Friday, November 23, 2001
It defied everything your mother ever told you about basketball. Hilo made history
25 years agoThat Vulcan team led by coach
Jimmy Yagi went 23-3, and
many of the players are
now involved in coachingBy Jerry Campany
jcampany@starbulletin.comShe always said that the team with the best players and the team that could count its members as its closest friends wins most of the time.
Hawaii-Hilo of 1976-77 had neither, but still won.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Hawaii-Hilo basketball's run as a four-year school, and it all started with a Vulcans team that went 23-3. It did not win a national championship, but it did put Hawaii-Hilo on the map. The team's only losses that season were a pair of blowouts at the hands of North Carolina-Charlotte -- a Final Four team -- and a final heartbreaking tournament loss to Illinois Wesleyan, which featured a center -- Jack Sikma -- who would be picked eighth overall in the NBA draft less than a month later.
When players today lose an important game, they mope about the court looking like it is the end of the world and trying to make sense of the loss. It is not the end of the world, and you can move on. The players and coaches of the successful '76-77 Hawaii-Hilo team proved it.
When they think about their collegiate careers, they do not dwell on mere wins and losses. They don't linger on the fact that they beat Michael Cooper's New Mexico squad and possibly could have won a national championship had a referee only blown his whistle. They think about the people they shared the court with, and nothing more.Sometimes the memories bring them smiles. Sometimes they bring frowns.
They have to think about those days gone by more often than other teams from the era, because the reminders are all around them. They cannot walk down the street without seeing an aged but friendly face because so many of them came to Hawaii to play basketball and never left.
"On the court everybody understood the goal," said Bill O'Rear, a member of that Hilo squad. "Off the court we were not that close. People would see us play together and think 'These guys are the Waltons.' We were not as athletically talented as other teams, but every game was like having five coaches on the floor."
And that is no exaggeration.
Of the 14 players on that team, half are involved in coaching.
Jay Bartholomew runs the basketball program at Waiakea High School while Bill Naylor does the same at Maui High. Tolentino Reyes is an assistant coach for the Hawaii men's volleyball program and Mark Lovelace is in charge of Kamehameha's Division II basketball team. Gilbert Hicks and O'Rear have found real jobs, but spend their summers teaching young men the fundamentals of the game. Steve Coccimiglio is the athletics director and head basketball coach at Diablo Valley Junior College in California.
All three coaches of that team -- Jimmy Yagi, Dwight Sumida and Joey Estrella -- still actively teach young men and women how to play a game better.
With so many players from a single team going on to run teams of their own, you would think that their head coach was a master technician, a man who gave his team a chance to win by out-thinking the other guy.
But that was not the secret to Yagi's success. He won 218 games over nine years for Hilo by teaching the same thing that coaches all over preach about -- basic fundamentals.
"The thing with Yagi is that he allowed you the freedom to express yourself," said O'Rear, who is now the sports editor for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. "He has a really good knowledge of the game. He gave us footwork and an understanding of shot selection and let us run with it."
Looking back on it, Yagi and his players point to that year as proof positive that despite how the game has changed -- there was no shot clock or 3-point line at the time -- basic fundamentals and a deep understanding of the game can overcome athleticism.
"He (Yagi) is definitely old school," current Hilo coach Jeff Law said. "The game has changed with better athletes and more size, but it always comes down to fundamentals. And he is one of the best at teaching it."
But all the teaching in the world doesn't matter unless the students can pick it up. Yagi was lucky to have a group that had a passion for learning the game, a group of young men who understood that it is the little things that matter most.
"They must have learned well," Yagi said. "We just had a good bunch of kids. They were smart, it is only natural that they went on to coach. They all had the ability for it."
Yagi has mastered the art of footwork enough that he is able to spend his golden years traveling the world teaching youngsters. Last summer it was Australia. Next summer it will be in Germany working with the German Junior National team. With all of that, he still finds time to get down to the gym and work with the current crop of Vulcans, including Kyle Bartholomew, the son of former player Jay Bartholomew.
"Our program is his baby," Law said. "He is genuinely a UH-Hilo person, he cares about it deeply. I appreciate him being around the program; he has nothing but good, true intentions."