Longtime Dayton Daily News sports writer and columnist Gary Nuhn wrote the story, which appeared in a special section in the Nov. 18, 1984, edition of the DDN. The story came out on a Sunday, six days before Dayton opened the 1984-85 season with a 76-56 victory against Brooklyn and eight months after Donoher coached the Flyers to the Elite Eight. Donoher had just completed 20 seasons as head coach and was entering the 21st of 25 seasons he would spend on the job.

Nuhn retired in October 2000 after 32 years with the paper. He talked about his experiences with Donoher in his farewell column.

I remember the first time I covered Donoher. I hadn’t been in town a year and had never met him when I was called off the bench and sent to Chicago to cover UD against DePaul.

It was one of those late games on Central time that always end hard against deadline. The Flyers lost a tough one and I went and stood outside the UD lockerroom, figuring I’d probably have to wait 15-20 minutes to get in. This was in the days when there were no prescribed post-game press conferences; coaches decided when and if they would talk.

I wasn’t there more than a minute when Donoher stuck his head out the door and said, “You on deadline?“

”Yes,” I said.

”Come on in,” he said.

He was that way to the day he was fired (and since). Always a class act through good times and bad.

Coincidentally, about seven months before he retired, Nuhn talked to Dayton’s current coach, Anthony Grant, who was about to turn 34, not much older than Donoher was when he became the UD head coach. Grant was then an assistant coach on Billy Donovan’s staff and still six years away from becoming a head coach for the first time at Virginia Commonwealth. Nuhn asked him about his head coaching aspirations. Grant said he was happy where he was. Donovan said he would make as many phone as as possible once Grant was ready to make the jump.

Grant also talked to Nuhn about Donoher.

“I’m here today because of the lessons he taught me,” Grant said. “Not just in basketball, but about being a man. I try to thank him all the time when I talk to him, but he never wants to hear it. Coach’ll never let me go into detail.”

Donoher, who will celebrate his 91st birthday on Jan. 21, may not have liked to hear the praise, but Dayton fans love reading about their all-time winningest coach. Without further ado, here’s the story on Donoher. It also featured his recollections of each of his seasons up until that point, and you can read that part on DaytonDailyNews.com.

THE BIG D

From player, to scout, to assistant, to coach to legend, Don Donoher means Dayton basketball, and Dayton basketball means Don Donoher

In Don Donoher’s final game as a player at the University of Dayton, the Flyers lost to Niagara, 77-74, in the second round of the 1954 National Invitation Tournament.

“I got back in the lockerroom and it hit me — ‘It’s over,’” Donoher said. “It was such an empty feeling. Doggone was I sick.”

He was 22 years old. He had spent 17 years trying to become a basketball player. He realized he had gone as far as he was going to go. The NBA wasn’t going to draft Donald “Mickey” Donoher.

“I cried,” Donoher said.

But not in front of his teammates.

“No,” he said. “I went back in a stall and just bawled my eyes out.”

It is 30 years later and Don Donoher doesn’t cry much anymore.

He has spent the last 20 of those 30 years as head basketball coach at UD. He has accumulated 363 victories. He has gloried in the good times and survived the bad. And last year, when there were only five coaches and teams alive in the NCAA tournament, Donoher and Dayton were among them.

Don Donoher had the All-American childhood.

He was born in Toledo, the fifth of five children of Tom E. “Ted” and Beth Donoher.

Ted was a sports nut. He went to sleep every night with the radio in his ear, listening to the Indians, the Tigers, whoever he could get.

Ted regularly took his sons and their friends to sports events — the Tigers, Mud Hens, Jeeps (a pro basketball team), Toledo U. basketball.

“One time he took me to Cleveland on a bus trip,” Donoher said. “It was the year Bob Feller set his strikeout record. He dropped me off at League Park and went to his appointment, but he was late getting back. I remember sitting on the curb outside the park and there must have been 50 people stop their cars and ask, ‘Hey, kid, how many strikeouts did Feller get?’”

As far back as he can remember, Don Donoher wanted to be a basketball player.

The Donohers lived hard behind St. Agnes Catholic Church. His dad received permission from the church to build a full-sized basketball court on the back of the church lot and that’s where Donoher grew up — right there on the asphalt how many ever hours there were in a day, a Basketball Beanie, he called himself.

When be was in the fifth-grade, little Don Donoher was a starter on the eighth-grade team.

