WVU Upsets No. 1-seed Rutgers
July 10, 2003 10:26 AM | General
January 14, 2002
PITTSBURGH, PA. (March 2, 1978) – As his basketball team boarded the bus on its journey to Pittsburgh to play Rutgers in the first round of the Eastern Eight tournament, Coach Joedy Gardner wondered to himself if this game was going to be his last at West Virginia.
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| Joe Fryz knocks down a jumper in the first half of West Virginia's 81-74 upset victory over Rutgers. (WVU Sports Communications) |
Three years earlier in 1975, Mountaineer basketball supporters weren’t exactly dancing in the streets when athletic director Leland Byrd announced that Gardner was going to be Sonny Moran’s replacement.
Gardner had just two years worth of head coaching experience at Arizona Western Junior College before making the jump to Division I basketball. However, the Ellwood City, Pa., native satisfied one important criteria for the job -- he was a West Virginia graduate.
Following the resignation of Fred Schaus in 1960, the Mountaineer basketball fortunes were handled by George King, Bucky Waters and Sonny Moran in succession. King and Moran were products of the West Virginia Conference while Waters came from the ACC.
It was during Moran’s four-year stay from 1970-74 that the basketball fortunes headed south. His best team in 1972 was decimated by a terrible automobile accident as the team won its first six games. The program never really recovered. Two straight 10-15 seasons led to Moran’s resignation after the 1974 season.
Press speculation at the time had the WVU coaching job going to either New Jersey Nets assistant Rod Thorn, Cincinnati head coach Gale Catlett, or Fairmont State coaching legend Joe Retton.
A dark horse for the West Virginia job was Gardner, who was recruited by Red Brown to WVU in 1954. Although Brown was no longer athletic director at WVU, he served as Byrd’s consultant during the hiring process.
Newspaper reports at the time listed the main reason that West Virginia decided on Gardner was because the head coaching salary of $23,000 was not enough to entice either Catlett or Thorn, and Retton was eliminated because he did not have WVU ties.
As a Mountaineer player, Joedy Gardner bridged the gap between Hot Rod Hundley and Jerry West during West Virginia’s “Golden Era” of basketball. By his own admission, Gardner was the guard who “took the basketball out of bounds and passed it to West.”
His athletic career was soon interrupted by military service; he flew A-4 jets for the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. Gardner played and coached service basketball throughout his years in the Marines and took that experience with him to Arizona Western Junior College as an assistant coach in 1970. Three years later he became the school’s head coach and two years after that, he was taking a basketball job that one cryptic sportswriter referred to as Morgantown’s “electric chair.”
Asked during his introductory press conference if the West Virginia job scared him he replied: “Have you ever had SAM (surface-to-air) missiles launched at you? Now that’s being scared!”
Departed coach Sonny Moran complained publicly that Mountaineer fans were “unrealistic” in their expectations of the basketball program. West Virginia left the weak Southern Conference in 1968 and competed as an independent. Moran’s first season in 1969-70 saw his team face four nationally ranked teams on the road including a stop at No. 2 Kentucky.
Because the Mountaineers were not in a conference, the hoop slate continued to be challenging. Fans thought the spacious and magnificent WVU Coliseum was going to be a cure-all for its basketball struggles, but the facility only proved to be a band-aid. By the time Gardner took over the WVU basketball position for the 74-75 season, the 14,000-seat Coliseum had only hosted six games with crowds of more than 10,000.
Because Gardner wasn’t a favorite of many West Virginia basketball boosters and the program was coming off two straight 10-15 seasons, his every move was being scrutinized.
Gardner led WVU to 14-13 and 15-13 seasons during his first two years before directing an 18-11 campaign in 1977. West Virginia upset No. 17 Notre Dame that year at the WVU Coliseum before a crowd of more than 13,000, and it looked like Gardner finally had the program moving in the right direction.
However, his team slipped terribly in 1978. West Virginia could manage just 10 regular season wins against 15 losses and were ranked last in the newly formed Eastern 8 basketball conference.
Upon his arrival at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, Gardner was asked by a Pittsburgh television reporter if he felt he had to win the Eastern 8 tournament to save his job. “If after three winning seasons (in four years) you have to win a tournament to keep your job, it’s kind of ridiculous,” he answered.
West Virginia had the monumental task of facing No. 1-seeded Rutgers, which sported a fancy 21-5 record and had one of the country’s best players in 6-9 forward James Bailey. ‘King James’, as he was known in Piscataway, teamed with Phil Sellers to help the Scarlet Knights to a 31-win season and a Final Four berth in the NCAA tournament in 1976.
Two years later, he was the best player in the Eastern 8 averaging a conference-best 23.9 points per game. Bailey joined Hollis Copeland and Abdel Anderson to give the Knights its ‘ABC’ front line. Guard Rodney Duncan was responsible for triggering the RU’s attack and ranked fourth in the conference in assists.
Unlike most of the other teams in the Eastern 8 tournament that year, Rutgers had charged hard to the finish, winning 11 of its last 12 games and 14 of 16. West Virginia, meanwhile, had won three of its last four games for much needed momentum.
