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downtown, while the rest settle for a case of beer at the motel
(each player is given $4 after each home game, and $5 after each
road game to do with as he pleases – "Usually," Bob McKeag
says, "we buy beer.")

There's no curfew tonight, inasmuch as there's no game
tomorrow.

Gibson and Conner remain perched in the Arena stands until
the last minutes of the game, with St. Louis the clear winner.

The itinerary for the trip, prepared the previous week, shows a
game scheduled for Friday, December 29 at 9 p.m., for the
championship, Virginia vs.St. Louis.

Halfway home.

III. INTERLUDE

The mystery of the morning is did the motel operator forget
to include Barry Parkhill and Gus Gerard in the 8:45 call, or did
they sleep through it? Only Ma Bell knows for sure.

Anyway, they make it to the motel office in time to join the
rest of us for a trip to Anheuser-Busch, brewers of Budweiser,
Michelob, and Ed McMahon. Two more cars have been rented, so
the entourage splits up for the 15-minute drive.

In the lead car which arrives last (figure that one out), Slick
explains how unusual it is to have a day off on a road trip,
Usually after an away game the team gets something quick to eat
and then piles into the bus for the long haul back to C'ville,
arriving at 3 or 4 a.m. "And God forbid you lose," adds Wilheim.

***

The brewery tour seems rather skimpy – even the Clydesdales
have left town (for the Tournament of Roses parade) – but the
guides are pleasant, the aroma intoxicating, and the entire
operation Brobdingnagian.

The tour first takes us to the brewery house, then to the
stable. Here the guide tells us that next we are to sample some of
the products. Gibson moves toward Stevie Morris and playfully
tugs at his jacket as if to say, "You can't have any," which draws
laughter from the other players. The inside joke becomes clearer
when, after a brief respite, quaffing some hops at ye local oasis,
and a glimpse at the bottling operation, the Hoot introduces
Morris to the guide.

"We call him 'Mic," Gibson tells the guide, explaining that
"Mic" is short for Michelob."

"You like Michelob,huh?" the guide inquires of Morris.

Stevie smiles bashfully and says he does.

Michelob Morris. What next?

***

Well, I'll tell you what next, as Groucho Marx might say.
Would you believe the Gateway Arch? How about the General
Robert E. Lee Riverboat, docked on the Mississippi, a popular
spot for lunch if you don't mind waiting twenty minutes. Gibson
decides we don't. Besides, there's a cocktail lounge to pass the
time in.

While we wait, I talk to Wally Walker about his fledgling
stardom, and learn that last year at this time he was still debating
between Notre Dame, North Carolina, and Virginia. Why
Virginia? "I liked it best here," the baby-faced freshman replies.
"Besides, I liked Coach Gibson." Ask almost any player this
question, and he'll point to the type of guy Gibson is as being a
major factor in his decision to come here.

Walker impresses one, at this time, as an eager, maybe slightly
awe-struck, young athlete, dedicated to developing his
considerable talents. Though not the natural conversationalist
Hobgood is, he's easy to get along with, and it's a pleasure to
watch the delight he takes in just being part of the team, relishing
both the knowledge and the good-natured ribbing ("Hey, Rookie,
when was the last time you shaved? How's the peach fuzz?") his
teammates give him.

We sit at two tables to eat in the stylish restaurant. Chris
Cramer recalls that road trips weren't always this nice. "I
remember five years ago when Bus Male (Director of Athletic
Facilities and Finances) and I went down to Clemson and had to
flip for a milkshake."

"When I played, we got $17 for five days, and we thought that
was a lot," Conner observes, before having a piece of butter
flicked at him off the tip of Cramer's knife.

One of the players wryly comments, "That's the sort of thing
people expect us to do."

There is talk about some bad calls against Georgetown last
night which the Hoyas didn't protest, much speculation about
who'll be named tourney MVP, and a Dan Bonnerism about
Robert E. Lee – "He looks like Colonel Sanders after three

months at the spa."

Practice is scheduled for three, but it's already two-thirty, so
it's pushed back half an hour to allow for a leisurely lunch on the
Mississippi.

***

A quick stop at the motel, then on to the "dumpy old gym"
once again. As we pull out of the driveway, the Wisconsin hockey
team pulls in (on a bus, no less), and we pass what must be the
five or six least desirable girls in Wisconsin, apparently here to
cheer on their team. In the back of the car, Larry Gerry and
"Skibo" Stahurski go into conniptions."Gross!...Step on it. Get
out of here!...I can't take it." En route, Gerry and Morris play a
game – mess up Lanny's hair and see how fast he can straighten
it. Well, anything for kicks in St. Louis.

