Center Rowe

In New England basketball, no mentor is more pivotal

We were a bunch of basketball junkies from Jersey, Philly, New York, and Connecticut, all enthralled by the idea that our school's basketball coach was Bob Cousy.

Basketball practice was open to one and all, and if we weren't there every single day, we were there most days. And then one day we heard that this interesting and unusual "Stack Offense" that was the staple of the Boston College halfcourt set was something Bob Cousy had picked up from the coach of Worcester Academy.

What? Was this possible? Who was this guy who was important enough to be giving his offense to Bob Cousy?

The name was Donald "Dee" Rowe, and to this day he doesn't really believe it, either.

"That's what Cooz says," Rowe laughs, "so I'll go along with it."

Oh, that's what Cooz says, all right.

"I got that from Dee," Cousy confirms. "We had recruited Steve Adelman, one of his players, and I saw the offense and liked it. Dee says he can't remember where he got it, but, hey, we all steal from each other.

"It was a beautiful offense that cut down your margin of error, was equally good against man-to-man or zone, and complemented our fast-break game. He says he stole it from someone, but I got it from Dee."

People still get a lot of things from Dee. Inspiration, mostly.

There are those certain rare people who enter our lives and make us feel better after every encounter. That's Dee Rowe. And for the past 40 years, the University of Connecticut has been the primary beneficiary of that warmth and personal sunshine. Dee Rowe began coaching there in 1969, and, at age 80, he is still a vital part of every UConn player's athletic experience.

His title? His job? Does it really matter? Since stepping aside from the coaching role in 1977, he has been an administrator, a fund-raiser, a consigliere, and, most of all, an ambassador of college basketball, which is firmly embedded in his DNA.

The best part is, he is still as crazy in love with the game as he was when his dad began taking him to Worcester Tech games before World War II.

"His level of enthusiasm amazes me," says Cousy. "People ask me during this tournament time if I'm staying on top of it, and the truth is that unless the Celtics are on, I'm really not watching anything. But I can guarantee you that Dee is glued to the television set watching these games 12 hours a day.

"He's priceless in terms of his contribution to the game. At every level, from coaching to administration, he's been there, and he's still out there selling it."

Dee Rowe is the personal epicenter of New England college basketball for the past 60 years. His tentacles include his many associations with that astonishing bunch that won the NCAA title for Holy Cross in 1947; his long association with Dave Gavitt, his onetime assistant at Worcester Academy; the relationships he's had with countless assistants who've gone on to glory - perhaps you've heard of a guy known as "Jimmy V"? - and, of course, his situation on the front line as Jim Calhoun has taken UConn from an occasional regional power to a college basketball brand name.

As far as he's concerned, no one could have had a better basketball incubator than Worcester, Mass.

"I thought the game had been invented in Worcester," he says. "That's where it was for me."

It started in the third grade. His gym teacher at Thorndyke Road School was Buster Sheary, who later would coach Tom Heinsohn, Togo Palazzi, and Ron Perry Sr. to an NIT title when an NIT title was as prestigious as winning the NCAA.

His first basketball had laces. And if a basketball wasn't available, he and his friends would shoot a tennis ball into a tin can. But there was always something going on involving a basketball in Worcester, it seems.

The culmination of it was Holy Cross winning the NCAA championship in 1947. He was part of the throng that greeted the team at Worcester's Union Station when it returned from beating Oklahoma, and it would have been totally outside his realm of comprehension to know that he would become friends with every key member of the team he worshipped, or that one day down the road Bob Cousy would ask Dee Rowe to be his presenter when he was inducted into the New York City Hall of Fame.

As good basketball fans know, Cousy was a freshman and merely a humble sub who went 0-2 -2 in that game. The stars were Frank Oftring, Dermie O'Connell, Bob Curran, and George Kaftan. Dee's life would become intertwined with all of them, not to mention Cousy, Joe Mullaney, and, perhaps most of all, Andy Laska, a revered name in Worcester as coach of both Worcester Academy and Assumption, which Rowe likes to refer to as his "laboratory."

That Holy Cross team always will occupy a special place in Dee Rowe's heart.

"They were great heroes, great mentors, and dear friends," Rowe says.

Rowe and Laska would be partners in a basketball camp and run clinics together "for about a million years," Rowe points out.

Rowe's alma mater is Middlebury, where his big catch was a girl from Reading named Ginny Reynolds, to whom he's been married for 55 years, and with whom he is the father of seven and the grandparent of 17. His ties to the school remain strong, as he teaches an annual course called "Issues In Sports."

He began making his own history at Worcester Academy, where he spent 13 years. One of his hires was a bright young man named Dave Gavitt, who had been a backcourt teammate of the great Rudy LaRusso on some very good Dartmouth teams in the late '50s. Gavitt had been a Rowe assistant for two years when his old friend Joe Mullaney said he was looking for an assistant at Providence.

"I said, 'I've got the diamond in the rough right here,' " Rowe recalls. "There was no search committee, no nothing. They hired Dave for $2,600."

Rowe and Gavitt have remained close over the years, and Rowe's friendship was rewarded when Gavitt chose him to be an assistant on both the US national team and the ill-fated 1980 Olympic team, which stayed home as part of Jimmy Carter's boycott over the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan.