Terrific sophomore guard Lowes Moore came into the tournament ranked second to Bailey in conference scoring at 21.4 points per game, while 6-7 senior forward Maurice Robinson averaged 20.5 points and 12.4 rebounds per game. Despite its late-season turn around the Mountaineers were still 7 ½-point underdogs.
The two teams took the floor to a near-empty Pittsburgh Civic Arena for a mid-week 3 p.m. basketball matinee. The lack of fans proved worrisome to Rutgers players and coaches. A year earlier in 1977, the top-seeded Knights were upset in the first round of the ECBL tournament by Massachusetts before just 200 fans at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
“It had an effect on us and it shouldn’t have, but it did,” remarked Rutgers co-captain Steve Hefele. The Knights were venturing into the same circumstances once again.
West Virginia came out of the gates in a full sprint, jumping out to a fast 18-6 lead following a Junius Lewis turnaround jumper with 13:25 to go. Joe Fryz, a sophomore guard from nearby Coraopolis, Pa., hit three long jumpers during the run.
Following a Rutgers time out, the Knights began to work into West Virginia’s lead on nifty jumpers and slam dunks by Bailey. With WVU’s margin just five with 5:40 to go, Rutgers scored eight of the game’s next 10 points to cut the deficit to just two points, 32-30 at the 2:51 mark. Rutgers employed a box-and-one defense on Moore, limiting the guard to just five first-half points. WVU tried the same approach against Bailey but aborted that plan when he responded by scoring 12 of RU’s 33 first-half points. Instead Gardner decided to switch defenses with the aim of keeping Rutgers off guard. The Mountaineers were able to withstand RU’s late first-half run and held a slim 33-30 lead at halftime.
The two teams played even for the first five minutes of the second half until Rutgers managed to capture its first lead of the game at 46-44 with 14:34 to go.
Trailing 44-43, Rutgers forward Abdel Anderson hit a short jumper and was fouled on the play by Maurice Robinson. His free throw gave the Knights a two-point advantage.
Robinson responded by scoring on a tip-in, and added another two on a sensational alley-oop slam off a feed from Fryz.
Rodney Duncan countered with a running jumper to knot the score at 48 with 12:53 to go, but West Virginia answered again when Fryz stole the basketball and scored on a layyp. Junius Lewis then hit another turnaround jumper and was fouled on the play by Bailey. He converted the free throw to give West Virginia a 53-48 lead.
WVU built its margin to seven and then to 12 before Rutgers made one last run. A basket by Bailey and a three-point play by Duncan closed the gap to just 75-70 with 1:57 to go. The Knights inched closer on a pair of free throws by Kelvin Troy to make the score 77-73, but Sid Bostick nailed two critical free throws with 32 seconds left to push the margin back to six.
Moore iced the game with a dunk to give the Mountaineers a memorable, 81-74 upset. Moore came alive in the second half and finished the game with 23 points. All five West Virginia starters reached double figures. In addition to Moore, Robinson had 18 points to go along with 14 rebounds, Bostick scored 16, Fryz finished with 13 and Lewis had 11 before leaving the game with a cut to his forehead that required a visit to the hospital and stitches. Freshman Dennis Hosey replaced him and played the remaining 21 minutes; Hosey was West Virginia’s only substitute.
The high-flying Bailey scored 34 points and added eight rebounds for the Knights. Copeland contributed 14.
The following day West Virginia edged Duquesne, 59-57 in the semifinals before falling to No. 2-seeded Villanova, 63-59 in the championship game.
West Virginia’s 1978 season ended with a disappointing 12-16 record and Gardner was fired just days after the tournament loss. His replacement was Gale Catlett, who transformed the program into an annual NCAA tournament contender by the early 1980s.
Although West Virginia’s Eastern 8 tournament victory over Rutgers was buried within an ordinary period of basketball at WVU, it still remains one of the school’s most memorable triumphs.
West Virginia 81, Rutgers 74
West Virginia (11-15)
Bostick 4-6 8-8 16, Lewis 5-8 1-1 11, Robinson 8-16 2-4 18, Fryz 6-13 1-2 13, Moore 8-15 7-9 23, Hosey 0-2 0-1 0. Totals 31-60 19-25 81.
Rutgers (21-6)
Anderson 2-3 3-3 7, Copeland 7-15 0-0 14, Bailey 15-23 4-6 34, Duncan 3-6 1-1 7, Hefele 3-8 1-1 7, Brown 1-1 0-0 2, Troy 1-5 1-2 3. Totals 32-61 10-13 74.
Halftime-West Virginia 36-33. Fouled out- None. Rebounds- Rutgers 30 (Bailey 8, Copeland 8); West Virginia 32 (Robinson 14). Assists- Rutgers 20 (Copeland 7, Duncan 7); West Virginia 11 (Fryz 5). Total fouls-Rutgers 23, West Virginia 14. Technicals- Bailey.
Attendance – 2,758.
