefeated at this stage, since he has three new starters. The real Tubbs surfaced for just a moment. In his best Jack Nicholson-soundalike voice, he answered: “I’m never surprised to be undefeated. When we’re 37–0 ask me if I’m surprised to be undefeated and I’ll still tell you no.”

  The final game of the tournament, appropriately, matches Virginia and Chaminade. Both schools have fallen a long way since the night of The Upset. Virginia, which will finish sixth in the ACC, is 5–5 after coming back to beat Georgia. Chaminade is 0–9.

  For a while it looks as if history may repeat itself in some small way. Virginia is tired. Maybe the Cavaliers, all of whom are sporting deep tans, have had too much beach time. Maybe they look around at the empty building and see an 0–9 team and think the game is a walkover.

  Whatever the reason, Chaminade is leading 33–32 at halftime. Holland knows his team isn’t playing very well but he isn’t thrilled by the officiating either. Walking off the floor he directs most of his anger in the direction of one Phil Ravitsky, who is an absolute double of Officer Toody, the moon-faced cop in the old Car 54 series.

  Things don’t get any better at the start of the second half. Toody keeps making calls that no one among the hundreds in the building can figure out. Finally, with Virginia leading 37–35 and still struggling, Toody calls a phantom charge on John Johnson.

  Something kicks in on Holland. “That’s it,” he says to Assistant Coach Dave Odom, “we’re out of here. I’m not taking this anymore. It isn’t fair to the kids.”

  With that, Holland starts toward the scorer’s table, fully intending to pull a Bob Knight and take his team off the floor. But Odom is heroic. Almost literally, he throws his five-foot-nine-inch body between the 6–7 Holland and the scorer’s table.

  “Don’t do it, Terry,” he pleads. “You’ll regret it if you do.”

  “But they’re screwing our kids. I owe it to them to do something.”

  “Fine, let’s do something about winning the damn game.”

  Holland’s fury has been stemmed just long enough. He turns and sits down. “I really don’t know what I would have done if Dave hadn’t stopped me,” he said later. “Maybe I just would have torn the scorer’s book up or something.”

  One disaster averted, the Cavaliers avert the other. Like Dayton, they wear stubborn Chaminade down and finally win the game 66–58. It isn’t pretty but it is a darn sight better than 1982.

  “Hell yes I was thinking about last time
,” Holland says. “I was beginning to think this building was haunted.”

  In a sense, it is, haunted by The Ghosts of Upsets Past. Lopes remembers. “For a while tonight I had the old feeling,” he says, sitting in his empty locker room. “I thought maybe for one night the Chaminade mystique might still be there. But it isn’t the same around here anymore.”

  The door opens and a manager comes in. “Coach,” he says, “we’re missing three basketballs.”

  “Damn it,” says Lopes. “Not again.”

  It is Christmas Night in a haunted gym. Chaminade and Merv Lopes are 0–10, out three basketballs, and a long, long way from The Upset.

  For Jim Valvano, this trip to Hawaii will be strictly business. He has been here often before, three times with his team, once to coach a postseason all-star game and on several other vacation trips.

  He has always enjoyed combining work with pleasure here and he has brought his entire family along on the trip. But his mind is on his basketball team.

  The Wolfpack is 3–2, having lost to Manning and Kansas and then, surprisingly, by 18 points to an underrated California-Santa Barbara team. Valvano knows he has plenty of talent. But he is concerned about whether it will jell. He is juggling four guards—two seniors and two freshmen—and he is struggling with Charles Shackleford.

  Valvano knows that, regardless of how the guard situation plays itself out, Shackleford is the key to this team. The 6–10 junior center is one of those players people look at and say: “He should be unstoppable.”

  At times, Shackleford is unstoppable. He can shoot with both hands, although that ability often produces some shots that are, to be polite, reckless. He has huge hands and feet, meaning he can rebound well but can’t run or cut that well. Still, when Shackleford is on and interested, he is a truly great inside player.

  Getting Shackleford to concentrate is Valvano’s No. 1 priority this year. He is not happy with the center right now. Too many one-handed rebounds, too many missed box-outs, too many silly shots. State will play three straight nights in Hawaii. Valvano’s goal is to get Shackleford pointed in the right direction by the end of game three.

  It is ironic to Valvano that the key to his team’s success this year is getting someone to concentrate. Because for Valvano, staying focused on coaching is perhaps the toughest thing he has to do in his life right now.

  James Thomas Valvano grew up in Queens, the oldest son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. He was a star athlete at Seaford High School, earning ten letters in three sports. He met the girl he would marry, Pamela Susan Levine, in eighth grade and courted her through high school and college.

  He went to Rutgers on an academic scholarship and wound up a starter in a superb backcourt, playing next to Bobby Lloyd, an All-American. In 1967, Valvano’s senior year, Rutgers finished third in the NIT, losing in the semifinals to Southern Illinois, even though Valvano scored 21 points in the first half.

  “I was nine-for-ten at halftime,” he said. “They kept moving out on me and I kept moving back until I drilled one from twenty-seven feet. Didn’t do much the second half, though. It was tough shooting with my left hand wrapped around my neck. What a choke-ola that was. They were good, but hell, we should have beaten them.”

  The summer after he graduated from Rutgers, he married Pam and started his career in coaching. His first job as a head coach was at Johns Hopkins. He spent one year there, then moved on to Bucknell and Iona. At Iona, he became a star, wowing the New York media with his one-liners, signing Jeff Ruland, and putting together a superb team that won twenty-nine games in 1980.