The “Mickey” nickname was hung on him sometime in that grade school period. Donoher and his friends hung around Chuck Brown’s gas station. There was boxer in Toledo named Mickey Donoher. Brown thought it would bug little Donnie if he called him by the other Donoher’s name, Mickey. The name stuck as if it were on his birth certificate.

In high school at Central Catholic, it was all Donoher could do to bring the right book to class.

“All my brothers and my sister were straight-A students,” Donoher said. “Model citizens. No one could figure me out. Every time grades came out, it was a donnybrook at my house like you couldn’t believe.”

Donoher could play basketball, though.

His junior year, Central Catholic, went to the state semifinals. But Donoher came down sick with tonsillitis right after the regional finals and another starter, Specks McCluskey, sprained bis ankle. With two starters out, Central lost to Hamilton.

Early in his senior season, Donoher twisted his knee. It was bad enough that doctors put casts on it two times. Donoher came back late in the year, but he was at half-speed.

Still, off what he had done as a junior, Donoher could have gone to school on scholarship at Detroit, John Carroll, Xavier or Dayton.

“A lot of Central kids were already at UD,” Donoher said. “If you were a scholarship athlete at Central, you either went to Notre Dame or you went to Dayton.”

•••

That was 1950. The Fieldhouse was new. UD basketball was just beginning to grab the town by the lapels.

Freshmen weren’t eligible to play varsity. Donoher started part of the time and didn’t start some of the time for the freshman team. The key was to be among the top four players (out of 12) because that was usually all that would be invited back as sophomores. Donoher was.

By the following autumn, things had changed. Because of the Korean War, freshmen were eligible to play and Coach Tom Blackburn had recruited a super crop — Jack Sallee, John Horan, Chris Harris and more. The competition was thick.

Blackburn kept a roster of about 16, which he called his varsity, but he also played some of them in JV games. Donoher was one of the swing players.

Near the end of first semester, Blackburn called Donoher in for a meeting. “He said he was going to keep me on scholarship for the next semester, but be couldn’t guarantee me anything for next year,” Donoher said. “The only thing I could figure is, he wanted me to go home right then. It shook me to my toenails.”

But he stayed.

The next game was at Louisville. Before that game, grades came out and starter Gene Hickey, Donoher’s roommate, was declared ineligible.

“To be honest with you,” Donoher said, “I was eligible by the narrowest of noses. I mean, we weren’t doing a whole lot of studying in that room. You needed a 1.7 and I was about that far (he held his fingers a half-inch apart) above it.”

At Louisville, Flyers began fouling out in pairs.

With less than a minute to go and UD up by three, Blackburn put in Donoher.

“They throw it in and they score right now to cut it to one,” Donoher said. “The place is going wild and they’re full-court pressing us like mad. I took one look and said, ‘Get me outta here,’ and I took off running. I got down to the other end and nobody was with me. Junior Norris threw a real high pass down to me and I shook it in for a bucket. I’m serious. My hand was shaking like crazy.

“Then they cut it to one again and that made my basket the winner. I heard Tom say many times, ‘If a guy ever won a game for me, he was worth four years of scholarships.’”

Donoher’s vibrating layup had solidified his final two years.

His junior season, the Flyers were 16-13. Blackburn spent the entire year on the rampage. Then, in the next-to-last game, Seton Hall came to town.

“They were undefeated, something like 28-0,” Donoher said. “There weren’t any wire polls, but they would have been No. 1 if there were. I had been in and out of the lineup all year, but that night I was in. He played five of us the whole game. He never substituted. And we took ‘em. That was some night in this town.”

Spring practice was allowed then and as the Flyers finished those drills, the starters for following season were set: Bill Uhl at center, Jim Paxson and Horan at forwards and Sallee and Bucky Bockborn at guards.

“Then,” said Donoher, “when I came back in the fall, I heard that Paxson and Bockhorn had been drafted. I thought, ‘Hmmm, I got a job.’ As it turns out, he made me captain. And we had a nice year.”

They were 25-7.

•••

Out of school, Donoher married Sonia McDonald, whom he had begun dating at a UD-Cincinnati football game his junior year, then spent two years in the Army, 18 months of it in Germany.

Discharged in September 1956, he returned to Dayton with hoops still in his blood. He tried out for the Peoria Caterpillars of the AAU League, but was cut.

He went to see Blackburn. He told the coach he missed basketball and wanted to stay involved. He mentioned officiating.

“Naah, you wouldn’t want to officiate,” the coach said.

“Well, what about scouting?” Donoher said.

“If you want to scout,” Blackburn said quickly, “I’lI give you all the scouting you can handle.”

