Old Oregon
MAC COURT LEGEND
Holding Bricks in the Air Ten years after coach Dick Harter’s death, reflections on the value of hard work—in hoops, in life BY MICHAEL N. McGREGOR
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O R E G O N Q U A R T E R LY
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WINTER 2022
electric. People talk about the upper level shaking during games in those days, supported as it was by only a few thin stanchions, but even the lower areas shook. The level of noise was the equal of any rock concert I’ve ever attended. I’m 63 now and to this day I’ve never experienced anything quite like that game. Much as I loved watching football, basketball was my sport. In high school, I played it every chance I got. And when that game in that overheated arena was over, I was as covered in sweat from the stomping and cheering and sheer joy of it all as I’d been from any game I’d ever played. Because, you see, although the Ducks had lost Ronnie Lee to the NBA, they still had Greg Ballard and Ernie Kent and that pesky little guard Mike “Bulldog” Drummond, and in front of 10,500 delirious fans who never stopped shouting, they held the mighty Bruins to their lowest point total of the season, beating them 64-55. For the third time in a row, they had defeated the school that had won 10 straight conference championships and 10 of the last 14 NCAA championships. And in the sixth of Dick Harter’s seven years as their coach, they’d done it his way: by fighting harder and playing scrappier than anyone they faced. The following year, when I was a seasoned sophomore, my buddy (and fellow Duck) Mark Thorne and I signed up to coach a team of
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hen I left my hometown of Seattle to attend the University of Oregon in the fall of 1976, I fell in love with everything except the football team. I’d been a Husky fan since Sonny Sixkiller appeared on the cover of Boys’ Life, and the Huskies were one year away from going to the Rose Bowl in their third year under coach Don James. The Ducks, on the other hand, weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. In the first home game I went to, USC flattened them, 53-0. After wins against two mediocre Utah teams, they lost every other game, including all of their Pac-8 contests, until they managed to eke out a final 23-14 victory over the even-more-hapless Beavers. Even the mascot embarrassed me. How, I thought, can I root for a team called the “Ducks”? Then came basketball season. In those days the university had a lottery system to buy a student pass to all sports events and I was fortunate to be selected. I say fortunate because, unlike the football team, the basketball Ducks were good. After narrowly losing their opener to UNLV, the No. 6 team in the country, they reeled off a succession of wins that included one of the biggest in Oregon basketball history: a 61-60 victory over the UCLA Bruins in Pauley Pavilion. (It was their second straight win in Pauley, where the Ronnie Lee-led Ducks had walloped the Bruins by 20 points the year before, ending their streak of 98 straight home wins and shocking the country.) When the rematch came in Eugene February 19, the Ducks were a decent 13-7 but the Bruins were an even better 20-3 and ranked No. 3. That was the first time I understood what the term “winning the lottery” really meant. Seats weren’t reserved in the student section. If you wanted a good one, you had to sleep overnight outside Mac Court. And that wasn’t the only thing that made that game feel like a rock concert. My friends and I got there early and were in the first rush of fans into the arena in the morning, putting us in the lower level near the court. From the moment we all poured in, the energy in that aging building was
