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. Bob Gaillard for instance, came to Redlands with a team from Oregon, to play in a local tournament. Gaillard was well-known having coached over a decade earlier on an NCAA powerhouse.
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 in back-to-back seasons. For openers, it had been so long since he’d coached at powerhouse University of San Francisco.
There wasn’t much he could add to a sad, dramatic and unfavorable tale about USF’s 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 his Pioneers’ bench. Those players were warming up. They were part of this eight-team tournament which, of course, included host Redlands.
“Sit down right here,” he told me just after one game concluded while his Pioneers’ team was warming up.
Of course, he had no idea what I was set to bring up.
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, I asked, we hadn’t thought about?
“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. Yes, they were basketball fans. More than a handful let me know they were Dons’ basketball fans.
Gaillard 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 there 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 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 in Redlands – good or bad.
In the midst 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 any of those players, everything. It’s Redlands, a place where academics are highly lauded. Same with, apparently, Lewis & Clark.
It’s quite possible Gaillard had nothing directly to do with any of those scandals. Who knows? He’d gotten fired. What a story it might make for that tiny Redlands readership. Like I said, there were a few local residents that had USF connections.
“I hope they’re here for our games,” he said, no smoke attached.
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, his fourth season at L&C, some 15 years after USF concluded their association with him.
“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 NCAA a few years after its 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, who coached Redlands High in 1959-61.
It was right around that time in 1977 that Tark himself had started getting negative NCAA attention. A USF-UNLV duel might’ve been NCAA office talk.
Tark once gave a nice insight during a 1987 car ride from Redlands to Ontario Airport that Gaillard could’ve easily drawn such attention, saying, “My only concern with the NCAA is that there should be the same rules for everybody. There is no question that there is selective enforcement.”
Gaillard, Tarkanian, plus others coaching at smallish collegiate campuses, likely saw larger universities getting away with plenty of questionable violations.
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, NCAA Tournament play 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, reached Elite Eight in 1973 and Sweet 16 in 1978.
He was out of coaching after 11 seasons, he told me, “working an advertising gig for baseball’s San Francisco Giants.” By 1989, he took over coaching these Redlands-appearing Pioneers.
Tarkanian once gave me a nice insight during a 1987 car ride from Redlands to Ontario Airport that Gaillard could’ve easily followed on, saying, “My only concern with the NCAA is that there should be the same rules for everybody. There is no question that there is selective enforcement.”
Gaillard, Tarkanian, plus others coaching at smallish collegiate campuses, likely saw larger universities getting away with plenty of questionable violations.
Maybe that’s another reason Gaillard didn’t want to talk.
As for Lewis & Clark at that 1992 Fulmer Tournament? The Pioneers not only won it, but they came back one season later, and repeated as champions.
That one time USF coach knew what he was doing.