Basketball Bennie and UD basketball were back together again.

Donoher went to work for Ditto Inc., an office equipment company, but he wasn’t setting any sales records because, in-season, he spent most of his time at Chaminade High School practices with his friend, Tom Frericks, at UD practices with Blackburn and on the road.

Frericks knew how badly Donoher wanted to coach and in the summer of 1961, he found him a job at Chaminade. Uncertified, Donoher was allowed to teach as long as he was taking courses toward a certificate. He taught business, phys ed and he was Frericks’ freshman coach.

That was the year UD won its first NIT.

UD hoops was on top of the world.

Ready to fall off.

First, NIT most valuable player Bill Chmielewski quit school.

Then the NCAA came down with its hammer, a two-year probation for rules violations involving Roger Brown.

UD’s administration saw its basketball program in disarray and decided Blackburn needed help. They told him to hire an assistant.

Blackburn didn’t have to look very far. Donoher had been helping him for six years. Who else? Donoher joined the UD staff on Feb. 1, 1963.

“All I did was recruit.” Donoher said. “I went on the road that first day and I stayed on the road.”

Donoher’s contract was a nine-month one, September to May. The summer months he spent as a mutual clerk at River Downs Race Track.

When he reported back to work in September of 1963, he knew something was wrong. The boss wasn’t around.

This went on for a week. Then one day Donoher went in, and Blackburn was there.

“The doctor wouldn’t let me out,” Blackburn said. “I got this cough and I can’t get rid of it.”

The rest of that season was agony. Blackburn got weaker by the day. Doctors operated, but could do nothing about his lung cancer. With three games to go, the old coach went into the hospital for the final time. The day before the final game he died.

Within a week, the athletic board met and recommended Donoher as the new basketball coach.

He had 1½ years of coaching the freshmen at Chaminade and now he had hit the big time.

Donald James Donoher was 32 years old.

He had become head coach through perseverance, circumstance and tragedy. But he was going to prove that the athletic board’s guardian angel was there the day it chose him. Don Donoher was going to win some games at UD.

The 20 years have passed quickly, some good, some not. In many ways, Donoher is like one of those pro golfers who can take you shot by shot through the third round of the 1977 Crosby.

Here are some of Donoher’s memories, highlights and lowlights; some snippets of UD basketball, some meaningful, some not. It isn’t meant to be all inclusive. It couldn’t be.

1964-65 (Record 22-7)

THE GOOD: UD won 12 of its last 13 and was invited to the NCAA. “That was big news around here,” Donoher said. “We’d just come off probation and both Tom Frericks and I felt strongly that we should go. Coach Blackburn had snubbed the NCAA all through his era.”

The Flyers beat Ohio U. in the first round.

“Mike Haley, the Roth High School coach, played for that OU team and they had us absolutely put away,” Donoher said. “Henry Finkel fouled out and we didn’t have a prayer. Tom Hamlin and Lew Hinchman on the radio had already given our obit, had wrapped up the season and thanked all the sponsors. And then we went to a half-court trap and they started blowing free throws and they just gave it to us.”

THE BAD: The Flyers were 3-1 going to the University of Kentucky Invitational. “That’s when I got my coaching baptism,” Donoher said. “Illinois kicked the crap out of us. We were down 20 at halftime. I was shellshocked. When we met the next morning to get ready for the consolation game against West Virginia, (assistant coach Chuck) Grigsby had to take the whole walkthrough because I was so incoherent.”

UD beat West Virginia.

AND THE SLOWDOWN: Tates Locke brought his Army team to the Fieldhouse.

“They held the ball on us right from the start,” Donoher said. “The place was in an uproar. Not only that but we were slower than turtles. They had us 19-18 at halftime and people were shouting all kinds of things at Tates. They were yelling that they were going to call their Congressman. They were yelling what a disgrace they were to the country. We finally won, 41-33.”

1965-66 (Record 23-6)

THE GOOD: Donoher started his four great recruits from the season before — Don May, Bobby Hooper, Glinder Torain and Rudy Waterman — along with Finkel and the Flyers, 22-4, were invited back to the NCAA. They beat Miami in the first round and drew the No. 1 team in the nation in the regional semifinal, Kentucky and Rupp’s Runts. “We gave ‘em fits,” Donoher said. “With 16 minutes to go we were up 4-5-6, but they put a 1-3-1 halfcourt trap on us and trapped us right out of the tournament.”

The Flyers played Western Kentucky in the consolation. Present UD Assistant Coach Jack Butler played for Western.

