WVU Sports Hall of Fame
Gale Catlett’s name has been synonymous with West Virginia University basketball since 1959.
That’s when Catlett first came to WVU from Hedgesville, West Virginia, as a member of Fred Schaus’ freshman basketball team. During Catlett’s three varsity seasons playing for coach George King in 1961, 1962 and 1963, the basketball program had reached the peak of its “Golden Era” with consecutive Southern Conference championship seasons in 1962 and 1963.
Catlett teamed with All-American guard Rod Thorn to help the Mountaineers produce consecutive records of 24-4, 26-6 and 23-8 while earning two NCAA Tournament berths.
Catlett’s best season as a player came during his junior year in 1962 when he averaged seven points and 4.1 rebounds per game while shooting better than 45 percent from the floor. The 6-foot-4-inch, 200-pounder scored a career-high 20 points in West Virginia’s 79-60 victory over Penn State on Feb. 20, 1962, and three times during the ’62 season he pulled down a career-high eight rebounds in games against Furman, Ohio State and Oregon State.
Catlett scored 402 points and grabbed 275 rebounds in 78 career games as one of West Virginia’s most rugged and fiercest competitors.
However, it was as a college basketball coach were Catlett really excelled and made a name for himself nationally.
Upon graduation in 1963, Catlett immediately broke into the Division I ranks as an assistant on Lew Mills’ staff at Richmond. Subsequent stops at Davidson with Lefty Driesell, at Kansas with Ted Owens, and finally, at Kentucky with legendary Adolph Rupp, made Catlett one of the most marketable young coaches in the sport by the early 1970s.
Rupp credited Catlett with devising a zone defense that helped Kentucky beat Marquette in the 1972 NCAA Tournament and when Catlett’s name surfaced for a job opening at Cincinnati, Rupp’s glowing endorsement pushed Catlett to the top of the list.
Catlett won immediately at Cincinnati and soon built the Bearcats into one of the powerhouse programs in the Metro Conference with a crop of highly rated recruits such as Pat Cummings, Brian Williams, Robert Miller, Mike Jones, Gary Yoder and Steve Collier. At one time, Catlett had five different players on his Bearcat roster named Mr. Basketball in their respective home state.
His best Cincinnati team was his third in 1975 which won 23 games and advanced to the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight; three of his six Bearcat squads reached the NCAA Tournament, one made the NIT and two finished second in the difficult Metro Conference.
Following a 17-10 record and a fourth-place Metro finish in 1978, Catlett was persuaded to return to his alma mater.
In order to lure Catlett, West Virginia athletic director Leland Byrd utilized the WVU Foundation to underwrite the first multi-year contract for a coach in school history, Catlett inking a four-year deal similar to what the Foundation was underwriting at the school’s medical center to attract surgeons and doctors.
By hiring Catlett, West Virginia showed it was serious once more about returning its sagging basketball program back to its glory days of the 1950s and 1960s when Catlett was a player.
And he delivered.
After posting back-to-back winnings seasons in 1979 and 1980, the Mountaineers took a big leap forward in 1981 when West Virginia upset Minnesota on the road in Minneapolis to reach the NIT semifinals in New York City. Exciting, young players such as guard Greg Jones and forward Russel Todd helped turn out record crowds and revitalize interest in college hoops throughout the state.
Fans came out in droves in 1982 to watch Catlett’s team win a nation’s-best 23 straight games, scale the national polls (reaching a high of No. 6 on Feb. 23, 1982) and earn the school’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in 15 years.
More than 2,000 beyond the WVU Coliseum’s capacity watched West Virginia defeat Pitt, 82-79, on Feb. 24, 1982 in one of the most exciting games ever played in the historic arena. To this day, the announced attendance of 16,704 represents the largest crowd to ever witness a college basketball game in the state of West Virginia.
West Virginia’s success under Catlett continued throughout the 1980s as West Virginia made NCAA Tournament trips in 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987 and 1989. His seven consecutive 20-win seasons from 1981 to 1987 represent one of the most successful periods in school history, matching the nine-year run made by Schaus and King from 1955-1963 and the seven-year run turned in by John Beilein and Bob Huggins from 2005-2011.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Catlett’s matchups against John Chaney’s Temple Owls and John Calipari’s Massachusetts Minutemen were annual showcase events in the Atlantic 10 Conference. His star-studded WVU roster in the 1980s included such Mountaineer greats as Lester Rowe, Dale Blaney, Darryl Prue, Steve Berger, Herbie Brooks, Tyrone Shaw and Chris Brooks.
Catlett’s success leveled off somewhat in the mid-1990s, particularly as the team’s schedule became more difficult when the Mountaineers joined the Big East Conference as a full-fledged member in 1995-96. Still, his West Virginia teams experienced far more initial success than the Big East’s other two newcomers, Notre Dame and Rutgers.
Catlett’s two best years during the decade came in 1997-98 when he produced back-to-back 20-win seasons and his squad made a return trip to the NCAA Tournament in 1998 - its first since 1992.
Led by Big East Defensive Player of the Year Damian Owens, Catlett’s 1998 team won 12 of its first 13 games, including a win over nationally ranked Georgia in Atlanta, defeated Georgetown on ESPN Big Monday, and then routed sixth-ranked Connecticut by 18 points at the Coliseum on Feb. 11, 1998 before more than 15,000 crazed Mountaineer fans.
The season concluded with a flourish when West Virginia blew out former Atlantic 10 rival Temple in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Boise, Idaho, and then upset ninth-ranked Cincinnati two days later in the second round on a last-second shot made by guard Jarrod West.
In the Sweet 16 in Anaheim, California - West Virginia’s deepest advance in the tournament since Catlett’s senior season in 1963 - West Virginia lost by just three points to national runner-up Utah. It was one of the high moments in Catlett’s long and successful coaching career.
Catlett coached four more seasons until his retirement on Feb. 14, 2002. His nephew, Drew Catlett, coached the remaining five games that year.
Catlett’s 30-year Division I coaching record was 565-325, including a school-best 439 victories during his 24 seasons orchestrating the Mountaineer program from 1978-2002.
He took 11 teams to the NCAA Tournament, winning seven times, and had nine additional teams qualify for the NIT. Fourteen of his teams won at least 20 games in becoming just the 45th coach in NCAA history to reach 500 career victories.
Two of his Cincinnati teams won Metro Conference Tournament titles (1975-76) and he coached five West Virginia teams to Atlantic 10 Conference regular season titles while leading two to A-10 tournament crowns in 1983-84.
He was named an inaugural member of WVU’s Mountaineer Legends Society in 2017.
