Back where it all began: Al McGuire at Dartmouth

(Reprinted from The Valley News)

Al McGuire was always coming up with something different. In the 1977 NCAA championship game, McGuire had to devise a game strategy his Marquette team could employ against the four-corner stall of North Carolina's Dean Smith. His plan forced the Tar Heels into turnovers and Marquette won the national title.

But not everyone always took McGwire's basketball insight as gospel. Once, as an assistant coach, he scouted a powerful Holy Cross team led by ail-American Tommy Heinsohn. On his way home from the game he came up with a new defense.

"It was on the train coming back to White River Junction that I invented the triangle- and-two defense." McGuire said. "We worked on it for two days in practice then 'Doggie' wouldn't do it. He said it would never work.

"Of course, you've got to remember it's much easier to be daring when you're only an assistant coach."

'Doggie,' of course, was the nickname for Dartmouth's legendary basketball coach Alvin Julian, and McGuire was one of his assistants for two years in the 1950s.

That's right, Al McGuire. College basketball's king of the one-liners. The television commentator with the New York accent who talks about aircraft carriers and PT boats on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

The guy who says that a team without a decent center is like a doughnut because

"they've got a hole in the middle." The guy, who after a game is no longer close, says "Collect the hymn books, the Mass is over." There's only one Al McGuire.

"It's surprising how very few people know about my being at Dartmouth," he said in a telephone interview from the office of "Al McGuire Enterprises" in Milwaukee. "It's where I learned how to coach. I have very, very fond memories of Dartmouth.

"I've still got the green-and-white scarf. I must have robbed it from Campion's. Do they still sell those scarves up there?

"I used to hang out with Jim Campion from the clothing store and Jim McFate, who ran the Hanover Inn. That's where I got my free drinks."

It was an odd set of circumstances that brought McGuire and Dartmouth together 22 years ago. McGuire was an unemployed professional basketball player with a wife and two kids to feed. He had been playing for the NBA's Baltimore Bullets when the team went "belly-up."

Fortunately, Walter Brown, the owner of the Boston Celtics, had the answer for McGuire.

Brown didn't ask him to play for the Celtics: the kid from St. John's knew better than to expect that. "I was a bum as a pro, a tail-ender. All I did was play defense by hanging on to guys' shirttails."

Brown suggested McGuire take up coaching. He knew of a college in northern New England looking for a freshman coach and would recommend McGuire for the job. Joe Mullaney, who later coached at Providence College, had been hired as Dartmouth's freshman coach. A week before the season began, Mullaney was offered the head coaching job at Norwich University in Northfield, Vt.

Enter McGuire.

"Walter Brown said to me, 'A1 you were the first guy ever to pack the Boston Garden. I owe you one.'

"That's because I said I could stop [Bob] Cousy. I lied. Only God could stop Cousy."

So, at Dartmouth College on Dec. 3, 1955 the coaching career of Aldred J. McGuire began.

"The job paid a Catholic salary," said McGuire. "I think I got two thousand bucks a year."

It wasn't a 12-month position so McGuire left his family in New York. Like many other Dartmouth assistant coaches before and after him, McGuire didn't bother finding an apartment in Hanover. He simply lived in what is now the Davis Varsity Field House, adjacent to Alumni Gym. McGuire had the only room on the third floor, which now houses the weight training room and a coach's office.

Whitey Burnham, assistant athletic director, also lived in Davis when he first came to Dartmouth in 1960. "The rooms were so small, Burnham said "even the mice were hunchbacked."

When McGuire lived there in the middle of the winter he'd sleep with the window open. "I used to go to bed at night and in the morning I'd wake up and there'd be snow on my blanket."

It was a drastic change for McGuire, a city kid, who grew up in New York. He played his college ball at St. John and was later drafted by the Knicks where he played two seasons before his brief fling with the Bullets.

Jim Wechsler, director of Lebanon Chamber of Commerce, was a senior at Dartmouth when McGuire arrived in town. "It was a culture shock both ways," recalled Wechsler with a chuckle. "Hanover was a real preppy town and here comes Al McGuire with his double breasted jacket and his pointed blue suede shoes. He wore these wild ties that looked like eggs had been spilled on them. He was a real city boy.