But that team did play a series of exhibition games, and Dee Rowe was honored to be a part of it. "Biggest thrill of my life," he maintains, although he also says that about presenting Cousy at the New York City Hall of Fame.

The way Rowe sees it, Dave Gavitt still affects him, each and every day.

"Our [i.e. UConn's] entrance into the Big East changed our lives," he points out.

When Dee Rowe took over at Connecticut in 1969, we were living in an entirely different college basketball world. The East was tribal and parochial. New England was New England. New York was New York. Philly was the Big Five. Upstate New York was a savage wasteland where, it was believed, you couldn't win at Canisius, Niagara, and St. Bonaventure because the refs would be members of the school's chemistry department.

New England was split between the independents (Providence, BC, UMass, Holy Cross, Fairfield, etc.) and the six members of the Yankee Conference, whose automatic bid into the 25-team NCAA Tournament had been pulled the year before (perhaps in response to UConn coach Fred Shabel holding the ball on BC in a 1967 first-round game).

UConn had been the dominant Yankee Conference team in the '50s and '60s, going to the tournament 10 times between 1951 and 1967. But Providence was the big fish in New England by '69. Holy Cross was still strong, BC had become a player under Cousy, and UConn's old formula of heavy reliance on in-state talent was showing a strain.

It was a definite transition period, and Dee was able to hold his own, averaging 18 wins a year and peaking with his 1975-76 team, which took him to the tournament.

But the times, they were a-changin', and Dee Rowe wasn't always enjoying himself, so he stepped away at age 48 following the 1976-77 season.

"I was a burnout," he says.

"It was the time of student unrest, boycotts, and picketing. As an example, we were recruiting Rick Pitino, and the day he made a visit, they were burning down a building on our campus."

But before it was over, he had stored up his share of big victories and his share of coaching memories, such as the time he took his team on the floor to play South Carolina, coached by the legendary Frank McGuire.

"I'm coaching against Frank McGuire, and nobody from my neighborhood in Burncoat Hill would have ever thought it conceivable any of us would ever be coaching against Frank McGuire," he declares.

He leaves the coaching to his friend Jim Calhoun now, and that's fine with him.

"To think of where we've come," says Rowe. "In the old days, it was try to win the Yankee Conference, and then it was try to get to the Final Four of the New England ECAC tournament. And now look at what Jim has done.

"What Jim has done is beyond anyone's comprehension. No one had a right to dream about anything like this. I tell people it's absolutely unreal, and to think he's done it all at Storrs, Conn. He's taken us to the top of the mountain to breathe the rarefied air. And with Geno [Auriemma] and all he's done, UConn is the college basketball capital of America."

His current calling card is endurance and survival. He has had two serious encounters with cancer, the first of which, 5 1/2 years ago, resulted in the removal of a basketball-sized tumor, part of his liver, his gallbladder, his spleen, and an adrenal gland. Never what you would call a portly fellow, he emerged from that ordeal pretty gaunt. But he looks remarkably vigorous now and he remains relentlessly upbeat.

"He's the nicest person among all my friends," salutes The Cooz. "About that New York City Hall of Fame thing, most people, if you had asked them, would have said, 'Oh, geez, do I really want to go to New York to do this?' But Dee loved it."

To Dee Rowe, this fabulous life he's carved for himself is now about one thing: relationships.

"Everywhere I go it's a reunion," he says. "It's about bonds and relationships. After what I've been through, I believe every day is a gift, and I'm able to spend mine in basketball."

It doesn't take much to please Dee Rowe. While in Philadelphia last week for first- and second-round play, UConn practiced at the storied Pennsylvania Palestra, in business since 1928 and, in the opinion of many, still the greatest place in America to watch a college game.

"Just sitting in that gym, just sitting there, was a thrill," Rowe says. "I'm saying, 'How lucky can I be?' "

Well, lucky enough to be given the University of Connecticut's distinguished University Medal two years ago in recognition of an individual "whose life achievements serve as examples of the University's aspirations for its students," and who have had "a significant influence on the University."

Not to tell tales out of school, but in the course of our discussions for this story, Rowe called back at least five times because he was afraid he'd forget a name of someone very important to him.

"Sounds like Dee," Cooz confirms.

You've heard some names. Here are others: Doggie Julian, whom he scouted for at Dartmouth; George Connor, the great Chicago Bear whom Dee's father took him to see play; Jim Valvano, his assistant at UConn; Bob Staak and Dick Stewart, assistants who became head coaches; Tony Lupien, who moonlighted as his basketball assistant at Middlebury when he wasn't coaching the baseball team; Johnny Egan, whom he saw bring home a New England Tournament championship for Hartford's Weaver High; Frank Power, the great Boston College assistant whom Dee lauds as "a great teacher and great basketball purist"; and so on and so forth, into the hundreds.

Now here's an aside to any new name who might be introduced into the World of Dee Rowe. If you really want to get on his good side, call him by his proper title.

"To be called 'Coach' is the greatest praise I could ever receive," he says.

So, here's to you, Coach. Bob Cousy says thanks for the "Stack," and New England basketball says thanks for everything.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist and host of the Globe's 10.0 on Boston.com. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.