  “That may have been the best team I ever coached,” he will say, no disrespect meant to the 1983 NCAA championship team. “No one respected us because who the hell respects Iona. Our best player was a big slow white guy [Ruland] and who the hell respects big slow white guys. But we were a hell of a team. We went into the Garden and beat Louisville by 17. Louisville didn’t lose again, they won the whole thing.”

  Iona lost at the buzzer in the second round to Georgetown and Valvano left for N.C. State. Simple story, right? Wrong.

  “I wasn’t going. I went down to do the interview because I figured I ought to go through the process. I checked into the hotel, turned on the television, and there’s my old coach, Bill Foster, coaching Duke against Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament. They’re playing at Kentucky and they’re beating them. I’m screaming at the TV. Finally, they win it by one. I said, “That’s it, this is what the business is about, winning that goddamn national championship. If they offer me the job, I’m taking it.’ ”

  They offered, he took, leaving behind screaming headlines in New York about Ruland having an agent (he did) and an impending betting scandal that the newspapers said would implicate Valvano (they were wrong).

  State went 14–13 Valvano’s first year and 22–10 the second, losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to Tennessee–Chattanooga. People liked Valvano in North Carolina. He was different with his New York accent and his one-liners and wisecracks, but they liked him. He made them laugh. Still, Valvano learned very early at State that you must win, you must win often, and even when you win often you are still compared to Dean—as in Smith.

  “True story,” he says, the first two words in many of his stories because he knows people often think them apocryphal. “My first week at State, I need a haircut. So, I go over to the campus barber shop and I sit down and the barber who has been here maybe a hundred years says to me, ‘So, you’re the new basketball coach, aren’t you?’

  “I say that I am and he says to me, ‘Well, I sure do hope you have more luck than old Norman did.’

  “This kind of gets to me. So, I say to the guy, ‘Wait a minute, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Norm Sloan win a national championship while he was here?’ And the guy says, ‘Oh yeah, he did. But he was no Dean Smith.’

  “So, I think about that for a minute. Remember, Dean hadn’t won a national championship at this point, but that doesn’t seem to impress the guy. So, finally I say, ‘You know, if I’m not mistaken. Norm Sloan went 27–0, undefeated one season while he was here, isn’t that right?’

  “And the guy looks at me and he says, ‘Yup, he sure did. But just think what old Dean would have done with that team.’ ”

  Valvano dealt with the Dean phenomenon by being very respectful to the great man in public. No sense riling anybody up, he figured, especially in an area where people thought you could improve on a 27–0 record.

  In his third season, Valvano thought he finally had a team that could compete with Dean—and the rest of the ACC. He had three outstanding seniors—left behind for him by old Norman—in Dereck Whitten-burg, Sidney Lowe, and Thurl Bailey. But in January, Whittenburg broke a foot and it looked as if State would be lucky just to get into the NCAA Tournament.

  Whittenburg came back the last week of the regular season. In the ACC Tournament, playing each game as if their NCAA bid was at stake—which it certainly was in the first two rounds—the Wolfpack beat Wake Forest by one, shocked North Carolina in overtime, and stunned Virginia and Sampson in the final. They had won the ACC Tournament and reached the NCAAs. Nice season, Coach.

  It would have ended exactly that way if Pepperdine had made its free throws in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. State, down six with a minute left, won in double overtime. Then, in the second round, heavily favored Nevada–Las Vegas missed its free throws and State won by one. A routine win over Utah and another miracle victory over Virginia—with Sampson somehow not taking the last shot with his team down one and his career on the line—and State was in the Final Four.

  Great season, Coach.

  But Valvano wasn’t done. The Wolfpack beat Georgia in the semifinals, setting up a final against a Houston team that had looked unbeatable—and had not been beaten—since December. “Have you got a chance, Jim?” they asked him the day before the game.

  “We’ve got a better chance than all the teams that aren’t here,” he answered
.

  State jumped to an 8–0 lead. Houston came back and led by six late in the game. But Houston Coach Guy Lewis, who should be on top of Valvano’s Christmas list every year, held the ball, waiting for his players to be fouled, even though his team couldn’t shoot free throws. The Cougars missed and missed from the free throw line, State tied and finally had the last shot. Whittenburg’s forty-foot bomb was so short that only teammate Lorenzo Charles could touch it, leaping over everyone to dunk at the buzzer for a 54–52 victory.

  Valvano raced around like a mad dervish, hugged everyone jammed into The Pit, and became a superstar. He made money so fast he didn’t have time to count it. Everyone wanted Jimmy V. to speak. Everyone wanted to hear him tell the story about Charles’s dunk. Everyone wanted a piece of him and Jimmy V. gave—for a price.

  Even though State stayed good, reaching the final eight two of the next three years, the critics said he wasn’t spending enough time coaching. He flew off one weekend after a loss in Louisville to do the color on an NBC game in Champaign, Illinois. “He doesn’t care enough,” they howled.

  Then he became athletic director, too. When the Knicks job opened up, some of his friends figured he would take the job, keep coaching at State, be the athletic director, continue all his TV and radio shows, do all his speeches, and perhaps, just to fill time, run for governor of North Carolina.

  What the critics could not understand was that Valvano needs almost every minute of every day filled. He does not waste a lot of time sleeping and he is in constant need of a challenge—especially mental. He is a voracious reader. On this trip to Hawaii he had brought along Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika.

  “I’m convinced that if we got into a war with them, they’d kick our butts,” he said one night. “They’re smarter than we are.”

  Valvano loves coaching. And he hates coaching. He loves the games—on court. And he hates the games—off court. He really enjoys his players. And he hates going through the recruitment that gets them to State. He loves attention and being in the limelight. He hates not being able to spend time alone with his family for eight months of the year.