Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994 TAG: 9406050084
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For the second consecutive year, West Virginia's Mountaineer Athletic Club brought the WVU Caravan to the Roanoke Valley. Saturday's stop was the only one in Virginia, and one of only a few on the 30-stop spring program outside the Mountaineer State.
There's a good reason for that. Within about a 60-mile radius of Roanoke, WVU has 750 active alumni and Mountaineer Athletic Club members. It seems the Big East influence is bigger here than some thought.
A WVU contingent led by athletic director Ed Pastilong and men's basketball coach Gale Catlett drove down from Friday's stop at The Greenbrier to eat, meet and raise funds at a Roanoke County church. Appropriately, there was praise.
They were celebrating the Mountaineers' recent all-sports acceptance into the Big East and a football program that won the championship in the first Big East round-robin season and played for the national title on New Year's Day. They feasted on their success and a picnic of barbecued chicken, crabmeat, salads and cookies.
What? No 'Eers of corn?
Catlett, who returned home to coach his alma mater in 1978, said Big East membership has made a bigger bang in Morgantown than WVU's coonskin-capped, musket-firing mascot.
"I think getting in the Big East is the best thing that's happened to West Virginia since I've been there," Catlett said. "It might be the best thing in the history of the program. It finally puts all of our programs in the same conference."
Annually at these alumni functions, Catlett has fielded questions about who was or wasn't going to be in the Eastern Eight or Atlantic 10 the next season. The A-10's flirting with the new Great Midwest on a potential merger two years ago "was one of the most absurd things I've ever heard," Catlett said.
Catlett also sees the Big East getting bigger, "after three to five years for this [12-team] concept to evolve and run smoothly.
"I'm guessing, but I never thought it would be 12," he said. "I thought 14 or 16 schools. I still think it will be more than 12. Eventually, it will be 16. You have to have divisional play in basketball. It's too hard to schedule equitably with 12."
Catlett may be speculating on those numbers, but he's sure of some others.
"If it's 16, it will be eight and eight [football-playing schools and non-football players], just like it's six and six now," he said. "No one is going to let that balance [in voting on league matters] change."
WVU does bring one of the nation's more stable programs to the Big East. In Catlett and Don Nehlen, West Virginia is the only Division I school that has employed the same basketball and football coaches since 1980.
Catlett, 53 and with 444 career victories and no losing seasons in 22 years as a head coach, said he sees himself on the sideline only a few more seasons, although the ties to his home state and family - he's one of 13 children from Hedgesville in the state's panhandle - may change that.
"I have to admit, too, that I'm rejuvenated about the challenge of taking our program into the Big East," he said.
His last season in the A-10 should be a challenge. WVU has no starters but good backcourt talent returning from a 17-12 NIT team. Catlett's program signed seven recruits in a class that would have been stronger had assistant coach Dereck Whittenburg not left in April for a spot on Bobby Cremins' Georgia Tech staff.
Catlett can cope with change. Last year, he lost three assistants and sifted through 270 applications to fill those jobs. He's moved former Roanoke College head coach Mel Hankinson to full-time status on the staff and will begin interviews for the Whittenburg vacancy this week.
The football Mountaineers open the season in the Kickoff Classic against Nebraska and should finish in the top three in the Big East, which already has pumped up Nehlen's program.
"The TV exposure and financial boost from the Big East will only help us," Catlett said. "It will broaden our recruiting base. It will broaden our interest."
It's evident in Southwest Virginia as well as south West Virginia.
Write to Jack Bogaczyk at the Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, 24010.
by CNB