By Harry Minium
Paul Webb will be 91 years old in June and age is beginning to take its toll on the former Old Dominion men's basketball coach.
He and his wife, Charlotte, walk four or five times a week in their Virginia Beach neighborhood, but he does so with a cane.
"The walks aren't as long as they used to be," he said with a laugh.
Webb has always been the glass is half full kind of guy and views aging pragmatically. If you're fortunate enough to live a long life, your quality of life won't be as good as it was when you were younger.
He accepts what life gives him with grace.
"My legs are getting weak," he said. "I don't move around as quickly or as fast as I used to. But that's natural when you get old.
"We can't do anything about that. We just enjoy what we can do."
Ah, but his mind is as sharp as ever. Webb graced me with a 90-minute interview recently and recalled incidents from half a century ago ago with crystal clarity.
And there were some great stories.
Perhaps the best involved ODU's torrid rivalry with VCU and a game in the late 1970s in which, during a pushing and shoving interruption on the court, Webb was hit in the chest with a full can of beer.
Let's set the stage: The Richmond Coliseum was packed and VCU fans, especially black-and-gold clad students, were hurling insults at the Monarchs.
Danny Kottak, a 6-foot-5, gifted and gritty forward from Louisville, was VCU's resident bad boy and he was in the proximity of things as players mixed it up late in the second half.
As officials were restoring order, Webb saw something headed towards him through the corner of his eye and ducked. The Budweiser bounced off his chest and he caught it on the rebound. Did I mention that Webb was an all-state basketball player at Petersburg High?
Webb held up the beer, looked up at Kottak and deadpanned, "You want a beer?"
Even with emotions running so high, Kottak laughed and shook his head no.
ODU trailed by three with five seconds to play and VCU fans were chanting "64 East," referring to the interstate route home to Norfolk.
ODU scored with three seconds left, and took a timeout. And that's where things really got tense. The Monarchs forced a controversial 5-second count and got the ball back.
VCU officials later looked at the replay, and said it was called after 3.8 seconds.
I was in grad school at VCU at the time and remember one TV sportscaster saying: "The Rams were robbed and we've got the proof."
No matter. It's in the books.
As the crowd continued to roar its disapproval, Tommy Conrad came off a pick and made a jump shot at the buzzer that gave ODU a 72-71 victory.
Conrad, mind you, was ODU's resident bad boy. The blond-haired, muscular and unflinchingly physical guard from Upper Darby, Pa. was a pain-in-the-rear force on defense. Opposing crowds hated him.
VCU students had been unrelenting in their abuse of him. After making the game winner, Conrad gave them some of their own medicine. He turned and screamed an obscenity toward them, then ran off the court giving them a hand gesture most delicately described as "the finger."
ODU assistant Mike Pollio, who was later to come VCU's head coach, corralled Conrad in his arms and led him to the locker room.
There is much more to Webb's record at ODU than just great stories. He is arguably the best coach the Monarchs ever had and that may come as a surprise to some of you.
Before I wrote a profile on Webb two years ago at The Virginian-Pilot, I asked half a dozen or so ODU students what Paul Webb was famous for. Several said Webb Student Center had been named for him (actually, it was named for Dr. Lewis W. Webb, a former ODU president), and none realized he'd ever been ODU's basketball coach.
So, here's an intro to the man some of you may not know very well.
ODU has had some great coaches. Blaine Taylor won 239 games and had great postseason success. Sonny Allen laid the foundation for ODU's success in Division I and won the 1975 Division II national title.
But no one has been able to replicate Webb's impressive postseason record. In ten seasons, Webb won 196 games and took the Monarchs to postseason play nine times.
That's nine out of ten, with four going to the NCAA tournament and five to the NIT.
He recruited some of ODU's best players – Ronnie Valentine, Kenny Gattison and Mark West, to name a few – away from ACC schools.
In his first season, a year after that Division II national title, he took ODU back to the Division II Final Four.
He led ODU into Division I in his second year in what was, for me, the most magical season in ODU history. After losing at VMI in an arena then accurately called "The Pit," ODU reeled off 22 victories in a row, including upset wins against Mississippi State, Virginia and Georgetown.
ODU went to the NIT, losing at sold-out Scope to Villanova, 71-68.
He took ODU to its first NCAA Division I tournament in 1980 and back again in 1982 and 1985.
There were notable regular-season victories as well, including a 68-67 upset of No. 3 Syracuse at Scope, and in perhaps ODU's greatest victory ever, a 63-62 upset of No. 1 DePaul in suburban Chicago.
He also won at U.Va. (twice), Clemson, and Virginia Tech and at home against Florida State.
He retired in 1985, far too early in my estimation, with 511 career victories, including his previous 19 seasons at Randolph-Macon. That was the fifth-most nationally at the time.
Webb said recruiting took much more of a toll on him at ODU than it did at Randy Mac. At the time, there were no limits on how many times you could contact recruits. Webb and his staff outhustled most of the ACC when recruiting West out of Petersburg High.
