A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  He had done everything he wanted to now. He would get his degree in May, he had won the national championship and proven he was as good as they had said he was in high school. He had stepped forward as the leader when he had to and at the same time had never been separated from his teammates by his ability. He had fought often with Brown, thought terrible things about him, and was delighted to look ahead and not see him in his future. But the two men parted friends, each understanding what the other had done for him.

  “Without Coach Brown, I wouldn’t be the player I am today,” Manning said.

  “Without Danny, I wouldn’t ever have coached a national championship team,” Brown said.

  Enough said.

  When Paul Evans walked out of the locker room in Lincoln after Pittsburgh’s loss to Vanderbilt, he knew that Charles Smith and Demetrius Gore would not be back. He also knew there was a possibility that Jerome Lane would also not be back, that he would skip his senior year to turn pro. He did exactly that.

  That specter did not frighten Evans, even though he knew that was an awful lot of talent to lose in one year. Smith, Gore, and Lane were the last of Pitt’s old guard, products of the Roy Chipman regime. Chipman had recruited lots of talent, but it had been spoiled, undisciplined talent.

  Even with the Big Three gone, Evans believed he had the program on the right track. He loved the four freshmen who had played extensively in ’88 and felt that they would form the nucleus of teams he could coach to the next level in the future. In Evans’s first two years, Pitt had won forty-nine games, a Big East regular season title, and been to two NCAA Tournaments. Those were impressive numbers. But Evans wanted more. He had come to Pitt because he believed he could win a national championship there. With Bobby Martin, Sean Miller, Darelle Porter, and Jason Matthews, he thought he had the kind of cornerstone class that would lead to a Final Four in the near future.

  It had not been an easy year for Evans, though. The feud with Massimino, the run-in with Thompson, and his new image were not comfortable for him. At Navy, his relationship with the media had been excellent. After Smith and Gore mouthed off in Lincoln, saying that Evans had been guilty of not telling them to foul on the last play of regulation, Evans blamed the media for goading them into their comments. This was not an encouraging sign. Evans is an extremely talented coach—even Massimino would concede that—but he needed to find a lower key to work in, one that would be less confrontational and more like the Evans who had coached for six years at Navy and won games and friends all at the same time.

  Pitt would be a young team in 1988–89 with much lower expectations than the previous season. That would mean less attention and less pressure for at least one season. That might be exactly what Evans and his program needed.

  Things were much more sanguine at Villanova than they were at Pitt. Massimino and his program had come through their crisis and emerged as strong, if not stronger, than ever. In 1987, the record had been 15–16, there had been no NCAA Tournament, and two recruits, Bobby Martin and Delano DeShields, had backed out of verbal commitments—Martin to go to Pitt, DeShields to play baseball. There had also been the Gary McLain fiasco. In 1988, the record had been 24–13, the team had reached the NCAA Final Eight, and a good recruiting class was on the way, with only Mark Plansky and Pat Enright—yes, at last—not returning for 1989.

  Massimino, who had felt tarnished and dirtied by the McLain incident, was back at the top of his profession. Once again, people were marveling at how he had gotten the job done with a team that didn’t seem to be that talented. “But the thing is,” he said, “these kids had talent and heart. If you have that combination, you can’t go wrong.”

  If you have the right leadership. There was no doubt after 1988—if there had ever been any—about Rollie Massimino’s ability to lead.

  The feud with Evans was, of course, not over. There was still bitterness between the two men but perhaps most of it had been spent in the confrontations of the past season. They had finally managed to execute a postgame handshake after Villanova’s 72–69 victory in the Big East semifinals and, simple as that sounded, it was a sign of progress. Maybe the future would produce more progress. Then again, basketball being basketball, maybe not.

  After losing to Florida in the Southeast Conference Tournament, Tennessee was invited to play in the NIT. Much to their surprise, the Volunteers were sent on the road to play, at Middle Tennessee. This was about as tough a first-round game as Tennessee could face. Not only was Middle Tennessee at least as talented as they were, but it was a team that wanted nothing more than to beat the Vols who were, after all, the big and powerful state school.

  Middle Tennessee did just that, leaving Tennessee with a 16–13 record for the season. It was not a season to treasure by any means, but it was the season Don DeVoe needed. Doug Dickey had told him, “Show me progress,” after his second straight losing season in 1987, and DeVoe had done that. Tennessee had finished sixth in a league that sent five teams to the NCAA Tournament, it had a winning record, and it upset Kentucky and Florida late in the season. That was enough to get DeVoe a two-year extension on his contract, leaving him with three years in all. He would have preferred a three-year extension, but under the circumstances, two was just fine.

  “This will give us a chance to get the program back where it should be,” DeVoe said. “We should have a strong senior class next year. And with Tennessee having such a strong high school senior class, we should be able to put together the nucleus of a team that will take us back where we were a few years ago.”

