My Losing Season (25 page)

Johnny Moates glided toward me on Richmond's first possession, his surefooted nerve a component of his high-flying game. Tee Hooper was a perfect choice to guard Moates because Tee's height and athleticism and the brimming desire he brought to the defensive end of the court were perfect foils to Moates's own superlative gifts. As Moates approached me in the dead center of his finest season on earth, I slapped the palms of my hands on the polished floor, got into my defensive stance, and moved out to meet one of the highest-scoring guards in the nation.

I would hear warnings from Bridges and Zinsky called out to me every time Mr. Moates came down the court. Tom Greene, a forward built whippet-thin, set the best pick of anyone I ever played against. He rattled me several times when Moates would come off the screen fast and be up in the air as I struggled to break through by straightening my body and beating Moates to the spot. On the other side of the court, Harvey Roberts was setting the screen and Richmond even brought its center, the wide-bodied Buster Batts, to the top of the key to get their boy open. I never played harder defense than I did that night and I never had such limited success doing it.

As Moates came toward me again and again, the one thing I knew for sure was that I would not have the help of my teammates. They had their men to guard and I had Johnny Moates. What they did not have was every other player on the Richmond team trying to free their man for a jump shot. I knew that Johnny, a shooter of immense gifts, would never take me to the hoop. His was a long-range game. He possessed the oddest jump shot I have ever seen but it was deadly. Moates would go off a double pick set on my right, and I would fall a step behind him. In that brief moment, Moates would take to the air in a mongoose-quick movement and bring the ball over his head and then launch it toward the basket with an unconventional high arching shot. I had my hand in Moates's face the whole night, which made almost no difference to him. His shot would soar toward the rafters, go higher than any jump shot I had ever seen, backspinning beautifully, until the laws of gravity brought the ball rippling through the net with that sweetness of sound—the swish, like a flower inhaling grass.

He earned each point he scored that night and I was up in the air with him for every shot. I felt overpowered but not humiliated. I could hear the Corps murmuring its approval of my hustle and gritty pride in trying to stop a much better basketball player. Moates was acting as both point and shooting guard, and before he knew it, he was acting like a one-man team. He was shooting it almost every time he came downcourt and we true point guards know in our hearts that this kind of roguish behavior is bad for your team. I also noticed that my team appeared to be winning.

Dan Mohr got his third foul with thirteen minutes to play in the first half and was replaced in the middle by Kroboth. This was a serious blow, which made my team a much smaller team than Richmond on the boards. But we had some things working for us. One, I was playing like the point guard I was meant to be, running the fast break with alacrity and skill, and distributing the ball to my better-shooting teammates. Because I had played against Moates for two straight summers at Wahoo, I knew that he could not play defense in the cafeteria of the Pentagon. He could not guard a savings-and-loan company at midnight, and to my great joy, I found at the opening tip-off that Moates was guarding me. I could give Moates a workout on the offensive end and both of us knew that I could go around him, either to the left or the right, any time the desire came over me. Moates watched my back for much of the night. But he did not see me counting the number of shots my teammates were putting up, did not notice me distributing the ball to the guys who were hot, and, on this night, my shooters were all lighting it up. Mohr had six quick points before he took to the bench to sit out the rest of the first half. I started driving the lane against Moates and as soon as Billy McCann dropped off DeBrosse to pick me up, John would move to a spot outside the key and I would flip the ball out to him. I had learned to hit DeBrosse when he was on the move and to give him at least one dribble because his shot was twice as effective when it came off the dribble. All game long, DeBrosse was on fire and Bridges had that engaged look in his eyes that signaled that Doug had shown up with his game face on and was ready to stick it in Richmond's face. Toward the end of the first half, Bridges backed the lithe and talented Tom Greene into the basket and hit a spinning fadeaway jumper that barely eluded Greene's lunging hand. It was the shot of a great and acrobatic athlete, a thing of beauty in itself. My shooters kept The Citadel in the game against their lone shooter. We were leading 39–37 at the half.

Though I was clearly overmatched by Moates, my teammates were encouraging. Rat put a towel around my neck and said, “Keep fighting him, Pat. You're fighting your ass off. It's great.” I could feel my team rising up around me. It came rarely during this terrible season, but it was there at halftime during the Richmond game. There is no feeling on earth quite so jubilant and satisfying as to have your team solidifying around you like a pearl in the tissues of an oyster. I went out for the second-half jump ball desperate to win.