"It took Al about four months to get used to Hanover and it took Hanover about four months to get used to Al."

McGuire added, "I think I scared them up there originally with the way I talked and with some of my concepts."

He could never adjust to White River Junction. "I'd change the name of White River Junction to something more exotic. They've got to goose that town up a bit."

McGuire's freshman teams posted records of 8-2 and 11-2. "There was a little butterball on my team named Dave Gavitt," said McGuire, referring to the current commissioner of the Big East, a member of the Class of '58,

Gavitt's son, Dan, is now a sophomore at Dartmouth. "The kid could only have one leg and he'd still be able to run faster than his old man," joked McGuire.

After leaving Dartmouth, McGuire became the head coach at Belmont Abbey, a small college in North Carolina. It was there he first used the combination zone and man-to-man defense known as the traingle- and-two that he invented on that train ride back to Dartmouth a few short years before.

"We were playing in Jacksonville, Florida, when I decided to try it," said McGuire. "I put the traingle-and-two in, and for the next 18 years I used it in every game for at least a minute or two, just to give the other team something to think about."

He used it when coaching Marquette to the NCAA title in 1977, his last year before retiring to the broadcasting booth.

Few people have ever made the transition any smoother than McGuire. His personality never changes. He's just himself.

He did have to make some changes when he lived in Hanover, however. To make some extra cash, he coached a semi-pro team in Pittsfield, Mass., on the weekends he didn't have to work with his Dartmouth team. McGuire and his players were like a vaudeville act, making their money from a percentage of the gate receipts.

"They always paid us in the dark and we'd leave to count the house ourselves. If we didn't get paid, we'd threaten to leave at halftime."

McGuire welcomed the opportunity to escape from Hanover. The town's quiet life was far from what he was used to in New York. "Outside of Winter Carnival weekend there wasn't much." he recalled.

In his spare hours, McGuire hung around the gym. "Dartmouth had an old trainer who used to give to me rub downs. I wish I could remember his name but I can't. He always said to me, 'Al, you're going to be a great coach someday.' I always thought he was conning me. Then, after it all happened I wondered how he knew."

McGuire hadn't been back to Hanover in more than 25 years until he returned two summers ago. "I was doing a stand-up at this hotel in New Hampshire or Vermont. I can't remember which. I could never get those two states straight. I stopped in Hanover and got all mixed up because it has changed so much.

"I went back to find my room and you know what? There was an assistant football coach living up there. He was in there, just him, a bed, and a set of golf clubs in the corner.

"I said, 'Hi. I'm Al McGuire.' We talked for a while and when I was leaving he said to me, 'Al, how'd you do it?'

"I told him the first thing I did was get rid of the golf clubs."

While at Dartmouth, McGuire interviewed for a coaching job at West Point. Colonel Earl 'Red' Blaik, the former Dartmouth football coach, was the athletic director. McGuire marched into Blaik's office and immediately told the colonel what it would take for him to accept the job. He was going to need his summers off because he needed to tend to the bar he owned in Rockaway, N.Y. He was also going to need an extra $2,000 for moving expenses, and a few other small items.

"Colonel Blaik, nobody ever called him anything else, was a very proper man, very straight," said McGuire. "He listened to me and then said, "Mr. McGuire, hand in your expenses on your way out the door.' That's all he said. End of interview."

McGuire laughs about it now. "I was young and brash and aggressive."

In McGuire's second year at Dartmouth, the team made it to the second round of the NCAA tournameht. The Big Green hasn't been to the NCAAs in 26 years and hasn't had a winning record for the past seven. "That's because they haven't hired any nuts like me," McGuire said.

Throughout his coaching career, even when he was at the top of his profession, McGuire said there was an idea that stayed with him. "I always thought I wanted to end my career at Dartmouth. That's where you have true amateurism. It's like rugby in New Zealand. The Ivy League is really the Utopia of sports. They keep sports in the proper place.

"Whatever I say about Dartmouth is meant as a compliment. The style of life, the things they teach young people up there, that's what's really important. In a way, I'll always be a Big Greener."