Minium: ODU, Randolph-Macon to Honor Former Men's Basketball Coach Paul Webb on Tuesday
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – Two schools with rich men’s basketball traditions will pay homage to the late Paul Webb when Old Dominion hosts Randolph-Macon Tuesday night in a rare rematch of what once was a torrid “small college” rivalry.
The game has been dubbed “The Paul Webb Challenge.”
The game will feature an unusual matchup in this the modern era of college basketball in which Division I and Division III schools rarely play. But given that Webb coached at both schools, a game in Norfolk was deemed an appropriate manner to honor Webb.
Webb coached at a time when Randolph-Macon and ODU were College Division and later Division II rivals in the old Mason-Dixon Conference.
Webb was 315-158 in 19 seasons at Randolph-Macon, where he won four conference titles and took his team to seven NCAA tournaments.
In 1975, he moved to ODU, where in ten seasons he was 196-99, took the Monarchs to the NCAA Division II Final Four and led ODU into Division I in 1975-76, his second season.
Few, if any teams, have had a more auspicious Division I debut as ODU did in 75-76, when the Monarchs upset Georgetown and Virginia on the road, won the ECAC South title and won what was then a state-record 22 games in a row. ODU finished with a 25-4 record.
In later years under Webb, ODU would win at Clemson, upset No. 3 Syracuse at home and claim a road victory against No. 1 DePaul.
In nine of his ten seasons at ODU, Webb took the Monarchs either to the NCAA Tournament or the National Invitation Tournament.
Dr. Wood Selig, ODU’s director of athletics, said few schools will ever go to the NCAA or NIT nine times out of ten seasons at any level of Division I basketball.
“The run that he had at ODU, I would like to think it could be replicated again here, but that’s very improbable,” he said. “You just don’t have that continuity anymore. The game has changed.
“Look at North Carolina, which went to the Final Four and missed the tournament the next year. Even the blue bloods will be challenged to hit that kind of stretch.”
Dr. Selig reached out to Randolph-Macon to set up this game shortly after Webb’s death last December.
“We wanted to make a statement, less than a year after Paul Webb’s death, about what he meant for our program, to our institution,” he said.
“It is important to us to keep Paul’s legacy alive, and this seemed the best way to do that. Paul made indelible impressions at both institutions.”
Gov. Glenn Youngkin had hoped to attend, but is scheduled to be out of town. The Virginia Beach native attended Paul Webb’s summer camps when he was a young man. Youngkin would eventually become a basketball star at Norfolk Academy and earn a basketball scholarship to Rice.
Youngkin wrote a letter to the Webb family shortly after his death, praising him for his role in helping thousands of young people.
"For nearly 60 years, he is credited with helping thousands upon thousands of young men and women improve their skills and achieve new levels of excellence," Youngkin wrote.
"As one of those young men, I will always owe Coach Webb a debt of gratitude for what I learned from him about true commitment to the game."
Youngkin sent the Webb family a state flag that was flown over the state capitol building on Dec. 8, the day Webb passed away. At halftime of Tuesday’s game, it will be formally presented to the Webb family. It will then become a part of Paul Webb’s exhibition in the University’s Sports Hall of Fame.
RMC will bring about 150 fans to the ODU game, including about a dozen former players. They will join more than a dozen former ODU players and more than 20 members of the Webb family at halftime ceremony honoring Paul.
Both schools have begun endowments to honor both Paul and Charlotte Webb. ODU is endowing a scholarship in both their names while RMC, which does not offer scholarships, has begun an endowment that will benefit its basketball program.
ODU will donate $1 per ticket to the endowment. RMC is donating to its endowment most of the guarantee that the Monarchs are paying to bring the Jackets to Chartway Arena.
Leaflets will be passed out to fans with directions on how to donate to the fund at both schools that will include QR codes that will allow fans to donate from their phones.
Doug Webb, one of four children of Paul and Charlotte, is an ODU graduate and a senior director of development for athletics at RMC. He has been handling arrangements in cooperation with ODU’s Kieran Donahue, who works with the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation and doubles as Selig’s special assistant.
Doug moved with his father to ODU in 1975. Older brother, Eddie, played basketball for Paul Webb at RMC as a senior in 1974-75.
“I wasn’t good enough to play, so I kept score for my dad’s teams at Randolph-Macon, then transferred to ODU when my dad took the job here,” Doug said.
Tuesday night, he said, “will be a little bittersweet without my dad there.”
Paul Webb always sat in a corner of the upper concourse of Chartway Arena. During ODU's season opener last week, Ronnie Wade, one of Webb's former players, texted Eddie Webb a photo of himself sitting in Paul Webb's old seat.
“I was down in Norfolk recently and it was my first time in Chartway Arena without my dad. That was not easy," Doug said as his voice broke with emotion.
“On the other hand, this is a celebration of his life and his success not just for him, but my mom as well," he added.
“She was such a big part of his success at Randolph-Macon and ODU. My Dad had a family program for the players and my Mom was a huge part of that success.”
“She was the main reason I came to play at Old Dominion,” added Kenny Gattison, the former ODU power forward who had a long career in the NBA.
“She hugged us after every game and stayed in touch with all of the players after we left. She was like our mother."
ODU has named its scholarship the Paul and Charlotte Webb Men’s Basketball Endowed Scholarship “because of the huge role Charlotte played in Paul’s success,” said Jena Virga, who heads ODAF.
Many of the ODU and RMC players who will be on the court will have shared memories to recall, such as the final ODU game ever at Crenshaw Gymnasium in Ashland on Feb. 17, 1975. ODU won, 86-85, in triple overtime after trailing by 20 at halftime.
Joey Caruthers, who will be at Tuesday’s game, led the second-half comeback with 20 points.
“That may have been aruably the best game I ever saw in Crewnshaw Gymnasium,” Doug said.
College basketball was a much different game then, in many ways a more innocent game. The College Division and later Division II, the so-called small college divisions of basketball, were as completive with power conferences as many mid-majors are today.
Randolph-Macon defeated Georgetown, then coached by John Thompson, under Webb in Ashland. ODU hosted Indiana and coach Bobby Knight at Scope and lost by two points a few years before going Division I.
The difference between Division III, in which basketball scholarships are not allowed, and Division I is far wider.
But Randolph-Mason is not just another DIII program. The Jackets are 128-12 since 2019-20 and won the 2022 Division III NCAA title.
While rare, DIII teams occasionally do upset Division I schools, meaning the Monarchs had better be ready to play.
“I’ve been telling our guys that Randolph-Macon is really a good team no matter in what division they play,” said Jason Wade, an ODU graduate assistant and a Richmond native.
Fletcher Johnson, the career scoring leader at RMC, will attend Tuesday’s game and played in that 1975 triple overtime loss. But he won’t be thinking so much about that defeat nearly 50 years ago as he will about the man who recruited him out of Richmond’s John Marshall High.
“Paul Webb without a doubt is one of the greatest men I have ever come in contact with,” he said. “There are not enough good words in the dictionary to describe him.
“Honest, fair, full of integrity. He was really good at getting us to to be a great basketball team. Our team when I was a senior, we’re all still close today.”
With that, he choked up briefly.
He recalls that a lot of coaches came into his home to meet his parents.
‘“But when Paul Webb left my house, my Mom said to me, ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking about school, but in my opinion, you need to go play for that man.’
“I did go play for that man and never regretted it for a minute.”
Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
To make a donation to ODAF, CLICK HERE To donate to an endowed scholarship, simply indicate the name on the scholarship as you check out.
To donate to the RMC’s Paul and Charlotte Webb endowment, CLICK HERE