Death Penalty: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of USF Basketball (Part Two)
Probation
Every day can be special when you know what to do / That’s why at Burger King, we make it special for you!
--Burger King television commercial, 1979
ROBERT LOUIS GAILLARD WAS A local kid who attended the University of San Francisco from 1959 through 1962, and before that, Harry Ells High School across the Bay in Richmond. As a Don, Gaillard set a War Memorial Gymnasium scoring record, dropping in 41 points as USF trounced West Texas A&M 100-51 on December 5, 1961, a record that has since been topped. Gaillard returned to the Hilltop in 1968 as an assistant under Phil Vukicevich, and when the intensely perfectionist Vukicevich resigned four games into the 1970-71 season, Bob took over and finished out the schedule.
Then things improved. But not without a minor disturbance to begin the Gaillard era: the 1971-72 Dons would be without their second-leading scorer from a year ago, Steve Ferreboeuf. The new full-time coach had taken umbrage with the junior guard’s hair length – it was down to his shoulders – and the kid also had the temerity to sprout a beard. Rather than comply, Ferreboeuf simply walked out and never returned. Despite suddenly being down a key player, Gaillard was unperturbed. “It helps recruiting,” he was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, “to have more conservative athletes so that parents see that the coach is providing direction and discipline.” USF’s recruiting practices would come more into focus as the 1970s wore on.
But for the time being, the Dons would be led by a pair of talented sophomores who would later play in the NBA, guard Phil Smith and forward Kevin Restani, along with transfer forward Byron “Snake” Jones, as USF went 20-8, including 13-1 in conference play, and were extended their first NCAA Tournament invite in seven years. In a vacuum, their showing in the ’72 tourney would be considered a dud, as the Dons stumbled in a 20-point loss to Long Beach State before thwarting Weber State in the regional consolation game, but at least they were back in postseason play. The following year, 1972-73, USF finished 23-5 (overall)/12-2 (conference), winning the West Coast Athletic Conference for the second consecutive year, then exacted revenge on Long Beach State in the first round before they were smothered by Bill Walton, Jamaal Wilkes, and the rest of the UCLA Bruins. In 1973-74, Smith and Restani, both seniors, led the Dons to a third-straight conference title and third-straight NCAA Tournament appearance. This time, it was more or less a repeat of the year before, winning in the first round – this time over New Mexico – before the Bruins squashed them yet again. Phil Smith and Kevin Restani gleefully accepted their diplomas and jumped to the NBA. Smith toted his considerable gifts across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, where he would average 7.7 points per game as a rookie backup for the 1974-75 NBA champion Golden State Warriors.
The 1974-75 Dons team would not win capture a fourth-straight WCAC title, but they still managed a second place finish, albeit with a less-than-inspiring 9-5 record as Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV Rebels took the conference with a 13-1 record – their only loss, oddly enough, to the Dons at War Memorial on Valentine’s Day – and a No. 17 ranking in the final Associated Press poll.
For the first time since 1971, there would be no NCAA Tournament invite for the Dons. Not even the NIT extended an offer.
A Fresh Influx of Talent
FOR THE DONS TO RETURN to tournament-worthy status, they would need to restock the cupboard in a hurry. In recruiting and signing a trio of superb prep stars who would not only make the team, but become key starters, USF did just that. Though success didn’t come right away.
The trio in question – Winford Boynes, a skilled guard; mercurial power forward James Hardy; and spindly 7-foot-1 center Bill Cartwright – would team up with returning junior guard Marlon Redmond to form a fearsome quartet that would combine to average 56 points and 28 rebounds per game. But all that resulted in a performance that resembled, in the words of Sports Illustrated’s Barry McDermott, “the uneven pace of a cable car.” The Dons featured a high-flying offense coupled with suspect defense, and, McDermott wrote, “the players have a tendency to blow their lines.” But, McDermott added, “Once they stop running into each other, they are very likely to be a smash.”
“I think they’re awesome,” Stanford head coach Dick DiBiaso enthused after his team fell to the Dons on December 5, 1975, at Maples Pavilion. “They have the best talent in the country. When they learn to play together, it'll really be something to see.” Learning to play together would take a lot of time; having three frosh running the show rankled some of the older players. Fights frequently broke out at practice. Freshman backup forward Ray Hamilton, an ordained minister, observed one such fracas and muttered to himself, “The devil’s in the gym.” Things were so tense that Boynes, who was the prize of his recruiting class1, considered transferring, and entertained offers from both Oklahoma and Louisville. He ended up staying.