Shaking hands with Moates, I said, “Hey, Johnny, how about not humiliating me in front of everybody I know in the world?” He smirked and did not answer. Richmond won the tip, and I found Moates coming up the court again and I met him at half-court and roared at him as I resumed my defensive stance with the sounds of my teammates warning of picks being set behind me. Moates was built like the long blade in a pocketknife and his face looked as though it had been put together with a drawerful of cutlery—a darkly handsome, angular young man who carried the knowledge in his dark blazing eyes that he was much better than I was. Whenever he made a shot, I would work him out in the offensive end of the court, changing direction with my dribble, then flashing past him into the lane. At halftime, Richmond had adjusted to my passing back to DeBrosse near the key and now when I drove the huge, lunging presence of Buster Batts would come menacingly out to me. This left Mohr wide open for a bounce pass and a layup.

Moates would answer with one of his looping jump shots, but Dan Mohr had returned to the game to play the half of his lifetime. His huge hands were everywhere, on the boards, hanging around loose balls, receiving passes as easily as though I were throwing him biscuits at the mess table. What Moates had done to me in the first half, Dan did to Batts in the second. The lead kept changing hands and at one point in the half, Richmond led us by twelve.

In the middle of the second half, the Corps of Cadets began to see my personal battle with Moates for the titanic struggle it was. Before that half was over, I had been transformed in the eyes of the Corps. Later, cadets would tell me that I looked possessed and deranged that night. I grabbed at Moates and cussed at him and screamed at him all night. He beat me time and again, but I came back at him. In the middle of the half Moates began to sag. His legs giving out on him, a look of fatigue spreading on his face. When Moates finally started to pass the ball to his teammates, I knew I had him where I wanted him. Then Tom Greene started to get the ball for the first time all game. Greg Connor had handled Greene all night and held him far below Greene's twenty-two points-per-game scoring average.

Mohr was rolling under the boards, unstoppable, valiant and graceful.

But let the
News and Courier
sportswriter John Hendrix, a spectator and witness to this long-ago game, tell the tale: “Mohr, the 6´ 7´´ Citadel senior, scored 19 points in the second half to total 25 for the game.

“But even Mohr's outstanding individual effort was overshadowed by that of Moates, Richmond's 6–1 senior guard and Captain. Moates, who scored 34 points during the game, kept the Spiders in the game all by himself. Doug Bridges and John DeBrosse got back-to-back buckets in a space of 32 seconds to put The Citadel ahead 78–75 with 2:08 remaining. Moates hit 16 seconds later to get Richmond within one, but Mohr put in the clincher with 1:32.”

By the end of the game, when I brought the ball downcourt Moates was so exhausted he could not even assume his defensive stance. When I blew by him, I got the ball to Dan, who scored on a short, perfect jump shot. “Will you guard your fucking man, Moates?” I heard the frustrated Batts scream at his teammate.

“Fuck you, Batts,” Johnny screamed back.

Hendrix reported, “With four seconds remaining, Harvey Roberts shot from the left of the circle and the ball bounded over the backboard. On the throw-in, Conroy was fouled again and he made it. With three seconds left on the clock, Richmond called time and got the ball to Moates just past center court.”

I and everyone else in the gym knew the ball was going to Moates, so when the action resumed, I overplayed him and forced him away from the basket. Billy McCann threw a pass that Moates had to bring down over his shoulder like a wide receiver running an out pattern. I forced Moates to throw up a desperation hook shot from past the halfway line. I almost blocked it, but did not want to take a chance on fouling him. The horn sounded and Moates and I collapsed in each other's arms, holding each other up. I did not think I could take another step. The Citadel had prevailed, 81–79.

“You're so good, Johnny,” I told him. “You're so goddamn good.”

Johnny Moates had scored thirty-four points and that included twelve field goals all shot from long range. If he had been playing in the three-point era, Moates would have scored forty-six points on me that night. Moates said nothing to me in return, but scowled at me then rose and walked in silence to his locker room, lord of that night. I, the young man he had just outplayed in front of 2,345 people, got up and jogged to my own locker room. Some of the fans called out, “Good game, Pat,” and I waved to them. It was only when I got into the noisy locker room that I noticed Tee Hooper getting out of his warmups. Mel had not played him for a single moment.

