Showing posts with label jerry kroll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jerry kroll. Show all posts

3.06.2010

RIP Bryan Adrian

Obit. Greensboro Sports: I remember Huckel real well and then in 1970 Bryan Adrian was one of the stars with the Maloy, Cook, and Kroll bunch. His camp. DavidsonCats.com.

3.15.2009

March 15, 1969

Forty years ago today, Carolina beat Davidson in the regional finals in College Park, Md., 87-85 on a buzzer-beating shot by Tar Heel great Charlie Scott.

Here, from my notes from the late ‘90s from some of my reporting for the old book, are some of the memories of those who were there:

Dave Moser ‘69: “It’s been hard to swallow for 30 years, that game. I still feel we were the better ball club. I have to say: Charlie Scott was a heck of a player. You could play good defense but still couldn’t stop him from shooting a 15-foot jump shot. In ’68, I could accept it, but I still feel we were the better team in ’69.”

Jerry Kroll ’70: “I was really pissed in ’68. I knew we should have won that game. It stung. But ’69 was worse. We had the ball with a minute to go and the official calls a charge on me and I foul out. At best, it was a questionable call; Gerald Tuttle fell down, and they called a charge on me.”

Wayne Huckel ’69: “We were the better team.”

Bob Dunham ’70, former Davidsonian sports editor: “I knew, if they couldn’t deny the ball to Charlie Scott, as soon as he got the ball -- it was over. It was not a matter of defense. It was Charlie Scott. He was magic with the ball.”

Luther Moore ’69, team manager at the time: “He earned it. Mike O’Neill was on him and had his hand in his face.”

Moser: “It wasn’t like O’Neill was playing bad defense.”

Bobby Vagt ’69, former Davidson president: “Pain. Agony.”

Tony Orsbon ‘69: “It’s an image that sticks with you, and that’s an image I’ll never forget, Charlie Scott going up in the key.”

Charlie Scott UNC ’70: “There was no doubt who was going to take that last shot. I wasn’t going to pass it. A lot of the Davidson guys are still upset about that. That’s North Carolina basketball, though -- people got long memories.”

2.04.2009

From the old book

Maloy, Cook and Kroll formed what was eventually dubbed the Holy Trinity of Davidson basketball -- a frontcourt that could match up with anybody in the country.

The 1966-67 freshman team remains the only undefeated basketball team in school history. The “Wildkittens” went 16-0. Under Terry Holland, still only two years removed from his playing days, the Davidson first-years that season beat seven ACC teams, averaging approximately 90 points and 50 rebounds a game.

In their debut, Maloy had 26 points and 21 rebounds, Cook had 23 points and 13 rebounds, and Jan Postma scored 24 points. Davidson’s rookies beat Wake Forest’s rookies 103-90. After beating Wake twice, South Carolina and Duke -- and many others -- the group closed its perfect season with an 88-80 victory against North Carolina State.

Maloy put up astounding numbers throughout his freshman season. He had 34 points and 25 rebounds Jan. 8 against The Citadel. After breaking his hand in a fall on campus, though, Maloy sat out the final five games.

But it hardly mattered.

Supporters of Davidson basketball had seen the future.

“I won’t say that this year’s team is the best I’ve ever had at Davidson,” Lefty told the Davidsonian in the fall of 1967. “But I will say it sure has the potential to be.”

Bob Dunham told a story decades later. During 1966 freshman orientation, he was in the same group with Maloy, and Chalmers Davidson, then the head of the library, made some reference to Chapel Hill, where they played, in his words, “real basketball.”

Maloy, Dunham said, just laughed.

“Mike knew what was coming.”

Dickens on Maloy

Got this e-mail today from Mike Dickens ’69. It’s posted here with his permission:

We pledged Mike in the fall of his freshman year (1966) in the pledge class with among 20 others Fox Demoisey and Jerry Kroll. If memory serves in our region the Sigma Chis at Wake Forest and Duke supported us and the chapters at UNC, NC State and especially the University of South Carolina were not pleased. I believe the intemperate words by one Sigma Chi at USC was that they were going to come up to Davidson and burn down our fraternity house.

We never faced the issue of presenting Mike for membership in the National Fraternity because he never made his grades. I am not sure if that rule was a school rule or a fraternity rule. In any case in 1970 when the chapter voted to leave the National Fraternity and become the Macchis (our school nickname) it was largely because of the feeling that the national fraternity was racist generally as well as specifically in some of their dealings with our chapter. Jerry Kroll was our president (I think the Greek title was Consul) and he would know the story better than I.

Mike faced a racism both overt and subtle that we can only imagine. Remember he came to Davidson just two years after the Freedom Riders in Greensboro and one year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. It’s is impossible to know what the pressures were like that forged the man he became. It is awfully sad however that someone who was such a good friend to a number of us could have disappeared so completely from our lives over the last almost 40 years.

The last time I saw Mike was in the fall of 1971. I was coming back from playing pro basketball in Belgium and he was playing with the Virginia Squires. I went by Norfolk and met him at his apartment. After getting into horrible shape the previous year playing for the Pittsburgh Condors he had completely turned himself around. He was 220 lbs and in the best shape of his life. He told me he was playing the best basketball he had ever played and he was the starter at small forward going into the season. But he said there is a rookie on the team that does things every day in practice that nobody has ever seen on the basketball court and I should remember his name. Well his name was Julius Erving and when the season started Mike was on the bench. He was making too much money to not start so the Squires traded him to Dallas after 7 games. With Charlie Scott averaging 34.6 ppg and Erving averaging 27.3 ppg and 15.7 rebounds a game the Squires finished 2nd in the ABA Eastern Division.

Mike played in 9 games at Dallas in the 1972-73 season but I think was in Austria well before the season ended. I talked to him in Dallas a couple of times but never saw him or talked to him after he went to Austria.