“They crunched us,” Donoher said. “Jack’s always talking about the three-point play he scored on Finkel. That’s the good news. The bad news is that those were the only three he got all night.”

THE HOUSTON: Late in the season, UD went to Madison Square Garden to play Houston and El Hayes.

“It was a horrible game,” said Donoher. “The crowd booed both teams. We had a huge lead and they cut it down. Then, twice in a row against a press, May broke loose deep and scored on layups.”

Fans near the floor at UD Arena hear Donoher yell “Houston” many times during a season.

“Before that,” said Donoher, “we’d just say something like, ‘May, you come back to the ball and run.’ Ever since then, we’ve called it ‘Houston.’”

AND THE RECRUITS: After that season, Donoher recruited George Janky out of Chicago.

“Era for era,” said Donoher, “George was the most sought-after player we’ve ever got. He was Kentucky’s No. 1 pick. And DePaul wanted him, too. We were up there late in the season playing DePaul and Ray Meyer told me, ‘Aw, forget it. You can’t beat Kentucky.’”

But one got away, too.

“It broke our hearts,” said Donoher, when Mike Pratt (of Dayton) went to Kentucky.”

1966-67 (Record 25-6)

THE GOOD: “We were tickled to be in the NCAA again, but we didn’t figure to go very far,” Donoher said.

They went to the finals.

Torain and Waterman led a comeback and Hooper hit a bomb to beat Western Kentucky in overtime. Tennessee fell by one. And May took apart Virginia Tech in another OT victory.

“We were going to the Final Four, and we absolutely couldn’t believe it,” Donoher said. “I remember Tom Frericks saying that night, ‘We just built the Arena.’ He’d been working on it, planning it and he had this dream in his head. ‘This will be the springboard,’ he said. And it was.”

May hit everything he launched against North Carolina (it was Dean Smith’s first Final Four team) and the Flyers earned a date with UCLA and Lew Alcindor.

“It was really a bad situation,” said Donoher. “We had to play right back the next night. They didn’t have the day to prepare that they do now. And the Dayton people were just going crazy in our hotel. It was just one gigantic party. But I’II tell you this. They could have put us in the most plush library in Louisville and it wouldn’t have made a difference. We were in over our heads. But it still gnawed at me that my preparation was stinko.

“I remember going to the press conference afterward, and the place was just jammed for Coach (John) Wooden. He finished and left to go to his locker room and everybody left with him. The Dayton writers were the only ones who stayed.”

THE BAD: The Flyers won the first five, then Louisville beat them. “When we got home that night,” said Donoher, “I had been hanged in effigy on the flagpole out in front of Baujan Field. They aired it on WHIO-TV before my show that Sunday.”

AND AL BABY: At mid-season, Al McGuire brought his Marquette team to the Fieldhouse. “We were beating them pretty good,” said Donoher, “and all night long, McGuire was off his bench, yelling at this one official, but he was calling him by the wrong first name. The guy’s name was George Conley and Al was calling him Billy or Bobby, or something like that. Finally, near the end, Grigsby yells down to Al, ‘Hey, Al, that’s not his name.’ And Al shoots back, ‘No wonder I never got a call.’”

Earlier that day. McGuire had vowed never to come back to play at UD as long as the Flyers played in what he called, derisively, “a gym.”

“When you come to Milwaukee,” McGuire told Donoher and UD Athletic Director Tom Frericks, “you get to play in an arena. Why should I come here and play in a gym!”

A year-and-a-half later, when that contract had run out, McGuire wrote Donoher a letter.

“Color me red,” it started, “I was too hasty in calling your place a gym. Marquette and Dayton should play. ...”

And the letter went on and offered Donoher a new set of dates for future games.

Donoher said he “tabled” the letter for a while, sort of a silent protest to McGuire’s previous elitism.

Then UD Arena collapsed while under construction in February of 1969 and that was just what McGuire needed.

Feisty Al wrote to Donoher, “I have not heard from you since my previous letter. I did not realize your typewriters were destroyed when your new gym fell down.”

That’s right. He called it a gym.

Donoher finally answered McGuire ... with a poem.

“There is going to have to be an interruption in the series,” Donoher wrote. “Dayton cannot play Marquette for the following reasons:

“Marquette is too rough.

“McGuire’s too tough.

“’Milwaukee’s too cold.

“And your gym is too old.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but McGuire didn’t take it that way. He gave the poem to the Chicago Tribune and to Sports illustrated and both ran it.