The practice gets under way about 3:45, and lasts until 5,
when Gibson calls the team together at center court.

In a light vein: "No more racing down the corridor like last
night. Okay, Mic? I've never seen Hobbo run so fast in his life as
when he saw me coming around the corner (when he and Morris
were going for ice to 'cool the brew,' as it were)."

On the opponent: "Coach Conner and I were not at all
impressed with their ball handling, so we're gonna go after them.
That's what Evansville did and best them. Keep the pressure on.
Go after the ball."

On food: "There's a strong rumor going around that you guys
lay better when you cat at Musial's. Is there any truth to it?"

There is, and co-captains Parkhill and Hobgood win a $7.25
nner allowance for each player. First class.

As Gus Gerard points out. "They're spending some money on
trip. Bus Male will lose his mind."

So we go back to Musial's, then most of us continue on to the
Arena for the Minnesota-St. Louis hockey game, which turns out
to be a down-to-the-wire thriller, answering the question why
hockey outdraws basketball.

It ends at 11:20, ten minutes before curfew and twenty-one
hours and forty minutes before the game we traveled almost
halfway across the country to win.

IV. AGONY

The call is for 9:30, and we make our way into the dining
room in time to indulge in another Quality Court breakfast.

Doughty and I join Andrew (not Andy ... Andrew) Boninti
and his roommate for this trip (the players alternate roommates
on road trip), Al Drummond,at a table for four.

I read aloud the pre-game article in the morning's St. Louis
Globe-Democrat, including a line about Virginia's "powerful
offense."

"Powerful?" Boninti jokes. "We don't know what we're doing
out there."

***

The team meeting in 251 has been moved up to 11:15 because
Gibson and Conner have to be at the tournament luncheon at 12.

Gibson begins the meeting by describing the 48-inch sandwich
he saw – and ordered – downtown last night. "It's the most
amazing thing you've ever seen."

Then Conner takes over, diagramming plays on the board and
talking about them. Gibson's comments are shorter – a brief

review of the game strategy and the plans for a victory party
afterward being chief among them.

"I guess we'll leave for the Arena around 7:20." Hobbo speaks
up. "Coach, I don't know about the other guys, but I'd rather go
earlier and watch the (consolation) game than sit around the
motel and wait."

Gibson concedes. "All right. 7:10." He then concludes by
saying, "A win here can help us a great deal. What's the slogan for
the trip?"

A few reply, "Win two for 72."

"What is it?"

Louder. "Win two for 72."

The players have been invited to the tournament luncheon, as
have all the teams, but none of them goes. None of them really
wants to. Gibson will explain to the to the tournament hosts that
"the team has a set routine the day of a game which can't be
altered." No one has been impressed by the way the tournament
has been run, and the only desire anyone really has is to win it
and then get the hell out of St. Louis.

It turns out that Virginia is the only team that doesn't show up.

It was the height of aloofness – and it was beautiful.

***

The afternoon passes much as did Wednesday. A few players
drive down to the Arch, but are back early to rest. The team meal
is at 4:30, and, after that, more time to kill.

The rest of us go downstairs to eat at about 5:30.

ACC referee Curtis Prins enters the dining room soon after,
and Sebo invites him to his and Doughty's table.

Boninti Gerard: Teaching Card Tricks To The Young

Prins pauses, then accepts, mumbling something, "If they
don't trust me by now..."

Wilheim shows us the gift each player has been given as a
remembrance of the tournament. Instead of a watch, which is
pretty much a standard gift at such tournaments, it's a small
medallion on a square block of wood.

Mrs. Gibson thinks its function might be as a coaster to put
under chair legs.

Conner thinks it should be taken up to the top of the Gateway
Arch and thrown across the Mississippi.

Hobgood has already shot his into a basket. A waste basket,
that is.

***

The woman Bill Gibson spends most of his off-court time with
is a rather attractive brunette, maybe in her early forties and
friendly as can be.

She sits alone in a row of seats near the portal which leads to
the locker rooms, watching Georgetown defeat Army for third
prize.

While we await the start of the big game, she provides me with
a deeper insight into the Hoot's character, particularly the strength
of his determination to succeed at Virginia. She recalls a time
several years ago when Gibson was offered the head coaching job
at N.C. State, but turned it down because he hadn't yet done
what he had set out to do with the Virginia program.

