After a couple of tense exchanges between the limo driver and a panicked arena employee, ticket manager Gary McCans was called in. He didn’t know the governor’s name, but asked around and discovered it was Brereton Jones. McCans then posed a question to the driver.
“I said to the guy, ‘Maybe the tickets are under the governor’s name. What’s his name?’ ” McCans recalled. “He didn’t know who the governor of Kentucky was; he was just somebody trying to scam their way in. He said ‘Gov. Smith.’ I said, ‘Sorry, good try.’ ”
McCans, who will retire in May from his job as event services manager, has been a fixture at the University of Dayton Arena since it opened in 1969. He graduated from UD a year earlier, worked for one year at the old Fieldhouse and was ready to head home to Philadelphia when he got a call from then-athletics director Tom Frericks, who hired McCans to work in the arena ticket office.
Over the next 47 years, McCans would become a walking encyclopedia of UD basketball. Through the years, he has added event tickets to boxes in his desk, including one from the very first Flyers game in the arena. That was on Dec. 6, 1969, against Bowling Green. An upper-arena seat cost $3.
By his count, McCans has seen almost 1,000 UD games. He’s also been on hand for all 113 NCAA tournament games held in Dayton, including last week’s First Four games.
The first tournament games at the arena were held in 1970, and McCans never will forget the frenzied run-up to the event.
“I’m laying on my couch on a Sunday afternoon watching football or something and Tom Frericks called and said, ‘Hey, I want to let you know we got the NCAA tournament,’ ” McCans said. “I said ‘great’ and asked when. He said March. I said, ‘March of next year?’ He said no, no, this coming March. So we had like three months to get the thing organized.”
Like most tournaments at UD Arena, those games did not disappoint. In fact, the two highest-scoring tourney games in venue history were played that year. Austin Carr scored 61 points — still an NCAA tourney record — in Notre Dame’s 112-82 win over Ohio. Artis Gilmore scored 30 in Jacksonville’s 109-96 victory over Western Kentucky.
In the ensuing years, McCans would witness Adolph Rupp’s last game at Kentucky — a loss to Florida State in 1972 — as well as Kentucky’s memorable 92-90 win over Indiana in a 1975 regional final.
He also was in the house when Saint Joseph’s shocked top-ranked DePaul in 1981 and witnessed unheralded Villanova’s one-point win over Dayton in 1985. Villanova, of course, went on to upset Georgetown to win the national championship.
The General’s wife
McCans’ brush with the “governor” of Kentucky made for an amusing tale and ended harmlessly enough. Years later, his encounter with the wife of Indiana’s “general” was a bit more intense.
The NCAA has a lot of rules outlining what fans can and cannot bring into arenas. Pompoms are not allowed, but a persistent Hoosiers fan challenged that rule more than 30 years ago when a ticket-taker broke the news to her.
“She had this big garbage bag and I said, ‘I’ve got to take those from you,’ ” McCans said. “She said, ‘I don’t think this is right’ and was making this big scene, so I took the pompoms.
“Somebody walked up to me a little bit later and said, ‘Do you know who that was?’ I had no idea who that was. He said, ‘That was Nancy Knight.’ It was Bobby Knight’s first wife.”
A couple years later, Indiana coach Bob Knight — a good friend of UD coaching legend Don Donoher — paid McCans a visit.
“I’m in my office and got my back to the door. The door slams — bam! — and I turn around and it’s Knight, and he’s got a pompom,” McCans said. “He says, ‘Don’t you ever take these from my wife again!’ I’m going ‘what the hell?’ — and at that I can hear Donoher just howling in the other office. I said, ‘Great, Mick, thanks a lot.’
“Then Knight said, ‘You don’t have to pay attention to her.’ Donoher set me up pretty good.”
Hope and Sinatra
Basketball players weren’t the only stars who played at UD Arena years ago. Before stages and shows outgrew the arena, it was the site of many big concerts. Elvis Presley played there four times, and McCans helped welcome to Dayton an array of performers ranging from Lawrence Welk and Diana Ross to ZZ Top and Queen.
After the tragic Xenia tornado in 1974, Bob Hope headlined a benefit at UD Arena. Prior to the show, McCans was eating lunch when someone asked to join him. He looked up; it was Hope.
McCans asked the legendary entertainer, who grew up in Cleveland, what was more exciting: movies or live shows? Neither, Hope said.
“He said it was when he performed for the troops overseas, when he could get into an area where one helicopter flies in,” McCans said. (Hope made 57 USO tours and was declared an honorary veteran of the armed forces in 1997.)
Another legend also made a lasting impression on McCans. He was in a locker room helping prep the area for the arrival of Frank Sinatra.
“I’m moving some stuff around and the door opens. These four guys walk in and right behind them is Frank Sinatra,” McCans said. “He says, ‘Hey, locker room attendant, why don’t you go get me a drink?’ I said ‘I’m not the locker room attendant, I’m the ticket man.’
“He said, ‘Alright, never mind, I’ll get my own drink.’ He shook my hand and away I went.”
Favorite players
McCans lists Don May, Ryan Perryman and Keith Waleskowski among his favorite Flyers of all-time. He recently added a new name to his short list: Scoochie Smith.
Smith, the Flyers’ standout point guard, has become one of the more popular players to wear a UD uniform. So it came as no surprise when McCans’ granddaughter Meghan wore number 11 for her sixth-grade basketball team in Arcanum.
When it came time to do a school project on an “interesting person,” Meghan chose Scoochie.
“I said to him one day, ‘My granddaughter has to do a project and she picked you. She’s done a lot of research, knows why you wear number 11, your birthday, how you got your name, but she would get extra credit if she could interview you.’ ”
Scoochie agreed to help out.
“My son videotaped (the interview) and he asked her more questions than she asked him. What position, can you dribble with either hand, can you go left and right … almost 40 minutes with her,” McCans said. “Scoochie is just an amazing young man.”
Meghan got a 100 on her project.
Next season
UD has given McCans, who turns 70 in May, a rousing send-off. The university flew him and his wife, Rita, to New York for the Atlantic 10 tournament and put them up in a midtown Manhattan hotel. He also was honored during this season’s St. Bonaventure game and was featured on the game program with Rudy Flyer.
McCans, whose job history at UD includes a stint as director of premium seating and positions in marketing, also was presented with a pair of original arena seats from 1969 that "they found buried in the back, brand new."
Next season, he hopes to be watching Flyer games in the arena from some good seats. He’s going to buy season tickets, but their location has yet to be determined.
“I gotta talk to (athletic director) Neil (Sullivan) about that,” McCans said. “I don’t want to pull rank, but I don’t want to start in the 400 level. I’ll have to twist his arm and see what he can come up with.”
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