It was an up-and-down season in which the Dons won five in a row in December, then alternated triumphs and defeats in the first half of January, then won nine in a row – including five-consecutive at War Memorial – from late January to mid-February, only to drop three in a row, including a close loss to Pepperdine that cost the Dons a chance at a conference title. USF spent the first half of the season bouncing around the ass-end of the A.P. Top 25, then fell out for good in mid-January.
The loss to Pepperdine, on Friday, February 27, 1976, was marred by Hardy’s stubborn refusal to reenter the game in the latter stages. Gaillard had yanked the big man earlier with the USF down 6 points, replacing him with speedy guard Sam Williams. As Hardy, whose deportment that season had “vacillated between enthusiasm and apathy,” brooded on the bench, Williams ignited a comeback that tied the game in the final moments. When the head coach ordered Hardy back in, the freshman declined. The Dons lost by a single point, giving Pepperdine, 10-3, the WCAC title over the Dons, who finished a lone game back.
Not surprisingly, the NCAA Tournament selection committee ignored the Dons, but the Hilltoppers accepted an NIT bid, though the embattled Hardy would not participate. Gaillard, reported Chronicle sportswriter Glenn Dickey, “told confidantes that Hardy would play only if five men were hurt and three fouled out.” It was a tough call for the head coach, but it was one that his players, including Hardy, interestingly enough, backed wholeheartedly.
With James Hardy’s keister planted firmly on a sideline seat, the Dons fell in the first round, 79-74 in overtime, to the 49ers of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, a team that consisted of junior forward and future NBA Finals MVP Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell and, well, little else of note. Maxwell “made it a night of famine,” for Cartwright, who scored only 5 points on 1-for-11 shooting, while having three of his shots blocked. Taking advantage of Hardy’s absence, Maxwell scored 28 points and hauled in 15 rebounds.
The 1976-77 team ranks among best in school history, leaving aside the fact that they didn’t win the NCAA title. The ‘76-’77 squad went 29-1, matching the 1955-56 national champions’ win total. Owing to good recruiting, they featured an astounding five players who would go on to the NBA: Cartwright, Boynes, Redmond, Hardy, and junior guard John “Chubby” Cox2, who had to sit out the previous season after transferring from Villanova, where he had toiled under Rollie Massimino on a couple of bad Wildcats teams3. Belying the moniker, Cox was a strapping 6-foot-2, 180-pound guard. He wasn’t much of a shooter; he averaged 9 points per game at Villanova and, but during his short stay on the Hilltop, would evolve into a prolific distributor.4
The Dons began the year ranked No. 11 in the preseason Associated Press poll, and it was all upward from there, winning their first 29 games, including 121-85 over San Francisco State, 100-85 over Houston, 114-96 over Arizona State, and crushing Pepperdine 107-72, all the while climbing the polls. By the New Year, the Dons were ranked No. 1 in the country, holding that position through February. On March 1, the Dons took the court in South Bend, Indiana, to do battle with Digger Phelps’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish to close out the regular season, a last-minute scheduling quirk mandated by television. “We didn't want to play Notre Dame at the end of the year,” Gaillard recalled in 2015, “but TV and money kind of dictated a lot of things, so we did.” Numerous problems befell the Dons even before they took the court. “We stayed at some beat-up Holiday Inn,” Marlon Redmond recalled years later. “It was cold. The food was bad. It wasn’t a pleasant trip for us.”
“Something was wrong with the heat at the hotel, so it was cold in the rooms,” said Cartwright. “And our bus broke down on the way in. There was some goofy stuff.”
And with the NCAA Tournament on the horizon, the players weren’t exactly focused. “We came in very relaxed, almost like it was an exhibition game,” said Redmond. “It wasn’t a league game, and everybody was trying to come out of there not hurt.”
There was greater imperative for the Golden Domers, who had begun the season unranked, shot up to No. 2 in December, then dropped five straight to put their chance at a tourney invite at risk. A victory over USF would earn them a spot.
Unsurprisingly, the Dons fell, 93-82, ending their bid for a perfect season in front of a national television audience, as well as their stay atop the polls. USF would drop down to No. 3.
In the tourney, USF was dispatched quickly, falling to UNLV 121-95 at the McKale Center in Tucson5. Their final poll position stood at No. 8, disappointing for sure, giving their lofty position just two months earlier. But it still represented the Dons’ first Top-10 finish since 1957-58.
