Smith, Tark Once Coached at the Coliseum
February 11, 2015 05:26 PM | General
 |
|
| Former West Virginia coach Gale Catlett, pictured here with forward Michael King during the Mountaineers' 1983 game against No. 1-ranked UNLV. | |
| WVU Athletic Communications photo |
Last Sunday, Smith, 83, died at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., while Tarkanian, 84, died earlier today in a Las Vegas hospital.
Combined, they produced nearly 1,700 wins, three NCAA titles and 15 Final Four appearances during a period of time when the NCAA basketball tournament was evolving into the billion-dollar industry that it has become today.
Back in the 1980s and early 1990s when Smith and Tarkanian were the game’s two most recognizable coaches, March Madness simply wasn’t March Madness without Smith’s North Carolina Tar Heels or Tarkanian’s UNLV Runnin’ Rebels in it.
Smith gave us the Four Corner Offense, Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Bob McAdoo, Billy Cunningham, Kenny Smith, Phil Ford and many, many other great players.
Tarkanian, too, built his teams around great players such Armen Gilliam, Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony who played at a frenetic pace that often drove their coach to chewing wet towels during games to help ease his nerves.
Thirty two years ago, later this month, Tarkanian went through quite a few towels when he brought his No. 1-ranked Runnin’ Rebels to Morgantown to play West Virginia on February 27, 1983 in a made-for-TV Sunday afternoon game on CBS.
Tarkanian had no clue what he had gotten himself into until his team arrived at the Holiday Inn next to the WVU Coliseum and he saw thousands of WVU students camped outside in sub-freezing weather hoping to get inside the arena the next morning.
Tarkanian and his players spent a sleepless night in their hotel rooms listening to all those nutty West Virginia students chanting, “LET’S GO MOUNTAINEERS!” into the wee hours of the morning.
It wasn't a basketball game but rather an ambush.
“He couldn’t sleep the night before because of all the noise,” former West Virginia coach Gale Catlett told me in 2010. “Before the game I walked up to him and said, ‘Hey Tark, how are you doing?’ He said, ‘Gale, how in the hell did you ever get me to come here?’ He knew that day he was going to get his ass beat. We always laughed about that.”
Putting one on Jerry Tarkanian and his Runnin’ Rebels rarely happened, which is why West Virginia’s 87-78 victory over UNLV will always be considered one of the greatest wins in school history.
And while Dean Smith never faced the Mountaineers in Morgantown, his North Carolina Tar Heels did play a game here once at the WVU Coliseum in 1972.
That was the year Red Brown somehow talked the NCAA basketball committee into bringing the 1972 NCAA East Regional to Morgantown.
Today, it’s almost unfathomable a city the size of Morgantown could land an event of this magnitude … well, multiply that by about 10,000 and that was what the city was up against back in ‘72.
The boulevard was only two lanes, Interstate 79 was still under construction and I-68 was not even on the drawing board when North Carolina, South Carolina, Penn and Villanova came to Morgantown for a weekend of college basketball.
There were barely enough hotels to house the four teams, let alone the thousands of college basketball fans from the Northeast coming to the arena for the weekend.
South Carolina coach Frank McGuire, a New York City native, complained bitterly about the meager accommodations his team received while staying out at Mont Chateau - a 20-minute drive away from town.
“We were so far back in the woods that we might not have made it to the game had it snowed,” McGuire quipped. “Every morning I woke up and talked to the deer.”
The Philadelphia writers, too, bellyached about the lack of adequate lodging and dining facilities in the area, one writing that the only way to get to Morgantown was by flying into Pittsburgh and then “swinging on vines.”
The only person who didn’t whine about Morgantown was the classy Smith. That’s because he had more important things to worry about. Smith took care of McGuire’s Gamecocks by 23 points in the regional semifinals and then beat Chuck Daly’s Penn Quakers by 14 in the regional championship game.
It was one of 11 trips to the Final Four for Smith’s Tar Heels.
I also recall a conversation I once had with Catlett about Smith, one of the game’s great innovators.
“(Smith) was a great coach, he had great schemes and he was a Kansas guy and he used to stop in (the basketball office) when I was on the staff there because his mother was from Topeka,” said Catlett.
Catlett admitted Smith was one of the coaches that he borrowed concepts from during his career.
“Dean Smith was the passing game, multiple defenses and I would guess some of the stuff I ran,” said Catlett. “Coach (Adolph) Rupp, I learned from him, Lefty Driesell and Ted Owens, but some of it came from Dean Smith’s idea of getting the fast break out and running a secondary break and running your transition game. Then, setting up on defense and trying to run and jump and that kind of stuff.”
 |
 |
| Smith | Tarkanian |
The game grounded to a halt because some of the lesser-talented teams were allowed to grab and hold on defense.
“For some reason I think the Big Ten started (playing that way) – a slug-it-out league,” said Catlett. “I see some of the (thuggish play) on the court today that is amazing to me. They don’t call fouls. (Former Georgetown coach) John Thompson was smart and he was a great coach and he played that way. The one guy that never did that was Dean Smith.”
Indeed, Smith didn’t have to play that way because his teams didn’t need to and were so much fun to watch, as were Tarkanian’s.
Shoot, the Tark chewing wet towels was even fun to watch.
Ross Hodge & Honor Huff | Stanford Postgame
Friday, April 03
Geimere Latimer | April 2
Friday, April 03
Coach Deke Adams | April 2
Friday, April 03
Coach Rich Rodriguez | April 2
Friday, April 03