"I never questioned Bill's coaching ability. I knew he should
stay at Virginia, and time has proven me right."

What is it like being married to a basketball coach?

"It's hard to say. I've never known anything else. Bill and I are
great equalizers," she states, explaining how she keeps herself
busy as an anesthetist at University Hospital, so when her
husband's energy is spent at the end of the day, hers is too.

Does it bother her when fans used to verbally crucify Gibson?

"Bill always told me that people who pay their money to
come to a game have the right to say whatever they want." Then,
pointing to their daughter, Jane, a senior at Lane High who is
U.Va. all the way tonight with her orange fingernail polish, she
adds, "You should see what this child goes through at school. Bill
told us to never answer back, to be ladies at all times. We have,
and it's paid off."

At the end of our forty-five minute conversation, I tell Pat
Gibson that I'm confident the team will beat St. Louis.

"We'd better," she says smilingly, "or I won't go home with
the coach."

***

The tip off is a few minutes before nine, and the Billikens (a
cross between an imp and leprechaun) jump out to an early lead.
A burst of momentum by the Cavs to end the half, and it's all
tied up.

The second half has St. Louis in front most of the way,
especially late, when it counts. Another Cavalier comeback seems
to be in the making, but time is running out. A Virginia field goal
with seven seconds remaining trims the margin to one. Hobbo and
others frantically signal for time out, but the clock keeps ticking.
Finally, it is stopped with one second to go. After a desperation
Virginia huddle, St. Louis passes in-bounds, Hobbo intercepts and
shoots.

Swish.

Only the buzzer has already sounded.

***

The locker room is silent, with most of the players sitting on
the benches, looking thoroughly dejected and wondering where
five of the last six seconds of the game went.

For this, they sacrificed Christmas.

Someone wants Barry to go accept a trophy, and he does.

Gibson emerges from the locker room gloom to face the press
waiting outside the door, a ritual that is sometimes fun,
sometimes infuriating. Tonight it's just difficult.

"You're playing away from home. You can figure on losing a
couple (of seconds), but you shouldn't lose seven (a liberal
estimate)," he says, characteristically hiding any anger he may
be feeling.

"It's a tough way to lose, men. A tough way to lose. The way
the game ended up is about how close we are to putting the
whole thing together. We're just a hair away," he explains,
speaking slowly as the question-and-answer drags on and on,
often with lengthy silence between questions.

Gibson is asked how the team is taking the loss. "It doesn't
feel good. Like the coach, it doesn't feel good." He pauses, then
adds, with a degree of pride and confidence, "Those kids won't
let you down."

Inside, the players dress slowly.

I walk around the locker room, ill-at-ease, struggling to find an
appropriate word of consolation. Realizing there isn't one, I
finally sigh, to no one in particular, "What can you say?"

Boninti, nearby, sums it up. "It just ruins the whole trip, that's
all."

***

Most of the players gather at the foot of the empty stands by
the locker room portal in the half-lit auditorium, waiting to be
driven back to the motel.

Hobbo and the ever-effervescent Steve Sebo – the only one
there who isn't looking as if he'd just lost his best friend – discuss
the game's controversial ending, with Hobbo mildly perturbed that
something wasn't done to restore the lost seconds to the clock.

Curtis Prins, the game's ACC official, walks up drinking a
coke. "Bad ref, huh?" he says, gently mocking Hobbo. He goes on
to explain how he cannot put seconds back on the clock unless he
knows for a fact that the clock has been running when it isn't
supposed to be, and there was no way he could have known this
since the scoreboard at the Arena hangs directly above the court,
and is "the last place I would have looked" given the impossible
angle.

Sebo suggests that the only solution to this recurring problem
is to have an official timekeeper assigned to each game, in the
same way refs are.

Prins agrees with him. "I'd love it, Steve."

As for tonight, well, Chris Cramer mouths the sentiments of a
lot of people when, driving back to the motel, he concludes,
"Whoever wrote Meet Me In St. Louis was full of shit."

V. REVIVAL

The chairs in room 251 are still lined up in rows, just as they
were for the team meeting.

The party has not been canceled, only its modifier.

The players lounge in the chairs, not saying anything, unable
to shake off the defeat.

Friends, and friends of friends, and children of friends–maybe
about ten in all–are standing in the doorway, hesitant to enter.

Recognizing the impasse, Gibson moves to the center of the
room and says to the team, "What's the matter? You anti-social?
You have guests here."