Underneath the good times, trouble was brewing, and it would bring increased scrutiny to the program and threaten to blow everything up.
Probation
WHAT DO A CHEESEBURGER, GOLDEN State Warriors tickets, a telephone, and a dorm room have in common?
Generally, very little, if at all. Except in the case of this story, they had a lot in common. It all added up to a pattern of minor infractions that took place under the surface that would eventually lead to the USF men’s basketball program’s downfall just a few short years later.
The NCAA’s investigation commenced in late 1976. Well, an “informal inquiry,” anyway, according to university lawyer Charles “Skip” Paul. On September 21 of that year, NCAA Assistant Executive Director Warren S. Brown sent a letter to USF, the contents of which were published, in part, in the Sunday, May 7, 1978, edition of the San Francisco Examiner:
Undoubtedly you are familiar with the enforcement program of the NCAA and the responsibilities and obligations of the NCAA committee on infractions…
Allegations have been received which charged violations of NCAA requirements on the part of the university and its representatives as of this date. The allegations have not been sufficiently investigated to determine whether an official inquiry is warranted.
As noted, the purpose of the preliminary inquiry is to determine whether there is adequate evidence to warrant an official inquiry. If following this preliminary checking the allegations appear to be of a responsible and substantial nature, the committee on infractions will correspond with you in accordance with the provisions of section three of the official procedure governing the NCAA enforcement program. If not, you will be notified that the matter has been closed.
This letter is merely intended to acquaint you with the developments to date and assure you that your institution will be fully advised if there is sufficient evidence developed to warrant an official inquiry…
At the time the letter was received, no one on campus had any idea what the “violations of NCAA requirements” were. According to Examiner columnist Frank Cooney, there was a “popular theory” that a disgruntled former school employee, who had “quit in anger after being denied a raise,” had tipped off the regulating body about some potential infractions within the basketball program. Again, this was in September 1976. As of May 1978, USF had not received any results or any follow-up action: no reprimand, no correspondence declaring the issue dead, no notice of any further investigation.
Crickets.
“USF has not been charged with any violation of the NCAA regulations,” Paul declared.
Oh.
Finally, on October 16, 1979, the NCAA dropped the hammer. Not exactly Thor’s Mjölnir, but a small, but utilitarian, ball peen hammer. By this time, Bob Gaillard had left the coaching ranks of his own volition, turning over the keys to his top assistant, Dan Belluomini, who ironically had replaced the graduated Gaillard on the USF playing roster eighteen years ago, back when Pete Peletta was the head coach.
The NCAA’s findings constituted a moderate-sized list. USF’s infractions included, according to the Chronicle:
Cash gifts and loans to players, though in small amounts
“Occasional use” of department vehicles and telephones by players
Doling out free Golden State Warriors tickets to players
Purchase of a meal for a recruit in his hometown
Three days’ worth of free room and board for a player before school was in session
All minor infractions, to be sure. At least no one on the team was found guilty of accepting compensation for no-show jobs, hiring a friend to take a midterm exam on his behalf, or receiving the newest Pontiac Trans-Am from a booster. But certainly these were contraventions that could not be ignored. The NCAA placed the USF men’s basketball program (none of the other sports teams were affected) on probation, meaning, most notably, they would not be eligible for postseason play following the 1979-1980 season, ending a three-year run of making the Big Dance. In addition, they would be ineligible to appear on the United Press International (UPI) coaches’ poll, and their games could not be shown on national television (local broadcasts would still be allowed).
For his part, Belluomini (whose photo appeared with the Chronicle story with the caption “Wrist slapped”) was aware of the investigation when he took over for Gaillard at the conclusion of the 1977-78 season. “I had analyzed the situation and I knew something was coming, but the severity was sort of a nebulous thing,” he was quoted as saying. “I don’t know if the one great recruiting year we had [referring to 1975, when the Dons inked Boynes, Cartwright, and Hardy] prompted it, but I do know that teams which have had success are in the limelight and tend to be scrutinized, which we were if the investigation lasted three years.” He also admitted some degree of naïveté regarding the violations. “I was aware of some of these things,” he said, but didn’t know what was illegal. The Warriors tickets, for example, “were complimentary…from the Warriors, so we thought it was all right to just hand them out.” The tickets were considered illegal because they were deemed an extra benefit that were not readily available to the general student body.
