By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN —
The first thing you notice about John Antonik these days is the weight he’s lost.
Did it, he said, the right way, so you understand why he looks so good. Good, old-fashioned hard work.
The man who is in charge of West Virginia University’s athletic department’s website has been so busy over the past year that it’s a wonder he ever found time to eat anything.
First of all, keeping up with 17 sports on line is a major endeavor, writing notes and columns and news and turning out videos requires as much stamina as it does ability. But Antonik, while working this more than full-time job, has managed to author two books on West Virginia sports history, the second of which will be released Sept. 1.
The first book was a beautiful product entitled the “West Virginia University Football Vault,” a coffee table offering that is unique in its production, covering the history of the Mountaineer program from its earliest days to the present and doing so with a number of inserts of copies of historical items, turned the book into a living document.
Now Antonik has moved on to the basketball program titled “Roll out the Carpet … 101 Seasons of West Virginia University Basketball.”
In reality, it was supposed to be 100 Seasons of West Virginia Basketball, but they couldn’t arrange a deal to publish it on time. Good thing. It comes out off a Final Four season with interest in the team as high as it has been since the Jerry West era.
This is a more traditional book the football one, done without the gimmicks, taking you from the first game against Backyard Brawl rival Pitt in 1904 to Bob Huggins’ magnificent return to his alma mater, capped with a return to the Final Four.
The nearly 500 photographs and illustrations are absolutely fabulous, carrying you from the “short shorts” period to today’s baggy bottoms, from the crew cut days of Jerry West through the blown out Afros of the 70s to today’s mop top of Joe Alexander and the shaved head of Da’Sean Butler.
The names alone conjure up images, all of them captured within, be it the tattoos of Kevin Pittsnogle or the leaping ability of Alexander, the two-handed set shot of Marshall “Little Sleepy”
Glenn to the antics of Hot Rod Hundley or the sheer intensity of Jerry West. Think of Huggins and you think of a snarl on the sideline, that is there, too, as is the compassion he showed as he knelt over an injured Da’Sean Butler, cradling him in both arms.
A history buff, Antonik lets you know that when Jerry West and Willie Akers came to West Virginia as freshmen, the Russians were putting Sputnik I into space, West having more of an effect on life in West Virginia than did the Sputnik.
The program, of course, is so rich in tradition and history that Antonik has a mother lode of anecdotes to draw upon, some well known, others far less.
And that is what really makes this book live. Sports too often are relegated to dry statistics and dull recreations of games played. It’s the people and the stories, however, that bring the games to life and give energy to the book.
He went to the late Tony Constantine, the long-time Morgantown sports writer, to give you an idea of just how tough “Little Sleepy” Glenn, the first great player at WVU, was supposed to be.
“If Glenn and (legendary heavyweight boxing champion) Joe Louis were locked in a room and had to fight to get out, I’m not sure Glenn wouldn’t be the one who came out standing,” Constantine said.
In truth, Antonik spent a whole lot more than this past year working on this endeavor. He says he began five years ago, and he says he talked to every WVU basketball coach back to Fred Schaus, who started in 1954.
Schaus told Antonik that coming up with Jerry West as the centerpiece on his great team that went to the NCAA Final was the easy part, finding complementary players was not.
“Your great baseball players, your great football players and your great basketball players … everyone can recognize great talent,” Schaus said. “The ones that were difficult were the ones that you have to kind of take and you that they develop. You are looking at them as 17-, 18-year-old kids and thinking when he gets to college, he is going to get a lot stronger and that makes a heck of a difference. The role players are the ones that are difficult to judge and recruit – or even try to recruit.”
Players like Bucky Bolyard and Willie Akers were in that mode, Schaus logging a whole lot of tough miles in his 1957 Chevrolet on the winding roads of West Virginia in search of talent.
He talked about going to Aurora, a town of 150 people, to see Bolyard in a gym that had six inches between the baseline and the wall.
“Why, a player can’t even take the ball out of bounds,” Schaus said.
Much of college athletics is involved in recruiting, and Antonik reveals a little-known fact. John Havlicek, the Ohio State All-American and NBA Hall of Fame player, almost was a Mountaineer.
Havlicek came out of Bridgeport, Ohio, right across the river from Wheeling, in the early late 1950s. Had the Mountaineers pulled that one off they would have had a succession of All-Americans that ran from Rod Hundley to Jerry West to John Havlicek to Rod Thorn.
But circumstances just didn’t work out. Also a great football player, the Buckeyes legendary coach Woody Hayes was hot on his trail and as he often did, he would have some generals from around Ohio talk to a prospect. That was head-turning to a kid in the late 1950s with the Cold War in full swing.
Then, on the day they were supposed to meet with Havlicek, he showed up late, wound up in the company of Ohio State basketball coach Fred Taylor and the Mountaineers were out of the running.
The book is cram full of such stories, some of which you may know, many of which you do not. But if you are a WVU basketball fan, at $39.95 this will revive a lot of sweet and some not-so-sweet memories for you.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
