My Losing Season

by Pat Conroy

  WHEN I LED THE BULLDOGS OUT OF the locker room on Davidson’s home court, I was overwhelmed that I had come to the end of the season so unprepared for the finality of it all. Dan Mohr, Jim Halpin, and I were ending our lives as basketball players, and I could still remember the first day I met them in the middle of our fear-haunted Hell Week. Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?

  The sellout crowd booed us heartily as we took to the court and I drank in their jeers as though they were an intoxicating extract. I loved the taunts of the enemy crowds, and I wanted to show this Davidson crowd some of my new tricks. I wanted to beat Davidson so badly I could taste it, vinegary and sharp in the back of my throat. They had ruled the Southern Conference and been ranked in the top-ten teams in the country since my freshman year. Beating them this night would be my going-away present to myself. This Davidson team was young and in the process of rebuilding. It still rankled me that Mel had benched me for the entire second half of the first Davidson game because of my perfect—and I repeat—my perfect behind-the-back pass to Kroboth. With the Corps behind us, we should have won that game.

  As I dribbled past the Davidson coach, Lefty Driesell, I heard him call out to Mohr. “Hey, Danny, Mel benched you for four games? Has he lost his mind? You’d be my main man this year. My go-to guy.”

  Dan was muttering to himself when we went to the rebounding line. “You hear that, weasel? I’d be a fucking first-string All-American here, and I’m a can of corn to fucking Muleface.”

  “We’ve been through this before, Root,” I said. “Before every game with Davidson, Lefty tries to get under your skin. It works every time.”

  “It’d get under your skin, too, Conroy, if you had pro potential like Hetzel and Synder—the way I do. Hell, if I’d come to play for Lefty, there’d be scouts from the Celtics in the stands tonight. Playing for Muleface’s screwed up my whole life.”

  “But you march so well. And you learned how to clean a rifle and execute a snappy about-face.”

  Back in the layup line, Lefty made another pass at Danny, Lefty’s long, good-humored face shining brightly as he said, “Come on, Danny. You didn’t even play at VMI. The whole league was talking about it. Up here, you could write your own ticket, Danny. That’s the damn truth.”

  “You hear that, Conroy?” Dan said to me on the other side of the court. “I could write my own ticket at Davidson. I don’t get jackshit at El Cid.”

  “What about friendship, Root?” I asked. “That must count for something.”

  “Fuck you, leprechaun,” Dan said, without a trace of malice.

  I rebounded the ball and hit Brian Kennedy with a bounce pass that he caught on the run and put through the hoop. While waiting for my next layup, Lefty surprised me by saying something to me. “Hey, Pat. Why did Mel bury you alive the last couple of years? Mel even told me you couldn’t score for shit. I’d’ve played you up here, boy. Guarantee that.”

  I put the next layup in and as I rose to shoot that basketball off the board I rose up as the happiest boy in North Carolina because the great Lefty Driesell had proven to me that he actually knew my name. Long ago, in the Southern Conference, I had conditioned myself to the trauma of anonymity that mediocre athletes have to endure during every waking moment. In my first two years in the league, I don’t think Lefty could have fingered me in a police lineup, but now he was teasing me the way he had always done to Mohr, and I basked in the glory of it.

  When the managers began to feed us passes for jump shots, I took a ball and dribbled it to the half-court line to study the Davidson team. They looked massive, but I would beat them. I felt different than I had ever felt, and I could not place a name on what it was. But it lit my blood. I took it all in, the crowd, the noise, the smells of the arena, the nervousness of the referees—this was the last time that I would stand at center court at Davidson College, savoring my days as a basketball player.

  Dave Moser saw me staring at his team, motioned to Wayne Huckel, and they moved out to stare me down. They were bold and wonderful sophomore guards and would ripen into great ones. Both were brilliant students who gave honor to the phrase “scholar-athlete.” Moser pointed to me and then back to himself, letting me know he would be guarding me tonight. I bowed, accepting his challenge. In the first game, Huckel had guarded me, but I was quicker than Wayne and this was a change in strategy for Lefty. I said to myself, “Hey, Moser, I hope you like going to the hoop, pal.”