Tee Hooper would have stopped Moates if he had been allowed to play in the Richmond game. I was sure of it that night as I am sure of it now. Something had happened in the mind of our unreadable coach about his assessment of Tee Hooper's character.

         

T
HE NEXT DAY
I
WALKED INTO
Colonel John Doyle's modern poetry
class to the applause of my fellow English majors. Colonel Doyle was standing leading the ovation. I had to fight back tears as I opened my book and took my seat.

“An epic struggle, Mr. Conroy,” the elegant and precise Colonel Doyle said, his eyes twinkling. “You were Hector riding out of beleaguered Troy to do battle with the wrathful Achilles. Mr. Moates played the vile Achilles, of course.”

“He scored thirty-four points, Colonel,” I said.

“But he wanted to score sixty, Mr. Conroy. You wouldn't let him. You fought him on every shot. It was epic and heroic.”

“Colonel Doyle, didn't Achilles kill Hector?” I asked.

“Yes, but Mr. Conroy, you're missing the point. You beat Achilles. We won the game. The Citadel won. Today, gentlemen, we do battle with
The Waste Land
by Mr. T. S. Eliot, a delicious task, if I do say so myself.”

On occasion, The Citadel would rise up and ambush me with such perfect and completely unexpected moments. After I graduated I would try to go see Colonel Doyle every year when he was still teaching and cohosted his retirement party with my classmate Jeff Benton. Whenever I called him at his home in Virginia, he would gently chide me. “Ah, my Hector. Why is he sallying forth from the walls of Troy this time? What new battle brings him out to test his foes?”

“Do you know how much I love your ass, Colonel Doyle?” I would ask. The question would always fluster him.

“You've always been very gracious, Mr. Conroy. And profane.”

“No. That's not good enough, Colonel,” I would say. “Do you know how much I love your ass?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he would sputter. “I know how much you regard me.”

“Thanks for finding me when I was a boy,” I'd say.

“No, no, no, Mr. Conroy. You always get that part wrong. We found each other, Mr. Conroy. We found each other.”

CHAPTER 18

DAVIDSON

O
N
J
ANUARY 11, THE
D
AVIDSON
W
ILDCATS CAME TO PLAY
T
HE
Citadel in Charleston. Though neither I nor any of my other teammates knew it, The Citadel was ranked number one in the Southern Conference when we took the court against Coach Lefty Driesell's classy Davidson team. I learned of this notable fact thirty years later when I read an article by Tom Higgins, a
Charlotte Observer
sportswriter. My limping, damaged team could have received a great boost by knowing that something was going right for us during that dismal season. But if Mel knew that we had taken over the top spot in the conference with our victory over Richmond, he kept it to himself. On the previous Saturday night, Davidson had beaten West Virginia in double overtime while we were beating Richmond and Johnny Moates in Charleston.

In the period of basketball history of which I write, Davidson represented the big time in the Southern Conference because the wily, fast-talking Lefty Driesell had transformed the small Protestant college into a national power. I never took to the court against them without thinking the eye of sports-loving America had turned its curious gaze on me. When Mel delivered his pregame speech as the crowd began to hum in the field house, he tried to instill fear in us, implying always that he doubted whether we possessed either the talent or the will to be on the same court with the Wildcats. He could give us a thousand reasons why we could not beat Davidson and never came up with a single one that suggested we could.

Davidson was in the middle of a rebuilding year after losing Fred Hetzel and Dick Snyder to the pros in consecutive years. Mel said nothing about this Davidson team's vulnerability and that this team was still recovering from “a disastrous 25 day stretch from Dec. 10 to Jan. 4 during which they had lost six of nine games.” This Davidson team did not resemble the juggernaut teams of the past that beat up on their Southern Conference opponents and were frequently listed in the top ten in the nation. This bunch could be taken, could be beaten, but our coach neglected to share this fact with his players. Mel talked of Davidson as though the Boston Celtics were dressing for the game.

When I went out as The Citadel's captain, I shook hands with Rodney Knowles, Davidson's six-ten center. But the real physical shock for me came when DeBrosse pointed to the six-three shoot guard Wayne Huckel and said, “You get Hercules, bubba.”

