Bo Kimble's first left handed free throw

Anyone else remember this?

That offense Loyola ran was so much fun to watch.

Prior to that season my wife gave me a birthday gift of a trip to Sportscasters of America camp - a one week camp at Loyola Marymount. For me it was kind of a fantasy camp thing as I was already in a career, but for others it was a hopeful step towards a sportscasting career. One of those participating in the camp was Hank Gathers. He was very outgoing and definitely had a future in the business when his professional basketball career ended.

This was just prior to his senior season for which he returned despite leading the nation in scoring and rebounding as a junior. Of course his stats were inflated by the offense that they ran. He returned because he was told he'd be a 1st round pick, but he wanted to try to move up to the lottery.

One of our assignments was to interview on camera three players - NBA summer league was going on at Loyola Marymount at the time. I did one of my interviews with Hank and he was funny and gracious and about as nice as you could imagine. You often hear people say how nice an athlete is from a momentary encounter, but You really don't know. In this case, I had a chance to see him for little longer and I can see he was truly a nice guy and it was of course, one of the saddest sports tragedies when he died. I still have that interview, now on a DVD, and it represents a very special memory.

Thanks for sharing that Eagle.

I was in HS at the time and I was a huge basketball fan and played a lot of ball then. I remember how many of my friends and fellow students who liked basketball were shaken by the tragedy. I even went so far as to write "Hank" on the backs of my high-tops to honor him the rest of the school year.