Editor's Note: This story is from our October 1993 issue, written by Steve McCloskey. Enjoy a look back at the 1973 VT basketball team as they looked back on fond memories of their time together.
Just before the big game.Madison Square Garden marquee tells the story as Tech prepares to take on Notre Dame for the 1973 NIT championship. Back row, left to right: Asst. Coach Sonny Smith, Asst.Coach Jim Hallihan, Student Trainer Blaine Jackson, Asst. Coach Bob Andrews, Tim Harvey, Jimmy Allen, Calvin Wade, Dave Sensibaugh, Student Trainer Danny Roberts, Head Coach Don De Voe, Ed Frazier; Front row, left to right: Team Physician Dr. Irwin, Head Trainer Ed Motley, Equipment Manager Buster Smith, John Payne, Charlie Thomas, Geoff Wiggins, Kyle McKee, Craig Lieder, Alan Bristow, Bobby Stevens.
That magical 1973 Virginia Tech basketball team: Its crowning glory was an overtime win over Digger Phelps and Notre Dame to win the National Invitational Tournament. Back when that tournament meant something. The young men of that team are now men in their primes. They coach NBA and college teams, own companies, are already retired. A red-shirted guard from that team has his own set of memories...
The game itself is the tie that binds. Basketball is the most sublime of sports: bodies blurred in their own fast-forward existence and explosive quickness; sneakers screeching on hardwood; the game is an airborne ballet played out at 10 feet, and choreographed in the Grand Designer’s sweetest dream. It is the majestic arc of the long-range bomb, the graceful power of a runaway-train fast break, and the poetic flow of lean, glistening bodies straining to transcend the forces of the physical world. And all of its drama and beauty derives from being a team competition, a team effort, a team do-or-die...
March, 1973
We were coming home to Blacksburg from New York City. The Cardiac Kids had won the National Invitational Tournament, sweeping four games by a total of five points, and shocking the pundits of the basketball world, some of whom later described the victories as being "lucky." That was long before the NCAA had expanded to its present 64-team post-season format, and the NIT was then a prestigious tourney. Upon return, the team was truly amazed by the fanatics who had braved an end-of-winter rain to jam the Roanoke Airport and hail the conquering heroes.
Each to his own way, I'll go mine
Best of luck with what you find
But for your own sake, remember
times
We used to know.
"We Used to Know," by Jethro Tull
September, 1993
I am coming home to Blacksburg, a prodigal son, remiss in my alma mater obligations to the school that gave me so much. But now twodecades later, our team is reuniting, not really in celebration of that week in New York, but because we had then, and still have, a genuine love and enjoyment of one another.
My first visit here was on a recruiting trip almost 25 years ago, and I thought Blacksburg and Tech a magical mixture of Mayberry and Oktoberfest. Stir in 8,000 girls and you have the recipe for a four-year ice cream headache, which I barely survived, graduating by a mere 16/100ths of a grade-point. Fortunately, my brethren had far more maturity and talent, and in 1973, it all flowed together...
How We Got There
Many of theguys on that near-legendary team had been recruited by Howie Shannon, Alan Bristow foremost among them. Don DeVoe took over in '72, and had recruited some talent of his own, most notably Bobby Stevens and Charlie Thomas from Ferrum Junior College, Calvin Wade, and freshmen Dave Sensibaugh and Kyle McKee (this was the first season frosh were eligible to play at the varsity level).
Don had been Bobby Knight's assistant at Army and emulated Bobby in more than his X's and O's: his, shall we say, intensity, scared the hell out of me. The first month's practices were grueling, three-hour mara thons, capped off with dry-heaves in the showers. Hiking back to the dorm, the Blacksburg cold (also legendary) froze solid our still-damp, 1973-vintage coiffures. But a chemistry was percolating, and we came to believe that we had the makings of a pretty fair country ball club. At the closeof the regular season, the Gob blers were 22-5, and had garnered an invi tation to the NIT.
In a game of giants, our front line was Liliputian: Center Alan Bristow at 6'7 "; Craig Lieder at 6'6 ", and Ed Frazier all of 6'4"... and two of them couldn't jump (Frazier was an All-State High Jump Champion). But our "big guys" were smart, and anticipated each other, as well as theopposition. They were fearless, they could run, and most importantly, could shoot like the Earps at OK Corral.
Bristow was, and still is, our All American. A man-child in the Promised Land of the NBA, he was an underrated draft choice and player, yet survived for 10 years in the biggest of the Big Leagues. Now a head coach, he last year took the Charlotte Hornets-one of the newest expansion teams-to their first postseason playoffs. The hair is still golden, and there is nary a wrinkle; he could still play 40 minutes of full court. He is completely unaffected by all the years in the limelight, and the laugh comes just as easily. It was Alan's competitive intensity that drove the team, and himself, to heights no one could have guessed. It also led him, while "negotiating" a player's contract as general manager of the Hornets, to actu ally choke the player's obstinate agent.
Craig Lieder hit a 20-footer at the buzzer to send Game 4 of the NIT into overtime-he was clutch, and another who made the most of his skills. By way of commentary on his jumping ability, Coach Sonny Smith had bestowed upon him the nickname of "Lead" (after one of the heavier element in the Periodic Table). Yet he had a quick release, and a deadly shot. A man for all seasons, there wasn't a game that he didn't play well: pinball, ping pong, golf and cards; as his roommate for 4 years, I often wondered how he had spent his youth. After graduating, Lieder played hoops in France for 10 years, started a business which was later bought out, and true to his prediction in 1974, retired at age 39. He now lives in Asheville... and sometimes Vegas.