Huckel tried to break my hand when we shook hands before the jump ball. He looked like the side of a mountain or a linebacker who was obsessive about the weight room. Our whole team looked little as we lined up for the jump ball.

The Corps was there in force that night and no team on earth wanted to face the furious wrath of my cadets. I let the full-throated roar of the Corps carry me as Zinsky rebounded their first missed shot and hit me with a pass on the wing. I took the ball down the middle of the court as my fast-breaking team filled the lanes around me. I drove toward Dave Moser and Huckel and decided to show the sophomores what a senior guard could do. I faked a pass to DeBrosse on the left and drove past both the Davidson guards and put in the layup myself. Huckel drilled me and put me on the floor to let me know that he had received my message. The Corps rewarded me with the astonishing power of love that it gave to its athletes when their performance was well done. Quick learners, Huckel and Moser did not let me do the same trick the rest of the half. Until that move to the hoop, they did not know I was fast. Now they did, and they adjusted brilliantly as the good ones always do.

The sportswriter Louis Chestnut described it this way in the
News and Courier
the next day: “Pat Conroy, the bouncy senior guard, converted a driving layup into three points as he was fouled in the opening offensive maneuver by the Bulldogs. The lead then changed hands eight times up to the five-minute mark in the first half. At that point, with Davidson up by one point 25–24, The Citadel had its first cold spell.”

Let me translate. At that point, Mel Thompson stood up and told DeBrosse and me to slow the ball down. Nothing made Mel more nervous than fast-break, helter-skelter, up-and-down-the-court, on-the-fly, running and gunning basketball. He hated the pace of the game I played the best, the only one I could excel at during the last year in my life I could ever call myself an athlete.

With my team on the move, I thought we could wear Davidson down and bring them to their knees as I saw them begin to wilt before the Corps' derision. I drank in the Corps' burning affirmation of us as we carried their name into the furious night. Knowles and Youngdale, the six-foot-ten guys, loathed the breathtaking pace almost as much as my coach. Davidson hit five straight baskets and held us scoreless after Mel called a time-out. I had eleven points in thirteen minutes and got the pleasure of seeing Wayne Huckel backing up farther and farther every time I brought the ball upcourt. Those of us who live by driving the lane feel a rush of pure pleasure when we see our defensive men backing away from us. It is like the young wolf exposing his jugular to the alpha male in the stern language of arctic packs. When Huckel backed off me, I immediately turned and set a pick for DeBrosse, who held a hot hand from the opening whistle. Huckel was never in position to help Moser when DeBrosse came off one of my picks. This was the game when DeBrosse and I merged our disparate talents as our backcourt play lost its randomness and began to cohere into all the disciplines and mysteries of the dance. Suddenly, in the first half of the Davidson game, I would know everything that DeBrosse was even thinking about doing. Our intuitions as athletes locked into place. We began to see the court with the same set of eyes.

We started running again, and the team began to make a spirited go at Davidson. In movement, my team fired into life. In stillness, we lapsed into mediocrity. But we had righted ourselves when Zinsky pulled a rebound away from Youngdale, fired a pass to DeBrosse on the right flank, who hit me with a perfect pass to center court as my team was off to the races for the last shot of the half. Huckel and Moser had dropped back quickly to defend against the fast break and I could hear my teammates filling in the lanes around me. Zinsky called out that he was filling the lane to my right and I heard Kroboth stake out the left lane while DeBrosse was shadowing me as a trailer on the play. In the dead center of our lives as Citadel athletes, my team was assembling around me in a classical, textbook fast break and we were looking good doing it. The Corps was on its feet, and I dribbled toward the Davidson guards borne along by the noise in the throats of the Corps. I came low and fast, and I kept my eyes on Huckel who was deep and Moser who moved out to the key to stop me. I went by Dave in a blur then turned my head toward Zinsky who was making his move to the basket on my right.

As I looked toward Zinsky, Huckel moved out to intercept my pass, forgetting about Kroboth filling the lane to the left. I put the ball in my right hand to shovel it softly to Zinsky, but hurled it behind my back in a perfect bounce pass that landed in the hands of Al Kroboth. The pass took Zinsky and Huckel by surprise, took Moser and DeBrosse by surprise, took Kroboth and Driesell by surprise, and took the Corps and Mel Thompson by surprise.

