He Hits the Road Again but in a New Direction

One December dawn long ago, an icy storm turned a lonesome stretch of central Illinois highway as slick as a rink. En route to a small town called Pontiac, my poor little Pontiac Firebird skidded and spun on the ice like Bambi, but I lurched from a ditch back onto the road because there was a high school basketball Christmas tournament that I was dying to see, even if I nearly died getting there.

The bleachers were all but empty. A kid from Bloomington touted to be a Pistol Pete Maravich-like dribbler and passer was scheduled to be playing in the tournament’s first game, and college scouts aplenty were expected to pay their respects. But because the tip-off was at 9:30 a.m., and because the weather outside was frightful, only one coach was evident when I arrived.

His name was George Raveling.

We had been introduced once or twice, because whenever or wherever a blue-chip prospect was to be found, so was George. I spotted him from Chicago to Kankakee, from Grand Rapids to Gary. He was a bird dog, to borrow some baseball-scout lingo. He scoured the bushes for talent, be they inner-city bushes or boondock bushes.

It surprised me not one bit when Raveling proceeded to run big-time college programs at Washington State and Iowa and USC, since his love of scholastic basketball was as obvious to me as his knowledge. No matter if he ever gained fame as a strategist or innovator, the likelihood that anyone would out-recruit him, or be more devoted to a pupil, was tremendously slim. He loved kids and helped make them men.

The news that he is bailing from active coaching comes as no great shock. Raveling has been having a midterm crisis for a couple of seasons now, dating back at least as far as his consideration whether or not to head the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches a couple of years back. The road gets long and tiresome after so many winters, even when it isn’t slippery.

Still, it took a literal crossroads in George’s life to bring him to Monday’s announcement. The accordion that was once his Jeep, crumpled and cracked from a two-car crash, could very well have been the driver. And while a man should feel lucky to escape such debris with his life, the fact that one-third of the bones in your body are broken or bent tends to give one pause. For Raveling, it is time to pause.

No doubt he remembers that Pontiac morning of our distant past. Perhaps he even remembers one Bob Bender flipping fabulous no-look passes, not to mention scoring 50 points, as a senior who eventually would appear in Final Fours for not one but two schools, Indiana and Duke, before becoming a successful NCAA coach himself.

More likely, though, George remembers it because he remembers everything. The man has a remarkable capacity for names, faces and dates. He is a raconteur with a million stories, including an anecdote or two from this summer’s Goodwill Games in Russia that I haven’t even gotten a chance to hear. Knowing George, he probably recruited some point guard from St. Petersburg Orthodox High, or Kiev Tech.

The poor guy went halfway around the globe safely, then got undone on his own city’s streets. By the time he was sprung from hospitalization, his face looked gaunt and his waist was missing maybe 50 pounds. George, of course, joked that he hoped he could stick to this radical new diet.

I can’t say that I can match him story for story when it comes to his career. Ninety-nine percent of the nail-biting games played in Pullman, Wash., or in Iowa City, Iowa, I am afraid, went unseen by me. What I do know is that this city slicker must have had a what-am-I-doing-here moment or two near that Idaho border or in those Hawkeye cornfields. But that never stopped him from giving them his best.

Images, I do have. One is of George jumping around on the sideline as though he had just sprung from a jack-in-the-box. Raveling’s arms and legs got more of a workout than Richard Simmons’. He did more semaphore than most sailors. John Thompson carried a towel, Jerry Tarkanian chewed on one, but after a game, only Raveling needed one.

The one expression I wish I could change is the one on George’s face a few years ago after an NCAA tournament game, when some lucky stiff from the opposition eliminated USC with a shot that would have made a Globetrotter proud. For Raveling, that could have been the right time and right team. His own outside shot at coaching a championship club, after all, was getting longer and longer.

Now it is time for Raveling to cut down his traveling. Wherever basketball is played, however, be looking for him to turn up.