IT'S A BASKETBALL TOWN

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA) - Friday, March 14, 1997

Author: STORY BY MARINO PARASCENZO ILLUSTRATION BY TED

It got this good:

You're making those last steps up Cardiac Hill to Pitt's Fitzgerald Field House and someone, gagging just to stay alive, even finds the breath to wonder who's on the game.

The refs. OK, the officials. Ace? Lefty? Dutch? The Redhead?

That was basketball in Western Pennsylvania up to, oh, 10 so years ago. Back then, basketball was so good that just one little stat could cost you an argument over Pitt, Duquesne, Connie Hawkins, Uniontown, Farrell, the Pump House Gang from Mohawk, and did you hear about that 6-9 kid at Herron Hill, a mortal lock he's the next Kenny Durrett. You name it, someone topped you.

What was the high point in Western Pennsylvania basketball? A case can be made for any spot in a lifetime of memories, but one argument stops here: The NCAAs this weekend are the biggest basketball thing ever to hit town.

What used to be? Let the debate begin.

You could go back to an April night in 1965, and see the bushy-haired guy making his way around the floor of the Civic Arena in the kind of trance you see at the foot of the David in Florence.

This was Sonny Vaccaro, numbed that over 10,000 people would come out and see his baby, the Dapper Dan Roundball Classic, the first national high school all-star game in the land.

The Roundball proved to be an artistic and financial reward for Vaccaro's vision and hard work, but his favorite basketball moment was a time that surprised and saddened him by ending.

``In the late '60s and early '70s, we had as much talent in town as anywhere in America,'' Vaccaro said. ``We could always count on one of our kids being as good as anyone in the country - the great Kenny Durrett, Dennis Wuycik, Dickie DeVenzio, Maurice Lucas. And Simmie Hill and Norman Van Lier, two guys from Midland, the same high school team, in the NBA.''

For others, the Roundball itself was the high point. The Roundball was the center of the earth for that week. Never mind the crowds, you could tell by the 200 or so college coaches who came to town, some trying to get players, others trying to make sure they didn't.

``The Dapper Dan was the must stop for any kid - just the honor of being in this game,'' Vaccaro said. It was great for him, too. He was a special education teacher at Trafford when he started the Roundball Classic, and before it was over he was an executive with Nike, and now is director of sports with Adidas in Pacific Palisades, Calif.

And tell you something else, bay-beee - Vaccaro wasn't the only guy to stumble into the future through the Roundball. A 6-11 kid named Les Cason, from East Rutherford High in New Jersey, came in one year with his coach. Cason didn't make it, but his coach sure did - Dick Vitale.

Vaccaro knew basketball, but he needed some show-biz savvy to put on the Roundball, and that came from his old Trafford pal, Pat DiCesare, who made an art form and a fortune from staging rock concerts. He knew how to put on a show, which is why his high point wasn't a high, but a low.

DiCesare was packing the house with the Beatles and the like, and he knew that to make the first Roundball a success, he needed the No. 1 high school star in the land. But DiCesare came away from New York a whipped man.

``You don't talk to my boy,'' the kid's protective coach had said. ``You talk to me.''

That was as close as DiCesare ever got to Lew Alcindor, later to be named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. DiCesare knew all about turkeys. He was convinced the Roundball would be stillborn.

``And then to see all those people that first night,'' he said. ``That was the most thrilling. That was a real happening - a no-headliner show.''

Dave Pober, an insurance agent in real life, is as ravenous a basketball fan as there is. But you couldn't tell. At the game, he looks like a guy soaking up a Beethoven string quartet. He is famed for flying in the face of a Pittsburgh tradition - a distaste for pro basketball.

``They said having a pro all-star game in Pittsburgh, I was committing suicide,'' he said. Then he walked into the Arena that night, in August 1977, and saw over 10,000 fans in the house for what was nothing more than a pick-up game of pro stars. Pober would have other all-star games. The '82 game, when Julius Erving rode up to save the box office, comes to his mind.

But Pober's biggest moment is a span of time. He calls it the Tim Grgurich Era, named for the guy who recruited for Buzz Ridl at Pitt and later became the head coach himself. Grgurich was the central figure in a notable time, Pober said.

He recalls the Pitt team of 1973-74, that Ridl took to the the NCAA East Regional. Sports Illustrated did a story on the team, and used a photo of six players posed on a Mount Washington overlook, with the city in the background.

``The idea was, this was a local team,'' Pober said. ``All those kids could see their neighborhood from there. Timmy Grgurich was the man, and it was Billy Knight who broke the mold, because nobody ever went to Pitt. If a guy was going to stay in town, he went to Duquesne.''

Dave Miller, who now lives in New Port Richey, Fla., used to walk his mail route by day and live in the basketball arenas by night. For him, picking a high point was an exercise in feverish futility. He had a bunch of ties.

``The Duquesne Dukes, winning the NIT in 1955,'' Miller said. ``The NIT was the big tournament then. And Don Hennon and his amazing run at Pitt - a great player with no supporting cast.''

He had room to take a shot, too.

``The first six Roundballs were great, before it became a political thing,'' he said. ``Kids got in because they were good. You couldn't get a ticket.''

And on he went, then added a new one, the best, which he would miss.

``Pittsburgh is finally getting the NCAA,'' Miller said. ``That's why you have to give this guy from Duquesne credit . . . ''

Meaning Duquesne Athletic Director Brian Colleary, who worked for years to bring the NCAAs here today.

Largely forgotten now was a revolutionary moment in district basketball - when the WPIAL took its quarterfinals, semis, and championship games from Pitt's smaller field house to the Civic Arena, then about an 11,000-seat house.

That was the work of a Post-Gazette sports writer, the late Brute Kramer. He challenged the WPIAL to make the move, saying he'd pay them $1 for every unsold seat under 9,000. Convinced, the WPIAL didn't take Kramer up on the deal but did move the tournament in 1963. From there, it was televised by WQED. It was an energizing time. But time, higher cost and the drain on talent reversed the situation in the mid-'80s.

Another PG sports writer, Mike White, votes for the postseason tournaments of the Eastern Eight, the forerunner of the Atlantic 10.

``There was the Pitt-Duquesne rivalry and West Virginia was involved,'' White said. ``They kept setting attendance records - 13,676 in 1978, then 15,208 for the semifinals in 1979, and 16,009 when Rutgers beat Pitt, 61-57, for the 1979 championship.''

Like the others, Miller looks back on that general time, an era.

That was a time of wonderful riches:

The rise of the City League, the great Schenley-Fifth Avenue games, and two of the best guards in the state, Petie Gibson and Cleve Edwards, battling each other into the dry heaves. Farrell's Eddie McCluskey taking an awesome shortage of talent and winning state championships. The 1967 Aliquippa team, maybe the second-best in the state, but who could tell, with the No. 1 Ambridge Bridgers in their way? And maybe the best of them all, Hank Kuzma's unbeaten 1964-65 Leopards from tiny Midland High, with two future NBAers, Simmie Hill and Norm Van Lier, on the same team. Where did it all go?

``Used to be we had 10, 15 high Division I players coming out every year,'' Pober said. ``Now you're lucky to get two or three.''

Western Pennsylvania. could nearly staff the Pitt and Duquesne teams. This year, Pitt, an NIT team, has no players and Duquesne, a 9-18 team, has three.

Where did it all go? Everyone has a theory.

But now the NCAAs are in town. Maybe someday, after a new stampede of Dukes and Panthers are having their run, the basketball fan will look back on this as another high point in Pittsburgh basketball.