The Showman

Everything about the tiny (500 students) Roman Catholic college of Belmont Abbey, nestling in the farmlands of southern North Carolina, suggests rural serenity. Everything, that is, save Basketball Coach Al McGuire, 32. Brash as Broadway, New York-born Al McGuire still has a subway tang to his speech as he blows his horn with the stridency of a barker at Coney. "I fill the people's gymnasiums, give 'em a good show and a good ball game," he says. "I may make silly statements, but I'm no jerk."

No one in U.S. basketball, least of all his enemies, can afford to call Belmont Abbey's McGuire a jerk. By all rights, his adopted school should be the smallest in smalltime basketball: its bandbox gymnasium has only 500 permanent seats; players must clean their own uniforms. But under Al McGuire, Belmont Abbey has developed almost overnight into one of the nation's best small-college teams. Last week, winning two games out of three in Virginia's Quantico Tournament, Belmont Abbey's boys boosted Al McGuire's won-and-lost record to a gaudy 67-14 since 1957.

Below the Battery. By his own account, the secret of McGuire's success lies in taking an average of three players a year down to Abbey from the rich basketball territory of far-off New York. "I can't spend but about $100 recruiting," says McGuire. "So when I go home summers I blow the whole hundred on lunches. I never even try to get a boy who's all-city or anything like that. I look for good boys on bad teams. I like to get boys from poor families, or maybe boys who had to quit school. I want 'em hungry, but not mean. They come down here without seeing the campus--they might not come if they saw it first."

Once he gets his Yankee rebels used to the sensation of being south of the Battery, McGuire teaches them a brand of sound, aggressive basketball that he himself learned back home in New York. With Brother Dick* (now coach of the N.B.A.'s Detroit Pistons), McGuire starred for St. John's and the professional Knicks, where his slashing style earned him the nickname "Tiger."

No Secrets. At Abbey these days they call McGuire "The Fox." Riding the bench as though it were a bronco in full buck, McGuire baits officials ("I must hold the Carolina record for technical fouls"), indicates uncontrollable wrath by rising ominously from his seat and taking off his coat. Behind him, as if on signal, Abbey rooters stand to doff theirs in sympathy. Showman McGuire has also outraged basketball purists by offering to buy every spectator an ice-cream bar if Abbey lost--it did, but the ice cream was donated free by a manufacturer--and by insisting that there are "no secrets to basketball any more except recruiting." Says he: "Give me a seven-footer and I'm smarter than any coach in the business."

The more he wins, the harder McGuire has to hunt for opponents. Most major teams in the Carolinas do not want to risk playing Goliath to Abbey's David. As a result, Belmont Abbey this season will play 22 of its 25 games away from home, including flings for glory against big-time St. Bonaventure and Niagara. Says Al McGuire: "These kids of mine are as good as any you'll find at any school. But nobody wins on the road in this game. If I could get a decent schedule, we could go all the way."

* Al and Dick McGuire are no kin to Frank McGuire, another New Yorker who played for St. John's, now recruits home-town boys for the winning teams he coaches at the University of North Carolina.

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