Ed Frazier was the personification of this team's desire. He was a fighter and prone to such foul trouble that the NCAA briefly toyed with the idea of bringing hockey's Penalty Box to basketball. He played hard, and over the course of a season he would lose 25 pounds. His room mate, Jimmy Allen, mysteriously gained 25 pounds during that same season (Jimmy and I were so far down on the roster that our "bench seats" were actually in the parking lot). To illustrate the march of time: In 1969, in his senior year in high school, Frazier claimed the Virginia high jump championship with a vault of 6'4 "; this year, 7'2"won the title. Ed resides in Altavista where he owns a lumber mill, and is trying to learn the Fosbury Flop.
Charlie Thomas was a quiet leader — he just went out and got it done, usually with brilliant defense and bullet passes to the aforementioned guns. He also nearly cost us a game when he failed to make a bed check. The next day, I learned something about my teammates and Coach DeVoe: with a tournament bid riding on the game, Coach Jet the team decide CT's punish ment for the infraction; the vote was unanimous, and Charlie was benched. To this day, Thomas insists that he was studying late at the library. But Charlie, we were playing a road game! He is now head coach at San Francisco State University.
Bobby Stevens was the hero of that day 20 years ago-a last second shot in OT to beat Notre Dame and Digger Phelps. Iron ically, Digger had turned down the VPI coaching offer that DeVoe later accepted. Stevens, Lieder and Frazier were honored by the Optometrists of America for smash ing the NCAA record for the most contact lenses lost in a college season. Still echo ing in the Coliseum is the immortal question: "How can they lick those things and put them right back in their eyes!"
Bob is now coaching at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C.
Supporting Cast
One of the many remarkable things about this cast of characters was the egalitarian spirit that lived in our dorm. There was no caste system, as is common with many sports teams, and no prima donnas. The only put-downs for atrocious play (and there were several) were at the poker table; but that was serious business. As a group, they have been very successful, and my favorite story is Danny Elliott's. He was a prep star from Bladensburg, Md. who dropped out in his sophomore year and returned home to marry his high school sweetheart. He needed work, and started on the loading dock at Carrier Air Conditioning; he then talked his way into sales, and 15 years later pulled off a $75 million leveraged buyout of Carrier's Texas division. If he had just stayed in school for four years, he might have made something of himself ...
One of the most curious relationships was that between Kevin O'Connor, our graduate assistant coach, and Calvin Wade, perhaps the best sixth man in basketball that year. They were frequently card partners, Hearts being their game of choice. Curiously, their success seems to have been built on consistent miscommunication: Kevin was from New York City, and Calvin grew up in Mebane, N.C., the yin and yang of some kind of linguistic Twilight Zone.
Dave Sensibaugh would spell Thomas or Stevens in the backcourt, and Sensibaugh and Stevens hold the distinction of being the only players ever to infuriate our gentlemanly trainer, Ed Motley. The day following a bruising game, the boys took to the whirlpools at the Coliseum, but added bubble bath to enhance the benefits of the treatment. Calculations went awry, and a frothy layer of soap bubbles covered Ed's training room floor and clogged the jets of his very expensive, shiny whirl pools. After surviving the debacle, Dave married Deborah Lavery (daughter of the former VPI President), worked in fund raising with the Alumni Association, and obtained his MBA. For the last 12 years he has been with Eastman Kodak in King sport, Tenn.
And there has been sadness...
Ed Motley never bounced a ball or took a shot, but he was the heart and soul of our team, and every VPI basketball team for almost 40 years. As the team trainer, he nursed us, taped thousands of ankles, and chomped on as many unlit cigars. He reminded meof Hoss Cartwright, a humble, gentle, bull of a man whose devotion to us and Tech knew no bounds. His health was failing in the early '80s, and on road trips, a new generation of players carried him on and off the team bus—he died in 1986. I still see him waving his orange towel at courtside and I still hear his gruff voice ask each of us, star and scrub alike, “How you doin’ t’day, boy?”
OK, Eddie, but we sure miss you.
My profligate search for the Endless Party ended in 1982, literally in the rainy gutters of Portland, Oregon, throw ing down straight vodka with the last of panhandled change. For me, coming back to Blacksburg is a humbling, bittersweet catharsis: chronically unemployed and unemployable, in drunken late-night phone calls, I bummed money off some of these guys, and I really can't remember who. I once made that confession to Jay Skulborstadt, one of our team's lesser knowns (but bigger hearts), and undoubtedly one of my "toll calls."
He put a long arm around my shoulder and said: "Steve, none of us remembers either."
By now we are disbanding and returning to homes, and careers and whatever the future may hold. But a part of us will always remain here. So forgive my Aw gee-whiz revelry, but maybe the pundits of 20 years ago were right after all-we really were the lucky ones: good families and upbringing, good education, and the chance to play a great game. In 1973, a president was falling, and many of our friends and brothers would never return from a war half-a-world away. Yes, we are the fortunate ones, and every so often, we should come together, give thanks, and remember.