West, who I covered for the old Richmond News Leader, said at the time he couldn't recall a game in which someone from ODU wasn't in the stands.
Webb's last game at ODU was an NCAA tournament loss SMU in Hartford, Conn.
"I was tired," Webb said, adding, that the time was right.
"We were coming off a good season and had a great team coming back," he said. "I wanted to make sure that when I retired, I did not leave the cupboard bare.
"We had almost the whole team coming back."
Webb rattled off the names of his best returning players without hesitation: Gattison, Ronnie Wade, Clarence Hanley, Frank Smith and Keith Thomas.
Tom Young succeeded Webb and won 23 games in his first season, including ODU's first Division I NCAA tournament victory over West Virginia.
Webb indeed left the cupboard full.
In spite of being 90, Webb hasn't really retired. For the last 55 years, he has hosted the Paul Webb Basketball Camps, with four sessions in Virginia Beach and two at Randolph-Macon. Even last summer, he got on the court and schooled young kids on some basics.
His son Eddie Webb, former ODU assistant and long-time Virginia Sports Hal of Fame chair, runs the camps.
"I enjoy being around basketball and being around the kids," Webb said.
"But I've been thinking for some time about turning the camps all over to Eddie," adding that might happen after this summer.
His camp might have to wait for its 56th appearance until 2021, given the COVID-19 pandemic.
He remains in touch with dozens of his former players and former coaching friends, including Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim.
Boeheim coached the Syracuse team that lost at ODU in 1980, in which Bobby Vaughan's tip in at the buzzer was the game winner.
"Every time I see Jim, he tells me time ran out before Bobby got off the shot," Webb said, adding "the clock was in good hands."
Rufus Tonelson was running the clock, Webb said. Rufus was in the first class to enroll at the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary, was a charter member of what would become the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation and was a long-time ODU faculty member.
Given all that, Rufus didn't have a heavy hand. I looked at the replay and the clock began on time.
As for his victory at DePaul, Webb says his best memory was running into Dick Vitale in a hotel lobby. Vitale was just breaking into the broadcast business and said, "I guarantee you an upset tonight."
He said he recalls more of a 3 a.m. victory party than he does of the game. "There were so many good friends there who helped us celebrate," he said.
Webb tries to call at least one of his former players each day and when I spoke to him, he'd just gotten off the phone with Gattison and West.
He said he recently spoke with Vaughan's family – Bobby recently had a stroke but is slowly regaining the ability to walk and speak – and keeps up with Ronnie Valentine, ODU's career scoring leader, through alumnus Wes Lockard.
I went to Miami in the summer of 2018 to find Ronnie, who had been homeless for decades, and found him with Lockard's help.
Lockard has spent hundreds of hours since helping Ronnie. He has been aided by former Maury High and South Carolina great Karlton Hilton, among others.
There is some irony in that. Webb recalls that Hilton, who graduated from Anderson Junior College at the same time Valentine graduated from Norfolk Catholic, verbally committed to ODU before signing with South Carolina.
"If we'd gotten Karlton, he probably would have played in front of Ronnie," Webb said.
"Things often happen for the best and that was probably the case then.
"You can't put into words everything that Wes has done for Ronnie, all the time he has taken to spend with him, to help him and do so many things for him."
Webb has never been one to seek fame. As a coach he said only good things about opponents, did not promote himself to the media and has never campaigned for awards or honors.
I asked Webb whether he thought ODU fans remembered him and his reply spoke to his unassuming nature.
"I don't know and I'll tell you why I don't know. I sit in the third deck at ODU home games. I'm up there where nobody can see me, with Charlotte and Eddie.
"Most of the time we leave with a minute or two left in the game and we're out of there before the crowd leaves."
He's never been to the Big Blue Room or VIP suite even though he has passes to both. That's the way he wants it, he said.
"It's Jeff Jones' team now," he said. "And I stay out of the way.
"I root for them and support them and think Jeff is doing a great job.
"But I stay out of the way.
"I have great memories of my time at ODU. You treasure the relationships with people you built over time the most.
"I am fortunate that I was able to coach at Old Dominion."
He ended the interview by reminding me I owe him a hot dog from Famous Uncle Al's on Shore Drive – he bought me a hot dog during my 2018 interview.
I took off my reporting hat for a few seconds to respond.
Coach, it's those of us who had the pleasure of watching your teams who were fortunate.
I remember seeing you save Ronnie Valentine's career in Richmond by tackling him before he grabbed an official. I remember you accepting bad calls on the road without a whimper.
You weren't the most colorful coach I interviewed, but you never trashed the refs or blamed circumstances beyond your control for a loss. You were and are a class act.
It's an honor to know you, sir.
And yes, the hot dog is on me whenever Famous Uncle Al's reopens.
Contact Minium: @hminium@odu.edu
Minium: Even at 90, Paul Webb's Memories of the Good Times When he was ODU's Basketball Coach Are Crystal Clear