“I got a barrage of mail from alumni,” Donober said. “It was like, ‘Tell me it isn’t so.’ I was ticked that he’d gone public with it. After that, I wouldn’t schedule him for anything.”

1967-68 (Record 21-9)

FIRST THE BAD: “I really felt the heat for this season,” Donoher said. “We were crystal-balled into the Top 10. Our whole team was doing a masterful job of choking up in May, June and July. And before you know it we’re 7-9.”

NOW THE GOOD: “Then we put together a winning streak,” Donoher said. “Ten in a row. It was too late for the NCAA, but we did get an NIT bid. We were the last team in. The NIT was in the new (Madison Square) Garden for the first time and this was the first time we’d played in it since ‘62, when we won it. And doggone if we didn’t go through and win the whole thing.

“Donnie (May) was MVP. We really had a tussle with Fordham. It was uphill all the way. We got Notre Dame in overtime. And Jimmy Gottschall did a heckuva job on Jo Jo White of Kansas in the finals.

We went from being the joke of the town when we were 7-9 to being the toast of the town.”

AND THE CONTROVERSY: Two games from the end of the regular season, Torain and Waterman, upset because they weren’t playing much, accused Donoher and some of their teammates of racism.

Donoher never answered the charges.

Now he says, “I knew they were disgruntled because they weren’t playing very much. We’d changed our lineup a lot all through the bad streak and it just so happened when we started to win they weren’t in the lineup and I wasn’t about to change when we were winning,

“Years later I met with Rudy and we talked about the situation. His feeling toward the university was positive. With Glinder, it’s been a different thing. I’ve never seen him again. It’s my understanding he’s been in Belgium ever since he left here.

1968-69 (Record 20-7)

IN A NUTSHELL: “We had a surprisingly good year considering our losses — May, Hooper, Torain and Waterman,” Donoher said. “We played the last game ever in the Fieldhouse. I don’t remember much about it except it was against DePaul and it was our 20th win. We went back to the NCAA and lost to Colorado State, a team I thought we were better than.”

1969-70 (Record 19-8)

THE GOOD: It was the first year in the Arena.

After winning the opener, the Flyers went to Louisville and took the Cards apart by 16. It was the last time UD beat Louisville.

In the next-to-last game of the regular season, the UD-Notre Dame series began. “Austin Carr came in here and, boy, that was a big event,” Donoher said. “He scored 31, but we beat them. They came back in here a week later in the NCAA and he scored 61 against Ohio U.”

THE BAD: UD lost to Houston in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

AND THE REDHEADS: Two-thirds of the way through the season, Florida State came to the Arena with a redheaded lefty named Dave Cowens. There was another redhead in the crowd, Red Auerbach, coach of the Boston Celtics. “Cowens had a pretty darn good game against us,” Donoher said, “and Auerbach has always said he drafted Cowens No. 1 off that game.”

1970-71 (Record 18-9)

THE GOOD: The Flyers finally broke the Cincinnati Hex.

“We won it on a jump ball at the end of the game,” Donoher said. “It went to Al Bertke and he put it in at the buzzer. It was like pennies from heaven.”

THE BAD: At season’s end, UD went to Notre Dame. Both schools had been told the winner would go to the NCAA. It was Austin Carr’s final home game. He got 47 and three last-second UD shots missed for a one-point ND victory. Miami then murdered the Flyers, 83-53, and Donoher knew the trip to New York for the NIT would be short.

“It was almost like you wanted to make a phone call and ask them if there was any way they could find another team,” he said.

The super freshmen — Donald Smith, Mike Sylvester, John Von Lehman and Jack Kill — couldn’t get together. “Too many stars and only one ball,” Donoher said. “I remember we played ‘em a scrimmage before the season and we just wiped ‘em out. They weren’t even competitive. The chemistry wasn’t there. The same thing plagued em through their sophomore and junior years. The glue was Johnny Davis.”

But Johnny wasn’t going to arrive until 1973.

AND THE HORSES: The Varsity made a trip to UCLA, losing big to UCLA’s Walton Gang. “The day before (Stanford’s Jim) Plunkett had beaten Ohio State in the Rose Bowl,” Donoher said. “I watched it on TV from a box at Santa Anita. I remember that day I bet a horse called Cougar II with Shoemaker and he won. He wasn’t a big name horse then, but he turned out to be one.”

1971-72 (Record 13-13)

THE GOOD: They beat Notre Dame in the final game to avoid a losing season.

