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Catching Up With . . .
John Roche, South Carolina
Guard
January 4,
1971
Posted: Tue March 10, 1998
When
Frank McGuire, who
had won the 1957
national basketball
championship
at North Carolina with a team composed largely of players
from his native New York City, arrived as South Carolina's
coach in '65, he found a program lacking tradition, fan
support and talent. So he reopened his New York pipeline.
Two years later
McGuire spotted
6'10" center Tom Owens at Manhattan's La Salle Academy,
and to help lure Owens he offered a scholarship to his best
friend, John Roche.
Owens once said that Roche had "more than the average
Irish temper," which is one reason Roche and the
feisty McGuire quickly built a winning rapport.
Another was that the
6'3" Roche turned out to be more than an average point
guard: He won the ACC player of the year award as a
sophomore and as a
junior. He also made South
Carolina the first school
outside the state of North
Carolina to achieve
sustained success in the
conference. "Roche is the best I've ever seen at
controlling a game,"
McGuire said in 1971.
"I wouldn't trade the dirt under his fingernails for anyone
else's soul." Says Roche of McGuire, who died in 1994,
"He allowed his players an enormous amount of
decision-making responsibility. I was trained to be
self-reliant."
Roche is now a trial lawyer in Denver, where he lives with his wife and three children.
(William R. Sallaz)
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That training served Roche well in the fall of 1976 when,
after having averaged 12.6 points
and 3.9 assists in
4 1/2 ABA seasons, he was released by the Los Angeles Lakers.
Roche spent the next three years bouncing between a league
in Italy and Whittier Law School in L.A. He returned to the
NBA in '79 and played three years for the Denver Nuggets,
during which time
he earned his law degree at the University of Denver. Roche
retired from basketball in '82 and has since worked as a
trial lawyer in Denver, where he lives with his wife,
Jackie, and their three children, Ryan, 19, and Maggie and
Jennifer, both
16.
In anticipation of his 50th birthday next year, Roche is
training to run this fall's New York City Marathon. In one
sense, the race will enable Roche to turn back the clock:
The course runs north on First Avenue, right through
Roche's old neighborhood.
"There's a park on 68th Street and First where I grew up
playing basketball," he says. Nearby is Roche's
favorite landmark, the tenement on East 66th Street where
he shared a room with his two sisters. "A lot of
buildings where my childhood friends grew
up have been torn down and replaced by high-rises," he
says. "But my building still
stands.
—by Seth Davis
Cover photograph by James Drake
Issue date: March 16, 1998
Past Editions of Catching Up With...
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