Thursday, April 10, 2008
More musings on Gus Gerard
Parkhill can't remember 'greatest win'
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's UVa Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
See Doug and Randy talk sports every week with the Sports edition of the TimesCast
Recent columns
Something occurred to me Wednesday night as I was about to hand over a story on Gus Gerard to my editors.
How many people remember Gus Gerard? How many readers actually saw him play?
In my case, Roanoke Times sports editor Jeff Gilbert had heard of Gerard. That made it a little easier to pitch the story. So had my fellow assistant sports editor, Steve Hemphill, who grew up in Colorado and vaguely remembered Gerard from his brief stint with the Denver Nuggets.
Gerard won’t be remembered as one of the great players in UVa history. You could make the case that he was one of the great talents, but, as former teammate Dan Bonner pointed out, Gerard plied his trade for two of the most nondescript UVa teams of his era.
With Gerard as a sophomore in his first season of varsity eligibility, the Cavaliers finished 13-12 in 1972-1973. That team did have one shining moment, an 84-78 victory at North Carolina when the Tar Heels were ranked No. 3.
Believe it or not, I was at the game and remembered that Virginia had three players who scored 20 points or more – senior Barry Parkhill, Gerard and freshman Wally Walker.
“Not me,” said Gerard before addressing a ‘Hoos in Recovery assembly Monday night. “I was in foul trouble.”
Gerard went on to mumble something about having to play center as an alternative to Lanny Stahurski. But, when I went back and checked the game story, he was correct. The third 20-point scorer was Parkhill’s fellow captain and current UVa radio analyst Jim “Hobbo” Hobgood.
(We stop for an aside from Hobgood, who said, “I can believe Gus came back. But, if ‘Ski [Stahurski] ever returns to Charlottesville, that’s what I want to see.”).
Walker hit 12 of 13 shots from the field and finished with 25 points, followed by Parkhill with 23 and Hobgood with 22. The leading scorer in the game was current Denver Nuggets coach George Karl, who had 31.
“This has to be the greatest win I’ve ever been associated with,” Parkhill was quoted by then-Roanoke Times sportswriter Bill Cate. “Nothing else is close.”
(I sent Parkhill a copy of that quote and asked him to identify the game. He got back to me via BlackBerry and said he had no idea but that he expected to enjoy himself this weekend at the Masters).
Hobgood told me Wednesday that, before 1973, Virginia hadn’t won in Chapel Hill, N.C., since around 1917 and was right on top of that. Actually, Virginia won the first game ever played in the series, an 18-15 affair in Chapel Hill in 1911, and the Cavaliers’ only other road wins in the series were in 1981, 2000 and 2002.
“Pete [Gillen] won there twice,” Hobgood pointed out.
It was also Hobgood who recently stunned me with the revelation that, in his 12 years as the commentator for Virginia men’s basketball, he has never seen the Cavaliers play on Saturday of the ACC Tournament.
BUT, BACK TO Gerard.
In his second season of varsity competition, the Cavaliers finished 11-16 in 1973-74. That team lost 12 of 13 games in the middle of the season but played respectably down the stretch, winning five of its last eight games and six of 10.
Coach Bill “Hoot” Gibson had survived a “Boot the Hoot” campaign in the late 1960s and could have returned in 1974-75, but he jumped at a chance to move to Florida and take over the fledgling University of South Florida program.
I had a few minutes with Gerard before and after his speech Monday night at Virginia, when he addressed his decision to turn pro. If Gerard had a legacy, that was it. He was the first UVa athlete to turn pro before the end of his college eligibility.
What I would have liked to ask Gerard was whether he would have returned for his fourth year if Gibson had stayed. He did make reference to the situation during his speech.
“There was a new coach coming in,” Gerard said. “Maybe he was going to play the new guys. Who knew? I didn’t know much about coach [Terry] Holland except that his teams played defense, and I knew I didn’t want to play defense.”
The first offer he received from the pros was for $300,000, “and, while we’d probably had more than $20,000 to our family name,” Gerard said. “I told them, ‘No. That wasn’t enough.”
There was a bidding war between the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association at the time and the contract subsequently escalated from $300,000 to $900,000.
Gerard can remember being in New York, where teammate Andrew Boninti had a summer job, and watching Boninti communicating with Holland on the phone as negotiations were taking place. When the ABA’s Spirits of St. Louis said they would give him a $75,000 signing bonus and write him a check on the spot, Gerard jumped.
“We got ready to leave and we realized that neither one of us had gas money to drive back to Charlottesville,” Gerard said. “So we asked the agent if he could pay for our gas and he gave us three $100 bills.”
THIS WAS ABOUT the time of Gerard’s 21st birthday and you have to wonder, if Gerard had finished his college career and delayed his exposure to the pro-basketball lifestyle, if that might have prevented his later addiction to drugs and alcohol.
“I don’t think so,” said Gerard, who said of his personality. “I was addicted to anything that made me feel good. I was addicted to basketball before I was addicted to anything else.”
At 54, Gerard looks like he could take the floor tomorrow and, if not for a traffic accident in which he was rear-ended and required neck surgery, he still might be playing. He made reference to a brief appearance in a Mexican pro league and he apparently was the scourge of over-40 leagues until his accident.
In Holland’s first season, 1974-75, the Cavaliers were 12-13. Then, one year later, UVa won its first and only ACC championship. Gerard would have gone by then, but imagine a 1974-75 frontcourt of future pros Gerard, Walker and Marc Iavaroni, who was a freshman that year?
That’s not intended as a knock against Dan Bonner, who averaged 8.3 points in his only season as a starter. Besides, Bonner has to be feeling pretty good after publication of this week’s Sports Illustrated.
In a letter to the editor, subscriber Sam Clarke from North Garden said one of the joys of the NCAA Tournament is “we get the chance to hear Dan Bonner, one of the best color commentators, instead of Dick Vitale.”
Better yet, Bonner said Thursday, he doesn’t even know Sam Clarke.
Wonder if Sam Clarke knows Gus Gerard.