Al Kroboth was completely alone and I watched as he went up to dunk the ball with two hands. In the middle of preparing for the dunk, I saw the moment of recognition when poor Al remembered that the silly-assed rules committee of the NCAA had just outlawed the dunk because they thought it gave seven-foot Lew Alcindor of UCLA an unfair advantage over earthlings like me. It certainly did. I was part of this misbegotten rule change when it became illegal for the big men of the game to shoot the most emphatic and fabulous shot my sweet game possessed. The dunk to basketball is like the thunderbolt to the gods of storm. Kroboth went up for the slam dunk, remembered the rules committee of the NCAA, tried to alter the course of his shot in midair, and ended up throwing the ball awkwardly up by his wrists, the ball missing both the rim and the backboard to the vocal disappointment of the Corps. The buzzer sounded before Davidson could get off another shot.

“Goddamn, Conroy,” I heard Mel scream. “You know I hate your nigger basketball.”

Big Al came up to me in the locker room and squeezed my shoulders. “Good pass, Pat. I was going to dunk it. Forgot. Couldn't recover.”

“We'll get 'em in the second half, Al,” I said. “Don't worry about it.”

“Little Mel” Thompson put his hand on my shoulder and whispered to me, “We'll have no more of that, Pat. Coach is still upset.”

“Coach, it was a perfect pass,” I whispered. “I faked out the whole Davidson team.”

“But we didn't score,” Ed said. “You've got to admit that.”

“Al missed the layup, Coach,” I said. “But I got him the ball. I delivered it perfectly.”

“We don't go behind the back on this team. You've done it three times tonight. Once on the pass. Twice off the dribble. We don't need fancy, just good sharp passes. Okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

When Coach Thompson came in, I could tell he was pleased with our first-half effort. He offered us no praise, but he implied it by toning down the volume of his usual harangue. Rat crept up behind me, squeezed my shoulders, and whispered, “Pat, you scored eleven points the first half.” The news gave me exquisite pleasure since I had never scored in double figures in the first half during my entire college career. Whatever joy Rat's announcement brought me vanished when Mel substituted Tee Hooper's name for mine for the second-half starting lineup.

My cheeks burned in a fury I could barely contain as I considered the clear injustice of the move. I had played as well as I ever played in my life in the first half, and I could blow by Huckel any time I chose to. Mel's benching me was to his mind a fitting punishment for my temerity at throwing a pass I had learned while playing with black kids. I thought the banishment would be “temporary removal,” and that once I had realized the seriousness of my indiscretion, I would be back in the game. But this was not to be. In the bewildering architecture of whatever chaos theory Mel Thompson brought to coaching, I had crossed an invisible line. I would not be forgiven this night. At the end of the bench, enraged and hurt, I watched my team sleepwalking through the opening minutes of the second half. Though DeBrosse and Zinsky played with brilliance, scoring twenty-one of the team's last thirty points, and Greg Connor had a stellar performance under the boards, we still lost by four points.

In his postgame interview with Louis Chestnut the next morning, Mel was positively giddy in his assessment of the game: “After the exciting DeBrosse-Zinsky windup, generated off the pressing defense, Thompson had nothing but praise.”

(This marks the first time in my career I saw the pairing of the words “Mel Thompson” and “praise.”)

“‘If the kids give that kind of effort from here on out,' Mel said, ‘we will do all right in the conference. We had a lull in our offense on occasion and I guess that cost us the game because we were forced to play catch-up basketball. But the most pleasing thing was the way we stayed in there and battled. We'll be a problem for some people.'

“DeBrosse, who apparently has decided that he is the man Thompson has been looking for as a floor leader, again led the cadets in scoring with 21 points. The little scatback made 9 of 17 floor and was 3 of 4 from the free throw line.”

In a red-faced snit, I showered and dressed quickly and walked in darkness behind the barracks toward Fourth Battalion cussing with every step I took. Then the voice made its third appearance of the year, again surprising me because it was my father's voice, a voice I had loathed since childhood. Yet this voice came to me like some kind of attendant angel. “Relax, pal. Let's go back to the game plan. You keep forgetting. You're never going to listen to Mel Thompson again. Got it? Nothing he does is going to affect your game. See? He got under your skin again. You play well when you go by instinct. Don't think. Especially don't think about him. Next game's Furman, pal. Think about that game. Got it?”

I calmed myself.

I walked toward my barracks.

I got it.