Regarding the use of department telephones, Belluomini downplayed the severity, explaining how players “would come in and say it was an emergency call, and we might say ‘OK, fine,’ and not think anything of it. We didn’t have to let them do it, and it didn’t seem like a big thing.”
All of the infractions happened on Gaillard’s watch, and during a time when the Dons had both won the WCAC and made the NCAA Tournament five times in seven years and were frequently in the Top 15 in the A.P. polls (including the nine-week stretch at No. 1 in 1977). Gaillard, just thirty-seven, stepped down after the 1977-1978 campaign, announcing his intention more than two months before the first game tipped off. As the school’s athletic director, he got to choose his successor. In Belluomini, Gaillard was entrusting the team to someone familiar with his system, who had been “my principal advisor in practice planning, game strategy, and scouting.”
“I enjoyed being at the top,” Gaillard said during his announcement, referring to his squad’s prolonged stay at No. 1 in the A.P. polls, “but there were certain things I realized that I didn’t need. I couldn’t see myself coaching and answering a lot of negative questions for the rest of my life. There are other things to do, and I’d like to try them while I’m still young enough.”
Gaillard brought up his family. “I’m getting tired of flying around the country, especially during Christmas. The pressure of coaching isn’t only on me, it’s on my wife, too.” He expressed a desire to hear his eldest daughter, about to enter adolescence, “[call] me something other than ‘coach.’” Gaillard admitted that he was close to leaving back in 1973[-74], after Phil Smith and Kevin Restani departed. But he was lured back by two things: One, he was named the school’s athletic director. Two, “I had more good players than I knew what to do with.” Marlon Redmond, who had been a backup guard as a freshman, would earn a starting role in 1974 and, at 17.3 PPG, would be the team’s second-leading scorer.
Gaillard’s retirement would seemingly mark the end of an era, but not everyone was broken up about it. Forward James Hardy, who was close to Gaillard, and who was about to enter his junior season, felt betrayed by the coach’s impending departure and wasn’t shy about expressing it. “He’s messin’ with my mind,” Hardy told the Chronicle. “All summer he was tellin’ everybody how good things would be, to get people mentally at ease. Then he throws out this little surprise. He’s weaseling out on us, and personally, I have to get out of here.”
Hardy had hoped to play out his senior season in 1978-1979, but decided he wanted to turn pro as soon as possible. “Everything seems to be falling apart around here,” he groused. “I guess the pressure was too much for him. He’s not assuming his responsibility.”
“I have nothing to say about the situation,” Winford Boynes coolly said. He had been sitting next to Hardy during the Chronicle interview.
Gaillard’s farewell tour was largely a successful one. The Dons won five of their first eight games, despite playing without Cartwright, who had broken his arm. USF went on to win 17 of their remaining 19 games upon the big man’s return, but they lost Hardy to a broken thumb for the season’s final five games. He didn’t play in the team’s first-round NCAA tourney game, which saw the Dons eke out a four-point victory over a struggling North Carolina team while deploying only a six-man rotation with backup guard Sam Williams as the only reserve to see action. Hardy returned five days later to score 7 points in 14 minutes as USF fell to Cal State Fullerton 75-72.
Hardy and Boynes departed the Hilltop after that season, electing to enter the NBA draft. Boynes went to the New Jersey Nets; Hardy to the New Orleans Jazz.
A Fateful Meal
SAM PERKINS WAS A ONCE-in-a-lifetime talent. At 6-foot-9, 230-pounds, the Brooklyn-born forward was lithe and graceful, with an accurate left-handed shot that could keep a scoreboard operator busy, and he also possessed the size and strength to block shots and pull down rebounds in bunches. Sound familiar? Perkins bore an eerie resemblance to Bill Russell. The main difference was that the eighteen-year-old Perkins’s game was more advanced than Russell’s was at that age; it took Russell a year on USF’s freshman team under Ross Giudice to refine his skill set. With freshman teams a relic of the past, Perkins had a chance to be a starter upon stepping foot onto the campus of his choosing.
Perkins graduated from Shaker High School in the Albany suburb of Latham in 1980 after earning the New York State Sportswriters Association’s nod for large-school player of the year honors, and USF was extremely interested in bringing him to the Hilltop to add some size and skill to the Dons’ frontcourt; after all, Cartwright and Hardy had long since graduated and gone into the NBA, and the program had dropped to a 22-7/11-5 mark in 1979-1980 in Belluomini’s second season as head coach – good enough to win the conference, but the probation precluded them from a Tourney invite.
