25 year ago today ...

[Steak Snabler]

Hank Gathers died.

Here's a story from Philly.com (Gathers was from Philadelphia):

Fallen star: 25 years ago, Hank Gathers died on the court

 

[JackReacher]

Read that the other day. If you can get past the descriptive road map in the beginning, it's a decent story.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

I remember one of my friends calling me and telling me and I immediately called bull****.

My friend said, "If I was going to make it up, I would have come up with a better player."

Loved Kimble in the tournament that year. The upset over defending champion Michigan remains one of my favorite games ever.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

If they would have been put in any other bracket but UNLV's I think they may have made the Final Four.

 

[RubberSoul1979]

"The Guru of Go," about Paul Westhead's Loyola Marymount teams, is one of the better 30-for-30's that never gets much airtime. Has anyone else seen it?

Without recalling the details, I remember it explaining Gathers' heart condition in unfortunate terms: that he was either prescribed the wrong medication, or that he shouldn't have been playing at all. I can't remember exactly.

 

[micropolitan guy]

No defib machine on site. Now they are almost universal at sports vecnues. Saved the life of a kid this August who collapsed in the practice gym at Microville Tech.

 

[Steak Snabler]

"The Guru of Go," about Paul Westhead's Loyola Marymount teams, is one of the better 30-for-30's that never gets much airtime. Has anyone else seen it?

Without recalling the details, I remember it explaining Gathers' heart condition in unfortunate terms: that he was either prescribed the wrong medication, or that he shouldn't have been playing at all. I can't remember exactly.

I think the deal was, the medication they prescribed him made him feel sluggish, so he talked the doctors into giving him a lower dosage.

 

[JackReacher]

No defib machine on site. Now they are almost universal at sports vecnues. Saved the life of a kid this August who collapsed in the practice gym at Microville Tech.

From the ESPN story:

"He was carried outside the gym via stretcher, where he was shocked by a defibrillator that the team had purchased for nearly $5,000 after his original diagnosis."

 

[Steak Snabler]

Here's a clip from "Guru of Go" on Gathers' death. The footage of him collapsing is still haunting:

 

[JackReacher]

Interesting fact I just saw on Twitter. The day Gathers collapsed and died, Loyola was playing Portland, which had Erik Spoelstra at point guard.

 

[Steak Snabler]

Something else I didn't realize until reading some of the coverage today: They finished neither the game nor the WCC tournament after Gathers died (the game where Gathers died was a semifinal). LMU was given an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament as regular-season WCC champion.

 

[JackReacher]

I remember watching the movie they made about him, and it couldn't have been too long after his death. Was an ABC Family type movie. I must have watched that movie 50 times.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I remember being in seventh-grade Earth Science, first hour, the following morning and being so shook up I didn't know if I could make it through the day. I didn't understand this then, but it was the first time I grasped that young people can die, too.

I saw a kid die in a game live a couple years later, and it didn't even rock my world to the degree Gathers did.

 

[ChrisLong]

LMU was my beat. I was courtside. I thought the pass from Lowery was going to hit the wall above the EXIT sign, but Hank went up and got it. Westhead ran out, pointed to me and said, "Chris, call 911." I have a thousand memories from that night. They did have a defib on the bench. The doctor ordered them not to use it right there on the court because he felt it might be too alarming to some of the spectators. The second-round victory over Michigan was the greatest game I saw in my 44-year newspaper career.
I'll stop crying here in a minute and continue on with my day.

 

[RubberSoul1979]

The 1990 NCAA tournament, holy crap:
- LMU's run
- UConn advances on Tate George's shot, only to lose the next game on Laettner's first tournament buzzer-beater.
- Georgia Tech beats Michigan State when Kenny Anderson (maybe? maybe not?) beats the buzzer.
- UNLV bodyslams Duke by 30, still the biggest rout in title game history.

 

[LongTimeListener]

The 1990 NCAA tournament, holy crap:
- LMU's run
- UConn advances on Tate George's shot, only to lose the next game on Laettner's first tournament buzzer-beater.
- Georgia Tech beats Michigan State when Kenny Anderson (maybe? maybe not?) beats the buzzer.
- UNLV bodyslams Duke by 30, still the biggest rout in title game history.

Oh yeah, that was the best tournament. You also had North Carolina knocking off top-seeded Oklahoma in the second round, a bunch of crazy games involving teams like Xavier and Dayton, a great run by Ball State (the only team that whole tournament that had a chance to beat UNLV), and a ton of close games going into the 80s and 90s.

The NCAA record book used to have a table (probably still does but I haven't seen a book lately) of the close finishes and upsets in each tournament. 1990 was the runaway all-time winner.

 

[Steak Snabler]

The Sweet Sixteen game between LMU and Alabama was a great one.

Alabama played the slow-down game, but lost 62-60 when Robert Horry's shot went off the rim at the buzzer. Might be the greatest game Wimp Sanderson ever coached.

 

[RubberSoul1979]

LMU was my beat. I was courtside. I thought the pass from Lowery was going to hit the wall above the EXIT sign, but Hank went up and got it. Westhead ran out, pointed to me and said, "Chris, call 911." I have a thousand memories from that night. They did have a defib on the bench. The doctor ordered them not to use it right there on the court because he felt it might be too alarming to some of the spectators. The second-round victory over Michigan was the greatest game I saw in my 44-year newspaper career.
I'll stop crying here in a minute and continue on with my day.

WOW. Could the defib have saved his life?
Adds to the sadness that LMU hoops was never the same again.

 

[Dyno]

LMU was my beat. I was courtside. I thought the pass from Lowery was going to hit the wall above the EXIT sign, but Hank went up and got it. Westhead ran out, pointed to me and said, "Chris, call 911." I have a thousand memories from that night. They did have a defib on the bench. The doctor ordered them not to use it right there on the court because he felt it might be too alarming to some of the spectators. The second-round victory over Michigan was the greatest game I saw in my 44-year newspaper career.
I'll stop crying here in a minute and continue on with my day.

Wow. I can't even imagine. What a horrible thing to see.

 

[ChrisLong]

The Sweet Sixteen game between LMU and Alabama was a great one.

Alabama played the slow-down game, but lost 62-60 when Robert Horry's shot went off the rim at the buzzer. Might be the greatest game Wimp Sanderson ever coached.

I always thought he was aptly named: Wimp. He wimped out against LMU. He had 3 NBA players on his team and he chose the slowdown when he had 3 of the 4 best players on the court. He bought into the LMU mystic and paid for it. He also had a 60-52 lead with about 3-1/2 minutes to go and didn't score again. LMU closed the game on a 10-0 run.
Another memory. In the tourney opener against New Mexico State, Kimble got his fourth foul before halftime ... and played the rest of the game without fouling out.