Former Basketball: UL honoring “special” basketball players, coaches who brought the team back to li

Dan McDonald, Morning Advocate, Feb. 7, 2015

A third of a century later, Dan Gay still remembers the view.

Gay can still recall seeing Patrick Ewing’s arm well over the rim, only 35 seconds into then-USL’s opening game of the 1981-82 basketball season. The Ragin’ Cajuns were a heavy underdog to mighty Georgetown in the first round of the Great Alaska Shootout in Anchorage that November.

“My arm was up there, and Alonza (Allen) had his arm up there,” Gay said of the monster dunk that gave the Hoyas a quick 2-0 lead, “and it seemed like his (Ewing’s) arm kept going.”

Gay laughs at the memory, and he can afford to. The rest of the night, the Cajuns controlled Ewing and the Hoyas in what became a 70-61 victory. Gay, a 27-year international pro player after leaving USL, held Ewing to seven points and four rebounds before the future Hall of Famer fouled out.

Two nights later, after a semifinal win over Washington State, USL humbled Marquette by 17 points in the finals to win the Shootout title and send a shockwave through college basketball.

If people didn’t know that USL basketball was back, they knew it then.

It had been eight years earlier that the school resurrected the program after a two-year NCAA-mandated suspension. The architects of that rebuilding project, coaches Jim Hatfield and Bobby Paschal, are being honored in a weekend-long reunion that continues Saturday with activities surrounding the Cajuns’ 1 p.m. basketball contest against Texas-Arlington.

Those two, along with about 80 former players, staffers and others involved with the program from 1974-86, were the guests of honor at a Friday evening reception at the UL-Lafayette Alumni Center. On Saturday, that group will get a VIP tour of the campus and the athletic complex, will be honored at an 11:30 a.m. pregame reception at the Cajundome and will be recognized individually at halftime.

The players and coaches will also have an autograph session at 12:30 p.m. near the front of the Cajundome just before tipoff.

“This place was so special,” said Hatfield, who was charged as head coach with bringing the program back after two years of inactivity. “There was a spirit here, and it wasn’t the wins and losses. Those that went through it are the only ones that will understand, but very few people will ever have the opportunity to experience what I experienced, and I am forever, forever thankful.”

Hatfield coached for one year without playing a game in 1974-75 before the Cajuns returned to the court the following year, and four of the six players who signed with USL during the program’s shutdown were on hand at Friday’s reception. Hatfield, who left after the 1977-78 season to become head coach at Mississippi State, took the time to pay homage to that group.