The problem was that several other schools were also on Perkins’s trail, including UCLA, Syracuse, Maryland, and North Carolina. If the Dons were to make an impression, Belluomini and staff would have to go above and beyond.
Too far above and too far beyond, as it turned out.
“It was only a Burger King cheeseburger,” recalled an individual identified by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a man very close to USF athletics.” The incident took place during the Dapper Dan Prep Classic, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in April 1980, where a gaggle of coaches from the NCAA ranks congregated to ooh and ahh at eighteen-year-old prepsters and daydream of landing just one of them, and building a championship team around him.
Also lurking were NCAA investigators, whose job it was, as part of a new program dubbed “Operation Intercept,” to prevent overt improprieties from permeating the event and casting its innocence into doubt. Said Phil Musick, the sports editor of the sponsoring Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “I introduced the NCAA guys to everybody, and I told them to sit in the lobby or the bar and be conspicuous.” Musick was appalled by what he saw next. “Literally under NCAA surveillance, without a remote possibility of getting away with it, Belluomini and [USF assistant coach Mike] Brown waltzed this youngster out for a meal. It was a cold case of a violation of the rules.” A rule that had been in place since 1972, which clearly stated that coaches could not take a recruit for a meal until his official visit to campus. It didn’t matter whether the meal was an exorbitant osso buco paired with risotto alla milanese, or a dollar-fifty fast-food cheeseburger. What was intended to be a friendly gesture was, in essence, USF’s head coach and top assistant getting out over their skis.
To make matters worse, Brown, who was USF’s chief recruiter, may had violated another rule limiting coaches to only three in-person visits (not to be confused with so-called “bumps,” or chance meetings). “Friends of mine would tell me they saw Sam and Herb [Crossman, Perkins’s legal guardian] and Mike Brown out around town a lot,” said Julius Girmindl, Perkins’s head coach at Shaker High. “I thought Sam was closer to the USF people than anyone else.” According to Girmindl, he had no contact with anyone from the University of San Francisco. “I didn’t know when they were coming or what,” he said. Girmindl later confronted Belluomini, who apologized and laid the blame at the feet of Brown and admitted that he, Belluomini, “should have been closer to it,” Girmindl recalled.
Said Herb Crossman: “Brown never paid for anything when I met him at a club or restaurant,” and that “Sam never went along with us.” Eventually, though, Brown went too far when he allegedly took his recruitment pitch directly to the player, instead of to Shaker’s coach or athletic director, in violation of the high school’s rule. “Mike Brown violated our policy,” said the athletic director, Bob Jackson. “We didn’t make a formal report to the NCAA, but it was mentioned in the interviews.”
Crossman placed Perkins under strict orders to not discuss the Dapper Dan tournament with anyone, though in an interview with the Chronicle, Perkins revealed that Mike Brown never visited the house. Although he could not disclose whether or not he accompanied Brown on the Burger King run, when queried as to whether he was aware that USF had violated any rules, simply said “Yeah, I was,” and nothing more.
Perkins met regularly with NCAA investigators, who ultimately determined that Belluomini and Brown had flouted protocol. The talented youngster would eventually sign a letter of intent with the University of North Carolina, with whom he would play four seasons, win three All-America selections, and help the Tar Heels win the 1982 national championship. Perkins would play seventeen seasons in the NBA and appear in the Finals three times. He retired in 2001.
USF president Reverend John Lo Schiavo had been at the helm for only about three years, and already the basketball program was trying his patience. When he took over stewardship of the school in 1977, the Dons were already under investigation over the cash gifts, the Warriors tickets, and the use of telephones and department vehicles that earned them the October 1979 probation ruling. Now the Good Father had a whole other dilemma on his hands involving the team’s coaches buying a cheeseburger for a recruit who was still in high school. Wasting little time, Lo Schiavo demanded, and successfully received, the resignations of both Dan Belluomini and Mike Brown. The 1980-1981 season would be presided over by a new head coach, preferably one who would agree to run a spotless program. That man would be Peter Barry, who had never even played basketball, let alone coached it. He was a USF student-athlete from the past, a baseball player who graduated in 1970 and played two seasons in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ minor-league system, hitting .285 with 67 runs scored and 43 runs driven in while toiling for the Class-A Medford (Oregon) Dodgers. After a decade away from the Hilltop, Barry would return and be handed a mess to clean up.