THE BAD: “I’ve been confused by squads before,” Donoher said, “but this was total confusion. We went through the fall and never found a starting lineup. Just before the season, I decided to go with the four sophs. Then, in the last scrimmage, the older guys beat ‘em. As I look back, I should never have made it that easy. I could have gone with the veterans and broke the sophs in slowly. Most of the season it was like we were an exhibition team.”

AND THE SOLUTION: In the off-season, Donoher took some UD films and went south to visit Dean Smith at Carolina and Tates Locke at Clemson. The men shared ideas.

1972-73 (Record 13-13)

WHAT SOLUTION?: “When we came back, it was more of the same,” said Donoher.

THE GOOD: Smith put in 52 points at Chicago Stadium in a 110-89 victory over Loyola — then and now the school record. “We still show the first reel of that film all the time,” Donoher said. “It looks like it’s a spliced-together highlight film, but it’s just the raw footage. He made one of everything.”

THE BAD: Donoher was tagged with what he believes was his first-ever technical foul. “It was against Michigan here,” he said. “It was a close game near the end and I thought Campy Russell carried the ball. He made a big, sweeping left-handed dribble near his ear. The official was Elbert Fielden and I shoulda been barred from basketball for all the things I said to that guy. But all I got was one technical.”

AND THE UGLY: A Davidson game at UD late in the season ended UD’s affiliation with Southeastern Conference officials.

“Ir was like a free-for-all.” Donoher said. “Just an ugly game. That was the backbreaker as far as the SEC went.”

1973-74 (Record 20-9)

THE GOOD: Johnny Davis arrived. It was the second year of freshmen-eligible. “I don’t think anybody realized just how good he was,” Donoher said. “I put in UCLA’s high-post offense and junked Playground III, or whatever that was we had been running. We’d looked like a gym class for two years.”

The Flyers were 18-7 with No. 2 ranked (24-1) Notre Dame coming in for the final game. “It was the loudest I ever heard the Arena,” Donoher said. “By then, Smith and Sylvester had become very dedicated. The two of them were getting to practice an hour early and not just shooting, either. Purposeful shooting.”

The Flyers won, 97-82, and the next afternoon, a hotel in Pocatello, Idaho, called Tom Frericks asking for a rooming list. That’s how UD learned it was in the NCAA.

UD won in Pocatello, then went to Tucson to play UCLA, a team that started a front line of Bill Walton, David Meyers and Keith Wilkes and had Marques Johnson and Richard Washington on the bench. Fair talent. UCLA won 111-100 in triple overtime.

The next day at a press conference, San Francisco Coach Bob Gaillard said he had gone and gotten his team out of its locker room midway in the second half and had it watch the rest of the game. Said Gaillard, “I told them, ‘I want you guys to come out and see the best college basketball I ever saw in my life.’”

THE BAD: Not worth mentioning.

AND THE LAST WORD: The Flyers were 9-2 when they lost at Creighton. An old friend of Donoher’s, Jerry Bush, a former Toledo U. coach, was at the game. He came to Donoher’s hotel room afterward and they talked. As he left, Bush said, “Well, Donnie, it’s been great seeing you. Do me one favor, will ya? Go back to Dayton and learn to play against a 2-3 zone.”

1974-75 (Record: 10-16)

THE GOOD: You’re kidding, right?

THE BAD: The Flyers lost four one-point games in a five-game stretch in the middle of the season and then fell apart. It was the first losing season at UD since 1947-48, Blackburn’s first year.

1975-76 (Record 14-13)

THE GOOD: Jim Paxson came aboard.

THE BAD: “This was probably more of a waste of talent than any year I’ve coached,” Donoher said. “We had Jimmy Paxson and Johnny Davis, plus Erv Giddings, who was just a shade below making it in the NBA. But I’d changed to a motion offense and I really wasn’t good at teaching it. If there was any one year of film that I could have quietly confiscated, trashed and burned, that would be the year. Because I just wasted all that talent.”

AND THE NBA: A month after the season, Davis declared hardship and passed up his senior year.

1976-77 (Record 16-11)

THE GOOD: The Flyers started out 10-1 but it was against a set-up schedule, 10 of the 11 at home.

And they won 5 of their last 6. Be nice and don’t ask what happened in between.

THE IN-BETWEEN: After the 10-1 start, they went to Cincinnati and played UC in front of the largest college basketball crowd in the history of Ohio.

“We choked up,” said Donoher. “They put on a press and we could not do anything.