  I returned to my teammates, overflowing with a strange exhilaration. I could not suppress the confidence I felt, or deny it, or hide from it, or lose it, or dig a hole for it to burrow in. I simply had it in aces and spades and I gloried in it and strutted around the court and stuck it down Davidson’s throat. If my teammates did not share it, tough shit—because I had earned it the hard way despite the savage eye of Mel Thompson. I had fought my way back from despair and self-loathing, from a coach who screamed “Don’t shoot!” every time I touched the ball. Tonight, The Citadel had a point guard who believed he could hang the moon with the stars of Betelgeuse thrown in as a bonus. There wasn’t a boy in the country who could stop me from getting to the paint. I could not wait for the game to start.

  But Davidson used their crowd, and their early run at us was devastating. Moser had turned into a fine point guard and he and Wayne Huckel were taking rebounds and fast-breaking us right from the start of the game. Wayne Huckel gave DeBrosse and me fits. It was not just his height, six three; he was built so solidly he could chase Spaniards down crowded streets of Pamplona. He was the strongest guard I faced that season, and he posted me up near the basket all night. They were running away from us in the first few minutes. Rodney Knowles scored the first seven points as the Wildcats jumped to a 21–7 lead in the first five minutes. It stretched out to a fourteen-point lead until, with twelve minutes left to play, Mohr and DeBrosse began hitting from the outside. In the next three minutes, the Citadel pulled to within two, and finally when I drove the center lane, flashed past Mohr, and put up a reverse layup against a lunging Knowles, we tied it.

  On this night, DeBrosse and I were again seamlessly matched and fine at what we did. Moser paid me the high honor of guarding me tightly. Huckel was overplaying DeBrosse and I caught DeBrosse’s eye, knowing exactly what he wanted me to do. I dribbled toward John and we executed a pick-and-roll that peeled Huckel right off DeBrosse and left John open for a jumper which he sank. All night, DeBrosse charged by me and left Huckel planted into me. Other times we faked it and I drove between Huckel and Moser and Knowles towered over me and I flipped it to Mohr for an uncontested layup. But DeBrosse and I had merged our talents, and he could do all the things I could not do as a player, and I could do all those things that John would not even consider doing. He was a cautious player and I was a bold one. John had a beautiful jump shot and mine was a bad rumor, at most. He did not like to drive to the basket and I lived to do it. John loved shooting, not passing; a good pass made me as happy as I could feel on a basketball court. We drove the Davidson guards nuts that night, and I can still see Moser’s tough, Indiana face trying to figure out how to keep me out of the middle or stop me from delivering the ball on the fast break.

  But Knowles and Youngdale went to work on the boards again, and Knowles had twenty-three points in the first half alone. Davidson had built their lead back to fourteen when we went in for the half. “We can beat these guys. We can beat these guys,” I kept exhorting my teammates, but was met with those resolute Citadel stares that could drive Mel into such a fury. I drank a Coke, chewing on the ice, convinced we could win the game.

  Only four of the Bulldogs had shown up to play that night. Zinsky and Bridges carried a vagueness and lostness in their eyes that I couldn’t wave away. But Kroboth performed heroically while rebounding against the sequoia-like Youngdale and Knowles.


  The guard play was quick and fierce and in the trenches. Huckel knocked both me and DeBrosse to the ground during the second half. He hit like a nose guard and loved the sheer physicality of the game. The pick-and-roll worked for me and Johnny; I opened up my boy DeBrosse and his jump shot was picture-perfect all night long. I loved it when DeBrosse got hot and made me look like an All-American handing it off to him. We began to get back into the game, point by point, and with nine minutes to play, Mohr hit a jump shot to bring us within five at 78–73.

