Next up in our month-long series of Olympic memories is Jim Gudger, who is primarily known as a 3-sport athlete/coach at Western Carolina. After being named an all-conference player in basketball/football/baseball, he later won more than 300 games as a basketball coach and led his team to the 1963 NAIA national championship game. He also won 3 conference titles as coach of the baseball team and was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame. In addition to being devoted to his alma mater, he was a member of the US Olympic Basketball Committee. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with former Western Carolina SID Steve White about his do-it-all coach.
Gudger played 3 sports at Western Carolina (basketball/football/baseball) and was an All-Conference selection in all 3: which sport was he the best at, and which sport did he enjoy the most? I really think that baseball was his favorite: he even played pro baseball for a while after WWII.
He became head coach of the basketball/baseball teams in 1950 and was also assistant football coach: how was he able to balance so many different gigs at the same time? That tells you how times have changed. You just had to do it that way back then: almost every head coach we had was an assistant for another sport in the low-budget NAIA days. You had to be multifaceted just to keep your job.
In the 1963 NAIA national title game he lost to Texas-Pan American, who was led by MVP Lucious Jackson: did he consider that season to be a success (due to getting to the title game), or a failure (due to not winning it all), or something in between? We did not win the regular season title so we had to go through a process just to get into the NAIA tourney after stumbling toward the end of the season. If 1 of our opponents had made a FT then we would never have been there, so I think Coach felt very fortunate. The previous year the team won the conference title but voted not to go to the district playoffs so in 1963 they were excited to be there. The reason we did not win was Jackson: he was unbelievable and later had a great NBA career. By 10AM the auditorium was packed with 10,000 fans: it was a great atmosphere in Kansas City and they would play 8 games per day in the early rounds.
In 1964 he recruited Henry Logan to be the 1st African-American to accept a basketball scholarship at a predominantly white college in the Southeast: how big a deal was it at the time? It was sort of a secret thing that went on behind the curtain. He had to get permission from our school president and board of trustees just to RECRUIT Henry, but felt it was just a case of the perfect player at the perfect time. Henry was a local guy who people knew about and it created so much excitement. The White residents would go over to the Black high school just to watch him play, which had never happened before. It was quite a coup for us to get Henry but he was very apprehensive until Coach assured him that there would be no racial situation here. It opened the door for African-American football players to come here the following year.
In 1967 he left Earl Monroe off the team USA roster for the Pan Am Games because Monroe’s game was allegedly “too playground’’ for his taste: why was that such a sticking point despite Monroe’s 41.5 PPG while leading Winston Salem to the D-2 title? I was never privy to that decision making process but he was a coach who believed in a precision offense. He won games with defense: I heard that he did not think Earl would play defense but I do not know that for a fact.
In 1968 he became athletic director: how did he like being an administrator compared to being a coach? This was the sticking point about why he left the school. He wanted to continue to coach basketball but Dr. Alex Pow said that he could not be athletics director and head basketball coach at the same time. That caused a tremendous rift and was why Coach left for East Texas State in a huff. He wanted to call his own shots and he wanted to do both jobs simultaneously.
His 311 wins are the most in school history: what made him such a great coach, and do you think that anyone will ever break his record? He was a tremendous recruiter and salesman. He was a very colorful guy who could have sold horse manure for potato chips! He had a lot of success recruiting in the state of Indiana because he found guys who could fit his style of playing defense: a lot of other coaches back then did not emphasize defense.
He was a member of the US Olympic Basketball Committee: how did he like working with the national team? He really relished that role and would often use his position when recruiting to help lure players to Western Carolina. I think that he liked traveling around the world to teach basketball and spread the word: he was an extrovert all the way.
He wrote a book about the Swing-And-Cut Offense: what made it so effective? It was the forerunner of the Princeton-style offense. His teams would pass, pass, pass until they found the open man: they were very patient. We had 1 game that went 5 overtimes…and neither team scored 50 PTS! They would spend 5 minutes at practice and not take a single shot: the 10-foot jumper was his favorite thing.
When people look back on his career, how do you think that he should be remembered the most? To this day and throughout the state of North Carolina his name pops up as the face of Western Carolina basketball. He was such a great athlete, which has something to do with that, but the fact that he was a racial pioneer also has a lot to do with it. He did not set out to try to break the color line: he just wanted to get the best basketball player in the area to join his team. He was a character who would smoke cigars and always wear a red tie and socks just to get a little attention, and then all of his players were expected to do the same thing. I fashioned myself as a baseball player and after my freshman year he told me that I had a future in athletics…as a sports publicity guy!