  DeVoe had been rehired for two reasons: One, even with the loss of Elvin Brown because of the shoplifting incident and Rickey Clark because of his hand injury, Tennessee had hung in and played well enough to beat good teams late in the season. But beyond that, DeVoe had run the Tennessee program with class for ten years. In a league known for scandals more than schooling, this was no small thing. Doug Dickey had proven that in a sport where many people believed that cheating does pay, at least occasionally, doing things the right way can also pay off. It was a message college basketball needed to be sent more often.

  Gary Williams’s Ohio State team, after not getting an NCAA bid, went all the way to the NIT final, losing in the championship game to Connecticut. That meant a record for the season of 20–13, which was a lot better than Williams had realistically hoped for at the beginning of practice in October.

  In fact, ironically enough, the record was identical to Williams’s first year at Ohio State, although that season had ended in the second round of the NCAA Tournament (and, as a result, was more impressive). But what was really important was that Williams had hung on until the cavalry arrived. In October, he would have six new players in uniform—the two Proposition 48 freshmen of ’87–88 and the future Ohio State class of 1992, one he believed would be great. The only down note was that point guard Mark Baker did not meet Proposition 48 and would sit down his freshman year.

  As always, having coached a team without much talent to more victories than had been predicted, Williams’s name kept popping up in connection with other jobs. Rutgers was interested at one point but, even though the money might be huge, Williams wanted to stay and coach the players he had recruited. The Charlotte Hornets, an NBA expansion team, called. This was flattering, but Williams felt the same way about not leaving. He also knew that he probably was not emotionally equipped to handle losing sixty games a year, which was inevitable coaching a new team in the NBA. Kansas, after Brown’s resignation, also called. Williams was tempted once more, but once more stayed put.

  Williams would stay at Ohio State and he would spend the summer looking forward to coaching his new players, but also thinking about James Jackson, the “A-men,” senior-to-be guard. He knew that in two years he had put together most of the pieces of the puzzle to bring Ohio State back to prominence. The 1988–89 season would be a first step in that direction. But once again, recruiting would be vital. Sign James Jackson in the fall and the winter would p
robably seem easy. Williams knew that better than anyone.

  “When I came here, people wondered if I could recruit,” he said. “I think I’ve shown them so far that I can. But the key is to put the whole package together. Get the players who can play the way you want to coach, then put them on the floor and really be able to go after people. That’s what I want. I want to go out on the floor against anybody and feel like my team can really get after people and win the game. We’re getting close to that, but there’s still a lot of work to do to get it done.”

  If work was the key, there wasn’t much doubt that Gary Williams would get it done.

  For Todd Mitchell, Troy Lewis, and Everette Stephens, the doing had ended for them that night in Pontiac against Kansas State. For them, there would be many happy memories of Purdue. Lewis and Mitchell would graduate on time, Stephens a semester behind. When they played their last home game against Minnesota, Mitchell had told the crowd, “I really wasn’t sure if Purdue was the right place when I first came here. I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs, we all have. But if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that I made the right choice, no matter what happens the rest of the way.”

  The rest of the way had not turned out the way the three seniors had hoped. They had finished their Purdue careers with a record of 96–26. Included in that were two Big Ten titles and four NCAA bids. But their record in NCAA play had been 3–4. No trips to the Final Four; in fact, no trips beyond the Sweet Sixteen.

  “I think years from now when we all get together, we’ll remember all the good things and the good times first and foremost,” Lewis said. “There’s no question we had a great four years and we did a lot of great things that we should be proud of. But it will always bother me a little that we never put it all together in March. That’s what this season was all about. We said it all along, we didn’t make any bones about it, so there’s no use making excuses for it now. It’s funny, for all the fighting we did with Coach Keady I think the thing I regret the most is that we let him down.”

  Keady didn’t really feel that way. “It’s disappointing as hell, because we all worked so hard to get to the Final Four,” he said. “But I don’t have any regrets about those seniors. All they’ve ever done is bring us compliments. Anyone who has ever dealt with them has always come back to me and told me what class young men they were. I know we lost a ball game we wanted like hell to win. But no one will ever be able to tell me that Troy Lewis, Todd Mitchell, and Everette Stephens aren’t winners.”

  Case closed.

  Billy King’s last game was also a disappointment. It should be remembered that 99 percent of the seniors who play college basketball lose their last game—unless they play for a team so poor it cannot make postseason play and they happen to win their last game in an abysmal regular season. Ninety-six teams were good enough to make postseason play in 1988. Only two—Kansas in the NCAAs and Connecticut in the NIT—won their last games.

  Nonetheless, King was baffled by his team’s poor performance against Kansas in the Final Four. He had been so convinced the team was ready to play, then the Blue Devils had come out flat and fallen too far behind to catch up. King had wanted for his team, the one he and Kevin Strickland captained, to surpass the great team of 1986 that had played for the national championship. The only way to do that would have been to win it all. The Blue Devils had come pretty close, going 28–7 and winning the ACC title and the East Regional.

  “It feels kind of funny to realize it’s all over, but I think I would have felt that way if we had won,” he said. “I knew all year that this was it and I think I played that way. I hope I get a shot to go to an NBA camp [King did get a last-minute invitation to the Olympic trials but was cut early] but I really don’t expect to be playing ball next year. I’ve taken the approach all year that this was it for me as a basketball player. Where there’s an ending, there’s a beginning. I’m looking forward to whatever I begin next year.”