  Mohr turned around to go back upcourt when he saw Lefty Driesell come off his bench trying to get the attention of one of his players to call time-out. But Mel was on his feet screaming at me to call time-out, and I did so. As Danny ran beside Lefty, the Davidson coach shrugged his shoulders at him and said, “Goddamn, Danny. What the hell did you need a time-out for? You guys have got all the momentum. It’s us that’s flat.”

  “Got me, Coach,” Danny answered.

  After the time-out, my team went stale again, and Davidson began to play more conservatively, picking their shots with great discretion. Once more, we played for a long three minutes without scoring a point as Davidson began to light it up again with an insurmountable lead. We played sloppy, desperate basketball toward the end of the game, and John DeBrosse fouled out of a game for the only time in his college career, and Davidson won the game, pulling away by 97–85.

  The News and Courier said the next morning: “The Bulldogs had three men with twenty or more points. Conroy had 24, Mohr 22, and DeBrosse 20. Conroy and Mohr were playing their last regular season game for the Bulldogs.”

  Our bad year had ended badly but I went over to shake hands with Dave Moser and Wayne Huckel. I told Wayne that he and Dave were the best guards I’d ever seen come into the conference, and I wished them luck in the tournament.

  On the bus ride back to the hotel, Rat handed out stat sheets to all the players. The coaches had not gotten on the buses yet and a general malaise had settled over the team. Suddenly there was screaming in front of me as Dan Mohr read that he had taken down only a single rebound during the course of the game. He was furious with Joe Eubanks, the statistician. “Fucking Rat. You can’t count worth a shit. I can remember at least six rebounds I pulled down and you say I only have one. Goddamn, you got Conroy and DeBrosse with five rebounds each and they’re the two littlest shits in the league.”

  “Watch it, Root,” DeBrosse said. “Conroy and I were skying tonight. We had to hit the boards hard, because you were only bringing down one board all night.”

  “Pipe down, Root,” Cauthen said, enjoying the chance to get on Mohr.

  “Eat me, Zipper,” Dan shot back. “It’s fucking Rat’s fault. The midget duck-butt can’t count. I bet I got at least ten rebounds.”

  “I don’t think you even got one,” Cauthen said.

  “I’m sorry, Danny,” Joe Eubanks said. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “Fucking Rat,” Mohr said, dismissing the manager with a gesture.

  Later, at the hotel, I knocked on the managers’ door. Joe Eubanks opened the door and I could see that he’d been crying.

  “Where’s Al?” I asked. “Is he with Coach Thompson?”

  Rat nodded his head then walked over to the sink and began washing his face and hands. I walked up behind him and said, “Root didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Joe. This season’s been hell on Danny. He thought he had a chance to be an All-American.”

  “I thought he would be, too.”

  “He took his frustration out on you.”

  “He sure did. He embarrassed me, Pat, in front of the guys.”

  “Don’t worry about it—the guys love you. All of them. Even Root,” I said.

  “Hey, Pat,” Joe said as I was leaving the room. “Thanks for not calling me Rat. I hate it.”

  “Want me to get them to stop?” I said.

  “No. They don’t mean anything by it.”

  “All of us think you’re the best part of this team.”

  “They do?” he asked.

  “They sure do.”

  “Why don’t you call me Rat?” Joe asked.

  “My three nicknames on this team have been ‘weasel,’ ‘midget,’ and ‘leprechaun.’ Which one do you think I like?”

  “None of them,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “Now, because Danny Mohr hurt your feelings, I’m going up to his room, cut off his pecker, and feed it to a coon dog. I’ll make him pay for this. Good night, Joe.”

  That was the last time I talked to Joe Eubanks before I received a phone call in Beaufort informing me that he’d been killed in Vietnam.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE TOURNAMENT

  WE COME, THEN, TO LAST GAMES.

  We come, as we inevitably must, to the tournament game against Richmond which would flush John DeBrosse out of his Dayton suburb to connect his life again with mine, and in the process, give me back the team I had lost through neglect and memories too painful to recollect. We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game. The game that branded DeBrosse with his own earmark of stigma was upon us, the memory John would carry like a small-craft warning in his interior weather for the rest of his life.

