ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997 TAG: 9703030101
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
When Bill Foster coached his first college basketball game, John F. Kennedy was in the White House. The Beatles hadn't yet come to America. Color TV was an infant. The Cartwrights were on the Ponderosa. There was no microwave, much less Microsoft.
In Foster's new profession, a guy named Dean Smith had just finished his first season as head coach at North Carolina, with an 8-9 record. No one had heard of Texas Western. Cincinnati was the cat's meow, after back-to-back NCAA Tournament titles. An acronym that would become a dynasty, UCLA, had just been to its first Final Four, as had Billy Packer - as a guard for Wake Forest.
It was 1962-63, and Foster, as the lanky, young coach at Shorter College in Rome, Ga., found himself looking up to someone he had to look down to eyeball. It was Garland Pinholster. You were expecting John Wooden?
Pinholster was the coach at Oglethorpe College on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, ``kind of a Dean Smith at that time on a lower level,'' Foster said. ``Oglethorpe was in our district and was a terror in Division II. Pinholster was as big a fad-starter in the game then as Dean was later. He ran this thing called `The Wheel,' this defense, and when you got into it, you felt like a wheel had run over you.
``I liked a lot of what he ran. He was red-headed with a crew cut, wore a bow tie, a real banty rooster, a Marine drill sergeant. He'd go for job interviews at big-time jobs in the South, where the only sports were football and spring football, and the athletic directors would tell him the budget, and I think he'd just yell at them and scare the hell out of them.
``He couldn't get a job. I saw him a few years ago in Atlanta. He's a huge success. He's a big developer.''
So is Foster. At Cassell Coliseum today, Virginia Tech plays 14th-ranked Xavier in what will be the last home game - barring an NIT bid - of Foster's 30 years as a head coach. In those three decades, Foster has taken programs at Shorter, North Carolina-Charlotte, Clemson, Miami (Fla.) and Tech and made them something - a couple of times from nothing.
When he took the UNCC job in 1970, the 49ers were a Division III program in the Dixie Conference. The campus had no dorms, no gym, and played home games at a nearby junior high school. Five years later, the 49ers were 23-3 and waiting for an NIT call that never came.
``We were the College of Charleston of that time,'' said Foster, who had moved to Clemson by 1977, when UNCC and UNC were both in the Final Four.
``Dean called me a couple of times to complain about me putting `The University of North Carolina' in big letters at the top of our stationery,'' Foster said. ``I put, `At Charlotte' in smaller letters. Our chancellor called me about it, and I told him, `Aren't we part of the same system? Dean won't put ``At Chapel Hill'' on his.' We had to fight for a identity.''
At Clemson, Foster cleaned up the mess from coach Tates Locke's scandalous seasons. His 1980 team not only reached an NCAA regional final, it was the first Clemson club to go to the NCAA Tournament, and on the way beat top-ranked Duke, No.4 UNC, fifth-ranked Maryland, No.12 Virginia and 20th-ranked N.C. State.
At Miami, the program had been shut down 13 years earlier when Foster and two assistants restarted it, sharing a closet for an office. The Hurricanes played on a floor that was attached to a stage at a Hyatt hotel. Spectators had to take an escalator to get to theater seats.
``What spectators?'' Foster said.
When he retires and leaves the Hokies' hopes in the hands of assistant Bobby Hussey, Foster will have done it again, coming from the opposite sideline - as a TV analyst - and taking a program still trying to recover from NCAA probation and three consecutive losing seasons that ended coach Frankie Allen's employment at Tech.
Foster has been at Tech for only six years, but he does hold a special place in Hokies hoops history. His 1994-95 NIT champs own the school record for victories (25). No other coach has won more than 48 games in consecutive seasons (the NIT champs and the '96 NCAA entrant). Foster also is the first coach to exit Tech of his own volition, without controversy or pressure, since Chuck Noe took his ``Mongoose'' - which Smith turned into the Four Corners - to South Carolina in 1962.
This chronologically completes that Pinholster wheel back to the beginning of Foster's career. That was 531 victories ago. Only 12 active Division I coaches have won more games. Only eight have coached more games than Foster.
Yet, for all of his success and staying power, the persona of William Carey Foster pretty much jibes with his ego. It is telling that the year before Foster moved to the ACC (1976), Duke hired Bill Foster, who took the Blue Devils to the 1978 NCAA final. Clemson's was ``the other Bill Foster.''
The only part of Foster that is inflamed is his stomach, where the juices often run fast breaks that even his defensive genius can't stop.
Two weeks ago, Temple coach John Chaney sat on Foster's bench during an Owls practice and was talking about the end being near for himself as well as Foster, 60.
``You just enjoy it as long as you can,'' said Chaney, 65. ``All of us know that one day we'll have to walk away, with or without a clap. What's important is just so you know, when you walk away, that you've done a good job.''
Foster has done that and more, no matter the letterhead.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON STAFF Bill Foster, shown here on Feb. 23by CNBacknowledging the crowd's cheering following his 100th win at
Virginia Tech, is the first coach to exit Tech of his own volition
in 35 years.