They respond by moving the chairs flush against the wall,
funeral home style. A few of them pass beer around, the rest sit
around the room making the party seem more like a wake.

Parkhill appears to be taking the loss harder than anybody,
sitting with his head down, politely responding in low tones to
the friendly words of a well-wisher. A man comes over, Barry
half-rises to shake his hand. The man introduces himself and asks
Barry how he is.

"Pretty good," says Parkhill. Then, after thinking about it, he
adds, "That's a lie."

Most of the players are trying to figure out what went wrong.
One of them comments, "They were psyched. We weren't."

Conner enters with one of the 48-inch sandwiches which had
so impressed Gibson the night before, and Mrs. Gibson starts
cutting it and passing it around.

Barney Cooke And Joe Gieck Relaxing At Motel

I bump into Gibson, even now the congenial host, and he
explains that had this been any other time of the year he
wouldn't have arranged a party (if what we're standing in the
middle of can qualify as such). But, as we have been almost
forced by circumstances to forget, this is, after all, the holiday
season.

"They'll bounce back," Gibson says confidently of his team,
as Parkhill comes over. Hooter throws his arm around the guy
who, as a Post-Dispatch story said, "brought Virginia basketball
out of the dark ages."

"I was just telling Steve, we'll be all right, won't we?"

Parkhill agrees, but his thoughts are still about tonight. "I just
can't get used to losing," he says.

Gibson shakes him gently, as if Barry were his son, and
answers, "I wouldn't want you to."

After Barry has moved on, the Hoot looks around the room at
his team and says, "They're a great bunch of guys. I wouldn't
trade them for anything."

And you know he means it.

***

About 12:30, as the guests are beginning to leave, Prins enters
and is offered a beer. "You're giving him a beer?!" somebody
says playfully, as Jane Gibson picks up the knife which was used
to cut the sandwich, and taps it in, her hand in mock-anger.

Prins and Gibson exchange a couple of good-natured
wisecracks, and then Prins talks about some of tonight's calls,
admitting that he made one bad one (which happened to go in
Virginia's favor). He chats with the players, calling them by their
first names, and soon he has you realizing that refs are good guys,
too.

***

By now, the gloom has lifted somewhat. The players are talking
about things other than the game, and even an occasional smile
can be detected.

A little before one, a few students from U.Va. who live in St.
Louis come to inform us that the party they had planned for
tonight has not been called off because of the outcome of the
game (not having heard from them, we assumed it had been). So,
with a reminder from Gibson that everyone has to be up at 7:30
in the morning for the flight back, we head out to the suburbs.

While some of us help ourselves to the rather elaborate buffet
that has been prepared, others start up a poker game in the next
room.

The spell has been broken–at least temporarily. Even Parkhill
comes around. There is a soothing effect in the sense of
camaraderie that comes out of the jokes and non-sequiturs the
players hurl at one another.

Stahurski walks through on his way to get a drink, and
someone says, "Have you ever noticed that Lanny's bigger than
the tallest Clydesdale?" He comes back through, silently, and
Hobbo says, "Bye, Dino."

"Rookie" Walker is teased about his youth, and laps it up.

Al Drummond is teased about being the only black on the
team ("Hey, Al, come shine my shoes.")

"Butch" McKeag boasts about his 1.000 tournament shooting
average. "Yeah, but you only tried two shots," he is
reminded.

For the moment, things are back to normal.

Before we left Charlottesville, Bill Gibson told me he had three
goals. "The first is to win at Virginia, the second is to win big at
Virginia, and the third is my financial security."

He has already accomplished the first of those goals, "and if
you don't believe that was tough..." his voice trailed off, then he
finished his thought, "I can show you budgets."

The third you get the feeling will take care of itself in due
course.

The second–the one that would culminate in his dream of
winning an NCAA championship–will be the most difficult to
attain.

Right now he is coaching a team that, young as it is, has the
commitment to excel. From St. Louis they return to
Charlottesville, where they have regular practices (for the Duke
game) scheduled for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

It is a measure of Gibson's feeling for his players that he turns
over his entire house to them on the night of the 31st so they can
have a party.

And as long as this close friendship and respect between
players and coach exists mutually as long as the Hoot's family
remains dedicated to the same goals he is, and as long as the
athletic department doesn't tighten the purse-strings again, Bill
Gibson has a lot of happy years to look forward to.

Copyright, 1973
The Cavalier Daily