  With his degree in political science, his articulate manner, and his personality, King had job offers even before the season was over. He had chances to coach, to go into radio and television, or to teach. He was lucky because he never saw basketball as a be-all and an end-all. “It’s just something that I love,” he said. “I’ll never stop loving it—but I’ve always known that I can live without it.”

  He would never have to live completely without it, though. Even after he stopped playing, Billy King would always have the tapes of his games against David Rivers and Mark Macon. And, he would have plenty of stories to tell his children.

  While Billy King was coming to the end, Jerrod Mustaf was coming to the beginning. In March, after he had led DeMatha to the D.C. City Title and a 27–3 record, he surprised no one by announcing he would attend the University of Maryland.

  The word had been out on the coaching grapevine since December that Mustaf would play for Maryland. He had narrowed his choices back then to Georgia Tech, Howard, and Maryland. He had never taken an official visit to Georgia Tech and, since he had made it clear that he wanted to play for a team that had a chance to be a national championship contender, he wasn’t going to Howard. That left Maryland.

  One wondered how much this was Jerrod’s decision and how much it was his father’s. Sharr Mustaf clearly wanted his son to play for a black coach. He defended Bob Wade often even when it appeared there was no defense for Wade. At one point, shortly before Jerrod announced his choice, Sharr Mustaf said, “We have to support people like Bob Wade in the black community. We have so few role models that when we get one, we have to do everything we can to help them and build them up.”

  There was absolutely nothing wrong with Jerrod Mustaf selecting Maryland. But he had selected Maryland without using three of his official visits; without ever leaving the Washington area for a visit, and in spite of the fact that the Maryland program was clearly in turmoil. Two days before Steve Hood announced he was transferring, Sharr Mustaf, who was friends with Hood’s father, said he didn’t believe Hood would leave. “Bob Hood’s too smart for that,” he said. “He knows that Steve hasn’t worked hard enough to get more playing time.”

  Apparently Bob Hood wasn’t that smart, because Steve Hood transferred to James Madison to play for the man who had originally recruited him at Maryland, Lefty Driesell. That made five players who had left the program in Wade’s two years at Maryland. His claim was that they were all Driesell recruits who were malcontents. One month later, Brian Williams, the 6–10 center from California—who had been Wade’s key recruit—a cornerstone player, announced he was leaving. Wade, naturally, blamed the media.

  But he had Jerrod Mustaf. Exactly who had made that decision was unclear. Or perhaps it was quite clear. “I want him to go to Maryland,” Sharr Mustaf said just before Jerrod announced his decision. “But I think he’s leaning towards Georgia Tech.” If so, it didn’t stay that way for long.

  Mustaf was not the only one faced with a decision in the spring time. In April, shortly after the college season had ended, the NBA announced it would use three referees at games next season rather than two. One of the first college officials contacted by the league was Joe Forte.

  The offer was intriguing to Forte. His dream, as far back as the early 1970s when he first began officiating, had been to work in the NBA. Turning down a chance to work during the 1976 strike had been heartbreaking for him. Now, he had a chance to move up to the NBA at a time when he could honestly say he had done everything there was to do on the college level. His whistle, the Fox40, was selling well enough that he had quit his job in Atlanta to work on it full time.

  Part of Forte hated to leave the college game. He had been in five Final Fours in seven years and was always going to draw top assignments. He was still young enough at 42 that if he stayed in college basketball he would no doubt break all the records for Final Four appearances and end up in the college basketball Hall of Fame.

  But the NBA meant less work—an average of three games a week as opposed to fi
ve or six—and more money. Forte earned about $32,000 during the 1987–88 college season working more than 80 games. In the NBA, the starting salary was closer to $38,000 and someone like Forte would no doubt make more than that. It was tempting.

  Forte thought it over, talked to his wife and two children about it and to other officials who had been approached. He talked to his ACC supervisor Fred Barakat. “I told him what Dean Smith tells his players who are thinking of leaving early for the NBA draft,” Barakat said. “If the money is there and you think you’re ready, leave school. There’s no question Joe was ready for this.”

  That was the bottom line, really. Forte was ready and he wanted a new challenge. He didn’t know it that afternoon, but Arizona–Oklahoma was his last college basketball game. There was, however, one last bonus for his college years: Forte was chosen to represent the United States at the Olympics in Seoul. A nice way to climax eleven gratifying years.

  David Robinson and Kevin Houston were both a year removed from college. Robinson’s future was clear: Play for the Olympic team, finish his commitment to the Navy, and go on to play for the San Antonio Spurs for the small sum of $26 million. That didn’t begin to count the endorsements he was piling up even while he was twiddling his thumbs waiting for a chance to play.

  Kevin Houston’s future was much less clear. But in April, he got what he had been hoping and wishing for ever since he graduated from West Point: an invitation to the Olympic trials. Public relations was part of his invitation. So many people had been angered when Houston was passed over for the Pan American trials the year before that ABA–USA knew it would be a crucial mistake to leave Houston out again.