Soon the Flyers had lost eight in a row. Detroit Coach Dick Vitale danced at midcourt at the Arena after one of them. The last of the eight was at Notre Dame against a frontline of Dave Batton, Bruce Flowers and Toby Knight. “That’s when we started thinking ahead to the next year and we knew we had to make Pax a second guard,” Donoher said. “We were just playing too small.’

1977-78 (19-10)

THE GOOD: A victory over No. 5 Syracuse.

This was the first year the NIT came to the campuses for early games. UD beat Fairfield at home, then Georgetown came in and UD fans were among the first to know that a little school in the East was heading uptown.

THE BAD: Donoher earned technical in the UC game. UC had called the timeout when it couldn’t get the ball in-bounds and Donoher walked out on the floor to ask the official if he was sure the count hadn’t reached four. Before Donoher could say a word, he was given the T.

Afterward, Donoher went to the officials’ room and used his pass-key to get in.

“Charlie Dungan (head of security) was down there and I said, ‘Charlie, don’t worry. I’m under control.’ And I went in there and told that official, ‘I’ve watched TV all my life. That’s all I do. I’ve seen coaches out on the floor everywhere. How can you call a technical on me when time is out?’”

That didn’t change the score, though: UC 42, UD 40.

AND THE SNOWY: The Flyers were snowed-in after a victory at Western Kentucky.

1978-79 (Record 19-10)

THE GOOD: An overtime victory over a top-notch DePaul team.

THE BAD: “Jim Rhoden quit and that really hurt us,” Donoher said. “But we still had almost a cinch NCAA bid when Pax got that shoulder injury down at Cincinnati.”

UD was 15-5 when Pax suffered a shoulder separation trying to run through a pick at UC.

Three games later, with Pax watching in civvies, came the killer, a 71-70 loss at Biscayne, a Division II school in Miami, Fla. “It was like a nightmare,” Donoher said.

AND THE SCARY: The Flyers had what Donoher thought was a “gimme” game early against Baldwin-Wallace.

“Before the game I plotted all my substitutions for the night,” Donoher said. “I wanted to get everybody equal time. Never in my life had I done that. It turned out we could not stop that team. We had to make a steal at the end to win.”

1979-80 (Record 13-14)

THE GOOD: On a trip to Pittsburgh to play Duquesne, the Flyers watched on TV as the U.S. hockey team clinched the Olympic Gold. Everyone in the hotel was watching and every time the U.S. scored, the hotel shook. Nothing else good happened. Sorry.

THE BAD: “Howard,” Donoher said. “We’d lost Richand Montague with a sprained thumb the day before and they held the ball on us and we’re trying to chase with Mike Reichert, Jim Rhoden and Mike Kanieski. They beat us a deuce in double overtime. They were Division I, but, boy, in the community, that was a bad loss.”

Notre Dame came in for the finale. ND and Coach Digger Phelps was hit by a roll of toilet paper, then angrily asked Donoher to take the p.a. mic and calm the students. I went to the ref and asked him if he wanted me to take the mic,” Donoher said. “We’re having a terrible year and me talking to them might wake him up make it worse. After all, I’m the Village Idiot around here. The ref says, ‘No, we’re ready to go.’ But Digger came back a second time and that’s when I let go.”

It was great fun — Digger and Mick matching red veins on their foreheads.

THE PIZZA: The Flyers lost at San Francisco after which they listened through thin walls to a full-scale fight in the USF lockerroom. “They told us later it was over pizza,” Donoher said.

AND THE NAVY: There was a move to fire Donoher after that season, a strong move.

“There was great pressure to can me, both by alumni and the box office,” Donoher said. “But they stayed with me. They asked me to give up my title as athletic director, which was fine with me. I never liked it.”

They also asked him to win. Or else. And they gave him a one-year contract.

Soon after that, Navy Coach Bob Hamilton resigned. And Navy Athletic Director J.O. “Bo” Coppedge called to ask if Donoher were interested. In his first 16 seasons at UD, Donoher had had inquiries from Utah, Mississippi State, Clemson, Western Kentucky, St. Louis, Detroit and Indiana. Each time he had quickly said, “No, thanks.”

This time, he said, “Yes.”

“I had a lot of ties at Navy,” Donoher said. “My brother, Tom, had been chaplain there until he died. My son, Paul, was in his second year there. I’d always had very fond feelings for the Academy.”

He interviewed and was offered a five-year contract at the same money he was making at UD.

He spent a week bouncing it around in his head, then decided to stay put. “What it got down to was the economy at the time,” Donoher said. “Because of the interest rates, I was worried about selling our house and buying another one over there. Plus the cost-of-living was so much higher there. I just decided the whole thing was too risky. Even if I stayed here and lost my job, I figured I could have gotten into something else and made a decent living.”

