This was part of a series of mini-Redlands Connections. Quick Visits. Magic Johnson and John Wooden showed up at the University of Redlands as part of a Convocation Series. There was a piece on Tom Flores, an NFL Hall of Famer a few decades down the road. Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, former NBA player John Block, legendary high school coach Willie West all showed up. There are others. Cazzie Russell, for instance, came to Redlands with an NCAA Division III basketball team from Savannah, Ga. Russell, out of Michigan, was the NBA’s overall No. 1 draft pick by the New York Knicks in 1966. That guy lived through a remarkable career.
Today’s feature: Former Univ. San Francisco basketball coach Bob Gaillard.
I guess I could understand a few reasons why visiting Lewis & Clark (Ore.) College basketball coach Bob Gaillard wasn’t in all that much of a mood to chat.
He had a basketball team to coach at the University of Redlands’ annual Lee Fulmer Memorial Tournament. For openers, it had been so long since he’d coached at the University of San Francisco.
There wasn’t much he could add to a sad, dramatic and unfavorable tale about a scandal that was so richly embarrassing. At times like those, you hate being a media member. You have to ask, though.
Forty-five minutes before tip-off at Currier Gymnasium, I’d slid in beside him on the Pioneers’ bench. His players were warming up. Can’t remember if L&C was playing Redlands, or not, in the eight-team tournament that night.
Gaillard was in the midst of a 22-year coaching career at that Portland-based campus.
USF? Maybe there was something the media missed. New developments? A different side we hadn’t thought about?
“Was there any of that?” I asked.
“Look,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “I really don’t want to rehash something like that. There’s nothing new. It happened so far back.”
What my readers might’ve wanted to know was about his USF background. There were people in Redlands that attended USF. He tried to be kind and patient. He was in the midst of a career that left him with 530 coaching triumphs.
Gaillard was at USF from 1968 through 1977, starting about a decade after legendary Bill Russell had left that campus for Boston.
By 1976, he was the Dons’ head coach, a team that included NBA-bound players like Bill Cartwright, Winford Boynes and James Hardy. The Dons were 29-2 that season.
That team, eventually placed on probation, was cited by NCAA officials for academic fraud that included players getting special academic treatment, among other infractions.
Gaillard, voted 1977 AP Coach of the Year, was fired. No way he wanted to relive those moments – good or bad.
In the middle of his refusal, I said, “I really can’t blame you, coach. I always like to stay on top of something that might not have gotten reported. That’s all.”
It was a lousy atmosphere in which to try and rekindle all that negative hype – media coverage, NCAA sanctions, an outlaw nature of the players, everything. In Redlands, a place where academics are highly lauded. Same with, apparently, Lewis & Clark.
It’s quite possible Gaillard had anything directly to do with any of those scandals. What a story it might make for that tiny Redlands readership. Like I said, there were a few local residents that had USF connections.
Incidentally, folks like that never let me forget, either, especially ones who were on campus during Russell’s years.
Gaillard brought his team from Oregon, flew into Los Angeles, catching a couple vans out to Redlands for this tournament. It was 1992, some 15 years after USF.
“I’d really rather talk about this team,” he said.
Those were good years for the Pioneers, in fact, who were headed for a string of winning seasons. L&C dusted off its NAIA roots for the NCAA a few years after his pre-season trips to Redlands.
Back to USF, 1977. Wasn’t it curious that Gaillard’s Dons carried a 29-1 record into a 32-team NCAA Tournament? Their first-round opponent was none other than Nevada-Las Vegas, coached by Jerry Tarkanian.
Tarkanian also had Redlands connections. It was right around that time, 1977, that Tark himself had started getting negative NCAA attention. A USF-UNLV duel might’ve been the talk of the NCAA offices.
Maybe that’s another reason Gaillard didn’t want to talk.
Tark’s Runnin’ Rebels ran the Dons out that night, 121-95. In fact, USF had been 29-0 heading into their final regular season game against Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish lost to the Dons by 11 in that year’s opening round.
Remember, the NCAA Tournament was just 32 teams in those days.
One season later, 1978, which was Gaillard’s finale at USF, the Dons finished their season 23-6. Gaillard’s record, 165-61, over eight seasons, winning five West Coast Conference championships, reaching the Elite Eight in 1973 and the Sweet 16 in 1978.
He was out of coaching for 11 seasons, he told me, working an advertising gig for baseball’s San Francisco Giants. By 1989, he took over the Pioneers.
As for Lewis & Clark at the 1992 Fulmer Tournament? The Pioneers not only won it, but they came back the following season and repeated as champions.
