Shot Of Lemons To Cure The Blues

"But yesterday was the lowest I have sunk in my career," Abe said. "There are players on this team who are not even interested in basketball. One afternoon I told them to do wind sprints, and one of them said he didn't want to. I said, 'O.K., you go stand over there.' I asked who else didn't want to do wind sprints. Three of my starters walked over and stood with the guy.

"I thought that was bad," Abe said. "But yesterday they were so apathetic that I chased them off the court and went home. I got to thinking about a coach I know who asked permission to hire two assistants. He hired a psychiatrist and a hairdresser. After six months the psychiatrist went crazy. The hairdresser is still on the job. One of my players this year, his sweat is so rare it'll cure cancer. Another of my guys has worn out five pairs of shoes already, just from stumbling."

By now Abe had started to grin. He scraped the hair away from his forehead and brushed cigar ashes out of his lap. "I've got a trick tonight," he said. "My plays are devised to get a guy open for a shot. But my guys don't like to shoot when they're open. They only like to shoot if they can jump and twist. Tonight the plays are changed, so the shooter will be almost open but not quite. Maybe my guys can throw some of them twisty shots into the bucket."

Before that night, the last time Abe had been involved in a game at Gregory Gym in Austin was when he was the coach of Oklahoma City University. In 18 years at OCU, Lemons' teams won 308 games (and lost 179), led the nation in scoring three times, produced seven All-Americas, competed in seven NCAA playoffs and twice went to the NIT. In that previous visit to Austin, OCU had rushed to a 3-17 deficit and Abe had been hit with a third technical foul and ordered off the floor. Abe was finishing his No. 1 Combination Dinner at El Rancho, a Mexican restaurant, when he learned OCU had won the game.

In February 1975 Lemons took his Pan American team to Denver, was hit with two quick technicals and left the arena without waiting for the third. Pan American won that game, extending what turned out to be a 10-game winning streak on the road in seven states.

Pan American had a 20-5 record last season, was fourth in the nation in scoring with a 95-point average and had the country's leading scorer in Marshall Rogers (36.8). Pan American is located in Edinburg, Texas, far down in the Rio Grande Valley, near the Mexican border. The closest large city is San Antonio, 275 miles away. Pan American must be willing to play on the road, where fortune seldom roots for the traveler. "Booking home games was like trying to get people to play us on Gilligan's Island," Lemons says.

Pan American won four games the season before Lemons took over in 1973. (It was 55-16 when Lemons left.) Abe was paid more than double the $14,000 yearly salary he had risen to at OCU. Recruiting all over the country, and having an outspoken aversion to cheating and no loot to offer anyhow, it was a challenge to Abe's charm and shrewdness to persuade players from Kentucky or Indiana that they could profit themselves by performing at Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas.

OCU and Pan American being impoverished compared to the major universities, Lemons never could afford to devise a system and then find the players to fit it. He looked for players with flair and bent his plans to take advantage of what was on hand.

As a result, many of Abe's players were great shooters, but had only a nodding acquaintance with defense; as long as they kept hitting the basket, Abe felt the team had a good chance to win. One night last year, when Marshall Rogers was being even more deficient than usual on defense, Lemons told him, "You can just rest on defense, Rogers. Help us as much as you can, but don't get in the way." However, if a player's particular flair began to dim, Lemons might suggest reviving it, as he did one evening with Pan American Center Mike Hart. "Congratulations, Hart," Abe said to him at halftime. "In the first half you got one more rebound than a dead man would have gotten."

Abe has had luck putting patches on. Arnoldo (Pizza) Vera, who quit his job at a Pizza Hut in Edinburg to try out for the team, scored at the buzzer last year to enable Pan American to beat Georgia State 64-62 in Atlanta. The next morning Lemons read in the paper that "a chubby substitute led to Georgia State's downfall." Said Abe, "Tonight, he is going to be a chubby starter against Georgia Tech." Pizza Vera did not score a point against Georgia Tech, but Pan Am's guards got 63 and Vera helped to set the picks as Pan Am won 80-73.