1980-81 (Record 18-11)

THE GOOD: Roosevelt Chapman arrived.

THE BAD: Before the La Salle game, in a practice, the second team whipped the first team. “And I don’t mean they beat ‘em 20-18,” Donoher said. “They beat em 20-2, 20-4. I was so upset I decided to start the second team.” UD lost.

AND THE KNOCKOUT: In a game at New Orleans, guard Kevin Conrad took an elbow in the face.

“There had been some contact throughout the game,” Donoher said. “And this kid just hauled off and smashed Kevin. It knocked him cuckoo. We couldn’t wake him up in the locker room. We had to put him in the hospital.”

Later on that trip, with Conrad on the bench, the Flyers blew a 16-point lead and lost to Biscayne again, just as they had in ‘78-79. Conrad came in late, but didn’t score. After the game, Assistant Coach Dan Hipsher saw the game ball come bouncing toward him and kicked it as hard as he could. Unfortunately, he kicked it right into Donoher’s right hand. “It doubled my wrist over,” said Donoher. “I felt pain go up my arm like you wouldn’t believe. I about went to my knees.”

1981-82 (Record 21-9)

THE GOOD: A five-overtime victory over Providence.

“We came from way back just to tie it,” said Donoher. “Then we kept making shots at the buzzer to keep sending it into more OTs. Kanieski made one. Morrison made one. Conrad took a charge when it was our absolute only chance. And then to top it off, they miss a shot that would have sent it into a sixth overtime.”

And an NIT win at Illinois.

THE SAD: UD was 14-4 when Conrad came down with a stomach disorder — “atypical mononucleosis,” it was called — and by the time he returned, what seemed like a good chance at an NCAA bid had turned into the NIT.

AND THE REF: After the Loyola game at the Arena, Donoher chased another ref, this time George Solomon, even though UD won.

“I shook hands with Gene Sullivan (the Loyola coach),” said Donoher,” but I didn’t shake hands long. I wanted to get down to the end and head Solomon off at the tunnel. I made it, too, and I called him all kinds of words. Then I look up and there was a TV camera. They had telecast the game back to Chicago. I said, ‘Uh-oh, I’m gonna hear about this.’ I got some nasty mail about being a discredit to our youth. I would have been a real discredit if they’d picked up the audio. But I’II tell you one thing about George Solomon. The feeling is mutual. He doesn’t like me, either.”

1982-83 (Record 18-10)

THE GOOD: Chapman had a great year.

THE BAD: A CBS-TV game at Old Dominion. “By the end,” said Donoher said, “CBS wished it wasn’t on. Dayton wished it wasn’t on. And I think Old Dominion wished it wasn’t on. Because the two of us were bad. They got a little better in the second half, but we didn’t.”

AND THE NIT: UD was ignored despite an 18-10 record and season-ending wins over Marquette and DePaul. “At first I was stunned,” Donoher said. “But after everything settled down, you try to be objective. And our numbers (power index) just weren’t very good. It was that simple.”

1983-84 (Record 21-11)

THE GOOD: The night Donoher won No. 353 to pass the old coach, Blackburn, which ironically was also the night of UD’s 1,000th victory.

MORE GOOD: Ed Young’s shot at 0:01 that beat No. 3 DePaul at the Arena.

“The doggondest game I’ve ever been involved in,” Donoher said. “We never had the lead until. ... ” and he snaps his fingers. After the victory, Donoher jumped up and slapped the palm of his son, Brian, on the way to the dressing room. “TV caught that one,” Donoher said. “What they didn’t catch was right after that as I ran back in the runnel, I reached up and slapped the overpass. My thumb’s still not right from that.”

THE BAD: The night UD lost to Xavier and officially proclaimed the NCAA bid dead.

AND THE BID: It came. Why no one knows. And then came: UD 74, LSU 66; UD 89, Oklahoma 85; UD 64, Washington 58.

***

“You know, I started in this thing to be a high school coach,” Don Donoher said. “I’d have been very happy just doing that. I didn’t need any of the rest of this. My coaching idol is Bobby Arnzen up at Delphos St. John. If I had it to do all over again, I’d love to emulate Bob. He’s been there his whole life. One community with the feeder system built all the way down into the grade schools. To me, Bob Arnzen epitomizes what coaching is all about.”

On the other hand, it has not been so bad at UD, either.