There would be more turbulence ahead. Much, much more turbulence ahead.
Next: “Part 3 - Death Penalty” chronicles the turbulent early 1980s, featuring Quintin Dailey’s attempted sexual-assault of a female student and the investigation that revealed not only the details of the attack, but illegal gifts that had been bestowed upon Dailey since his arrival. These revelations, coming on the heels of past indiscretions from the previous decade, would lead to the program’s self-imposed death penalty in 1982. To be alerted when posts go up, feel free to subscribe!
Sources:
Boyle, Robert H. “Bringing Down the Curtain,” Sports Illustrated/Vault.SI.com, August 9, 1982. https://vault.si.com/vault/1982/08/09/bringing-down-the-curtain
Cooney, Frank. “Cartwright ‘Wrapped Up’, Dons Lose in Overtime,” San Francisco Examiner. March 14, 1976, pp. 1C, 4C.
Cooney, Frank. “Fact and Fiction in the USF ‘Investigation’,” San Francisco Examiner. May 7, 1978, pp. 1C, 7C.
Dickey, Glenn. “Commentary: The Lesson Was Important,” San Francisco Chronicle. March 17, 1976, pg. 58.
DuPree, David. “Gaillard Hopes to Go Out a Winner,” Washington Post. March 10, 1978. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1978/03/10/gaillard-hopes-to-go-out-a-winner/43b33a2d-5491-42c1-b430-617b2664bac0/
Faraudo, Jeff. “The Day USF’s World Crashed,” East Bay Times/EastBayTimes.com. December 21, 2007. https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2007/12/21/the-day-usfs-world-crashed/
Gardner, Sam. “Ex-San Francisco Coach Still Rues Loss That Knocked Undefeated Dons Off Course.” FoxSports.com. March 16, 2015. https://www.foxsports.com/stories/college-basketball/ex-san-francisco-coach-still-rues-loss-that-knocked-undefeated-dons-off-course
Jenkins, Bruce. “A Winter of Discontent for Hardy and Boynes,” San Francisco Chronicle. December 2, 1978, pg. 46.
Jenkins, Bruce. “Gaillard to Quit; Hardy Next?” San Francisco Chronicle. September 9, 1977, pp. 59, 63.
McDermott, Barry. “The Streaks of San Francisco,” Sports Illustrated/Vault.SI.com. January 31, 1977. https://vault.si.com/vault/1977/01/31/the-streaks-of-san-francisco
McDermott, Barry. “Who Is Kidding Whom? San Francisco’s Kids Sometimes Suffer Growing Pains, But Opponents Find Them Nothing To Laugh About,” Sports Illustrated/Vault.SI.com. January 5, 1976. https://vault.si.com/vault/1976/01/05/who-is-kidding-whom
McGrath, Dan. “USF Probation is Official,” San Francisco Chronicle. October 17, 1979, pp. 55, 57.
McGrath, Dan. “Belluomini’s Fateful Dinner,” San Francisco Chronicle. May 23, 1980, pp. 75, 79.
“USF Guard Quits Team,” San Francisco Chronicle. October 30, 1971, pg. 41.
“USF Names Coach Today; It Looks Like Belluomini,” San Francisco Chronicle. October 26, 1977, pg. 59.
Gaillard won a heated battle with Louisville’s Denny Crum for Boynes’s affection and signature on that dotted line. Wrote Sports Illustrated’s Barry McDermott in 1976: “Their tactics included early-morning stakeouts of Boynes' house. Crum would drive off with Boynes, while Gaillard sat ruefully in the house, playing checkers with Winford's brother. Then Gaillard would motor away, leaving Crum to talk about recipes with Boynes' mother. Once one of Gaillard's assistant coaches and Crum almost got into a fistfight.”
Cox’s NBA experience consisted of just seven games for the 1982-83 Washington Bullets. He was drafted out of USF by the Chicago Bulls, but ended up spending 1978-1981 in the Continental Basketball Association.
Massimino would take the ‘Nova program to prominence in the next decade.
Chubby’s sister, Pam, was married to Philadelphia 76ers forward Joe “Jellybean” Bryant. On August 23, 1978, the couple’s third child, a son named Kobe Bean Bryant, was born.
Notre Dame defeated Hofstra in the first round, then fell to Dean Smith’s North Carolina Tar Heels in the Sweet Sixteen. They finished No. 10 in the final poll, two spots behind USF.