Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 9, 1995 TAG: 9503090046
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
An Elvis once played the Metro Conference, and Baskerville, well, he was much more than a hound dog.
Metro memories ... pressed between the pages of my mind, and notebooks. Basketball is why the Metro began 20 years ago. Football is why it will end, and although there are spring sports to play, the Metro is down to its last dribble this weekend with the conference tournament at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky.
It's a great place to finish, even if the finishing act can't match what's come before. The Metro now is just like the Three Stooges after Curly. ``Soitainly,'' the act isn't the same. That's because UNC Charlotte, Virginia Commonwealth and South Florida, who moved from the Sun Belt to save the Metro in 1992, haven't generated the hoopla the league had in the past.
The move of Louisville, Tulane and Southern Mississippi to a new and still-nameless football-driven league killed the Metro. UNCC and South Florida followed. Virginia Tech had been looking to leave for a few years.
The Metro may be dying, but really, it's been on life support since Cincinnati, Florida State, Memphis State and South Carolina bolted in 1991.
That was the year the Metro played its basketball tournament at the Roanoke Civic Center. It was one of the worst-attended Metro tournaments, but at least the event got the building spruced up. It also brought a tent to the civic center plaza, and some said the beer and lottery-ticket sales under the big top were more intriguing than the games.
It also brought Florida State's only Metro title, when Charlie Ward - the only Heisman Trophy winner to play in the Metro tournament - hit a 30-footer to beat Louisville in the final. The Seminoles left for the ACC with the trophy. I remember that, plus the shiny suit worn by Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. He didn't appreciate it when I asked if the suit came with batteries.
Thirteen schools have played Metro hoops, some of them not so well, particularly St.Louis in the early days and South Carolina later. The Metro also may hold an NCAA record for schools on probation or being investigated at the same time. In the mid-1980s, that number was four, and that didn't include Tulane, which closed down its program because of a point-shaving scandal.
Point shaving is not an NCAA violation, just a federal offense. However, it was Memphis State coach Dana Kirk who ended up in the pokey for fraud and tax offenses. His 1985 Tigers went to the Final Four, and then on probation.
I'll never forget the time I turned on the TV upon arriving in my Memphis, Tenn., hotel room. There was Dana, pitching home security systems. Actually, that was not the most incredible thing I witnessed in my years observing the Metro. Nothing could top Les Henson's court-length shot that streaked below the rafters at Tully Gym in January 1980, winning for Virginia Tech at Florida State.
There also was the night at Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis when Tech coach Charlie Moir lost the game and then lost it. Moir's postgame radio show, then taped, had to be restarted three times because he kept describing officials Gene Barth, Ray Sonnenberg and Dick Hantak in four-letter words. The only one Moir said that made it on the air was ``Barth, spelled B-A-R-F.''
Moir is the only man in Metro history to coach at two schools. He was at Tulane, with its bandbox gym, before he moved to Tech. Maybe he should get a plaque for that. The other day, I was reminded I'd covered 12 Metro tournaments, in Memphis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Roanoke and Biloxi, Miss. - and I still haven't seen anything as repeatedly stirring in the league as the Louisville-Memphis rivalry.
Louisville's Denny Crum is the only coach who has survived two Metro decades on the bench, which is what two national championships and six Final Fours will do for you. The NCAA title won't necessarily get you named the Metro's coach of the year, however.
In 1986, M.K. Turk of Southern Miss was voted that honor. Crum's Cardinals won the national title. However, that wasn't as embarrassing as 1991 in Destin, Fla., at the Metro spring meetings when commissioner Ralph McFillen locked his keys in his rental car ... with the motor running. That car was no relation to John ``Hot Rod'' Williams of Tulane, but that was the last league meeting before the Metro truly became an Edsel.
There are many things besides Dell Curry's jumper, Wiley Brown's prosthetic thumb and the Memphis Pom-Pon Girls that I won't forget about the Metro. The names such as Elvis Rolle, Baskerville Holmes, Cheyenne Gibson, Bimbo Coles and Scooter McCray. The stars that soared in a galaxy first explored by Darrell Griffith.
The coaches, such as Ed Badger and his magical, flying sport coat, or Turk, and the day Southern Miss boosters bought him a truck and then drove it right down the ramp of Green Coliseum in Hattiesburg, Miss., and presented it to him at halftime on the floor - with his team losing by 10.
I'll always hear the regal voice of Louisville's public address announcer, John Tong:
``ANNNNNND FROM THIS POINT ON, BOTHHHH TEAMS WILL SHOOT THE BONUS.''
The feeling at Freedom Hall when it's filled, which it most always is. It's old, but remodeled, and still one of the best basketball buildings the sport has seen. The disgust of having your story blow up on deadline at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati because a maintenance man unplugs your computer as he takes up the hardwood for hockey.
There was the Metro semifinal when, to make sure everyone in noisy, packed Mid-South Coliseum could hear the final buzzer, the timer was to fire a pistol at the same time ... and then he did it two seconds too soon. Or how about the Midwest winter night in 1980 when one Metro coach's wife and girlfriend both showed up for a game and sat in adjacent sections?
That, folks, is full-court pressure.
They'll only play the Metro tournament one more time, at the place it belongs, with feeling. Which is probably good. It's time to go.
by CNB