| Gale Catlett
Special to MSNsportsNET.com
By John Antonik
 Gale
Catlett's affiliation with West Virginia University began in 1958 as a
member of the Mountaineer freshman team. The Hedgesville native missed the
1959-60 campaign with a broken wrist before lettering three straight seasons
in 1961, 1962, and 1963.
Catlett played during one of the finest periods in West Virginia basketball
history. From 1957 to 1961, Mountaineer teams spent a staggering 61 straight
weeks in the Top 20. West Virginia's winning percentage from 1951 to 1961
was 78 percent, second only to Kentucky.
During Catlett's three varsity seasons, West Virginia won a remarkable 70 of
88 games and went to the NCAA tournament twice.
Although not the team's primary scorer, Catlett managed to produce 407
points and grab 275 rebounds on Coach George King's guard-oriented teams.
Besides all the points and the rebounds he made, Catlett was a great team
player who would do almost anything to help his team get an edge.
"If he thought he had to knock somebody in the head, he knocked them in the
head," teammate Willie Akers recently told a statewide radio audience.
"That's the way he played."
"He was a competitor," added
teammate Jim McCormick. "It didn't matter whether we were shooting pool,
playing cards, running a race, or whatever. Gale didn't like losing."
All-American teammate Rod Thorn recalled Catlett's impressive focus and
understanding of the game. "Gale was always a very good student," said
Thorn. "Most of us don't have plans, but he always had a plan. He was a
student of the game even then."
Catlett's keen basketball mind was also evident to opposing players. Chris
Smith, Virginia Tech's all-conference center, remembered how Catlett used to
deliberately delay the game when the Mountaineers were in their vaunted zone
press.
"He would lie on the ground and
have their trainer come out and stretch him out," Smith laughed. "All he was
doing was catching his breath. He'd jump up and they'd get back into that
press and get a few more steals."
After completing his senior season in 1963, Catlett immediately turned to
coaching. He got a job as an assistant for Lew Mills at Richmond and coached
there for three seasons before moving to Davidson. After two years with
Lefty Driesell, Catlett became the freshman coach at Kansas for Ted Owens.
In 1971, Catlett took an assistant coaching position on Adolph Rupp's staff
at Kentucky. In just eight short years, Catlett had methodically moved his
way up the ladder to become one of college basketball's most recognized
assistant coaches.
Catlett spent just one year with
Rupp at Kentucky during the 1971-72 season, but that was enough to help him
land the head basketball job at Cincinnati in 1972 at age 31. He took over
for Tay Baker and led the Bearcats to a 17-9 record in 1973. Two years later
he had Cincinnati in the 1975 NCAA tournament, and they made two more trips
in 1976 and 1977.
In 1978 Catlett returned to his
alma mater and the new coach immediately introduced his winning ways. By
1981 he had developed a team good enough to make postseason play. A year
later, in 1982, Catlett's Mountaineer club cracked the national rankings for
the first time since he was a WVU player in 1962. West Virginia advanced to
as high as sixth in the national ratings and won a nation's-best 23 games.
It was the first of six NCAA tournament berths for the Mountaineers in a
span of eight seasons.
Players like Greg Jones, Russel
Todd, Dale Blaney, Lester Rowe, Darryl Prue, and Herbie Brooks helped lead
West Virginia to one of its most productive periods in school history. In
1983, West Virginia defeated number one-ranked UNLV to become the first and
only Mountaineer team to down a top-ranked team on its home floor. West
Virginia also had great wins over number 17 Oregon State in the first round
of the 1984 NCAA tournament, and an upset of tenth-ranked Auburn in the 1985
preseason NIT.
It was during the 1980s that the WVU Coliseum became one of college
basketball's most feared venues for visiting teams. The Mountaineers didn't
lose a home game for more than two years and posted a Coliseum-record,
39-game winning streak that was snapped late in the 1983 season. West
Virginia set a single-game attendance record of 16,704 against Pitt in 1982,
and averaged a school-record 11,384 fans that season.
Catlett's success continued in the 1990s. His 1992 team was the Atlantic 10
runner-up and faced Missouri in the NCAA tournament. He had NIT teams in
1993, 1994, and 1997 before producing one of the school's most memorable
seasons in 1998.
That year, West Virginia downed nationally rated Georgia and Connecticut on
the way to a third-place Big East finish. The Mountaineers earned an
at-large berth into the NCAA tournament and soundly defeated a good Temple
team by 30 points in the first round. Two days later, Catlett engineered one
of the school's most memorable victories when his team defeated number
nine-rated Cincinnati on a last-second shot to reach the NCAA "Sweet 16."
West Virginia's 24-9 season that year will go down as one of the finest in
school history.
Catlett finished in 2001 with
the most coaching wins in school history. |