  But there was optimism and zeal loose in our locker room after the defeat by Davidson, the thought that we had given a great effort against the Wildcats and had actually frightened them on their home court. Before the tournament, our practices were lively and our enthusiasm catching. From four to seven, we practiced hard and put our faith in next Thursday. I was convinced we were part of a down cycle in the Southern Conference and that we had as good a chance of winning the tournament as anyone. The tournament could provide redemption for the whole lost year. If we could only win three games in a row, we could spend the rest of our lives calling ourselves champions.

  Louis Chestnut said in the News and Courier that “the Bulldogs will be led into the game by seniors Danny Mohr and Pat Conroy, who will be tasting their final competition. Mohr is a top rebounder who sports a 13.3 scoring average and Conroy, who has not been a starter until this year, has shot for an 11.8 average. The top scorer all season has been junior John DeBrosse. The small (5´ 10´´) floor leader has a 14.4 average.” Mr. Chestnut agreed that our team was peaking at the right time and could do some unexpected damage in the tournament.

  WHEN THE CITADEL WAS WARMING UP in the Charlotte Coliseum, the place which represented the big time for any Southern Conference guy, I noted something in the layup line that had been peculiarly absent for most of the year—Doug Bridges snorting and clapping and dunking with authority, if not fury. The key with Bridges lay in the eyes. When Bridges hustled during warmups, it was a grand sign that he had come to the court ready and willing to play. When Bridges was lit up to play his best game, he could score thirty against any team in the country, and I mean any team. He was the best athlete on our squad. If you could have put my will or DeBrosse’s or Hooper’s into Bridges’s head, his name would still be sung in clear anthems by basketball fans. He had as beautiful a body as I have ever seen, and could look like a combination of Michelangelo’s David and Baryshnikov when he soared to bring down a rebound. For four days, I had dropped hints that we needed Bridges in the lineup to Little Mel when he was overseeing the one-on-one drills between the guards.

  “We need Bridges, Coach,” I said. “He’s got the firepower to match Moates.”

  “The big fella thinks he’s been erratic,” Ed Thompson said, in his quiet, serious way.

  “But when he’s on, Coach, there’s no one like Bridges.”

  “The big fella makes all the calls. You know that,” said Little Mel.

  Bridges’s eyes looked like the place where madness was born, and I almost screamed aloud when I saw Mel include his name in the starting lineup. I looked around the room and I heard the crowd outside. I felt my team coming together at last, the way teams
are supposed to feel, the ones who you would go to the wall for, dive on the floor for, and shed your blood for. Our blood was up, and I was ready to play the game of my life. That morning I had read in the Charlotte Observer that “The Citadel’s getting the best guard play in the Southern Conference.” Coach Gary McPherson of VMI had said that about DeBrosse and me.

  When I shook hands with Richmond’s captain, Johnny Moates, I was shaking hands with the tenth-leading scorer in the nation with a twenty-five-points-plus per-game average. This had been a dream season, for Moates wore the mantle of greatness with a cockiness that bordered on arrogance. He had the same look in his eye that I had spotted in Bridges’s during warmups, and I took that to be a bad omen for myself. Moates had disliked me since the last counselors game at Camp Wahoo, and even more so after our epic battle in January.

  As we walked out to start the game, DeBrosse told me to take Moates and he would guard Billy McCann, the son of Bill McCann, the Camp Wahoo coach who used to coach at the University of Virginia. I shook hands with all five of the Richmond players, feeling rested and peppery and charged up. Moates regarded me with the slight contempt one of the best ballplayers in the Southern Conference can afford to express when they are being guarded by one of the worst. Moates could do contemptuousness the way Olivier could deliver high tragedy. He was magnificent in his disdain for me, then spent the next forty minutes proving why I fully merited it. When I was busy diving into the wreckage of this lost season, I kept coming across the fact that I spent the entire season playing defense against a splendid platoon of shooting guards who were stronger, taller, and much better athletes than I was.