Cheers and tears greet Seattle U.'s return

Dave Cox remembers rooting through the trash in the Seattle University athletic offices in the early 1980s. The school had dropped from NCAA Division I to NAIA in basketball and now it was throwing away its history.

For Cox, the women's basketball coach until after 2003-04 season, this was sacrilege. The school had been too good for too long to let go of all its history. Cox was determined to recover everything he could. He became a one-man archivist.

"I found all of the Hall of Fame plaques and lists in the garbage," Cox said Thursday night. "Stuff was thrown on the floor. Somebody wanted to use an old wooden cabinet, so they just threw out all of the game film. I found it and kept it. Looking back I wish I had kept even more. I tried to save as much stuff as I could."

This was between 1983 and '85, when basketball became an afterthought at the school. For Cox, this period in the early 1980s felt like some kind of nightmarish Cultural Revolution.

But Thursday night those dark days were forgotten. Seattle University was coming back.

On the first day of the new year, Seattle University's basketball past returned to take a look at its future. Johnny O'Brien and Clint Richardson sat along the baseline. Eddie Miles was three rows from the court.

They represented a piece of the program's storied history. The trip to the Final Four and the loss to Kentucky in 1958. The win at the end of the 1966 season over eventual national champion Texas Western.

The years and years of national prominence, the grand names out of the past, from the O'Brien twins to Elgin Baylor, from Miles to Richardson and Frank Oleynick.

This season Seattle University, which de-emphasized basketball after 1979-80, is beginning the long trip back. The school is starting a new era, returning home to Division I.

Thursday night, it was back to the future.

The Redhawks (8-5) debuted their new product in Seattle's largest hoop theater, KeyArena, beating Loyola Marymount of the West Coast Conference, 49-39. And for Johnny O'Brien, an All-American in the early 1950s and the school's all-time leading scorer, it was a synchronous return to a familiar place.

"Back when Eddie [O'Brien] and I were playing and when Elgin was playing, we were an independent and we were playing at the Seattle Center," O'Brien said. "Tonight we're an independent and we're playing at the Seattle Center. It's a great start back."

Johnny O'Brien thanked coach Joe Callero, athletic director Bill Hogan and school president Father Stephen Sundborg for "putting us back on track."

Sure, this hardly was a marquee matchup. Loyola Marymount was winless in 14 games, had lost its head coach, Bill Bayno, to illness and lost its past four games by an average of 32.5 points.

"It's a beginning," said longtime Philadelphia 76er Richardson, who is fourth on Seattle U.'s all-time scoring list. "I don't think we have to get excited about a beginning. There's a lot of work to do. It's going to take a lot of work. I'm cautious because I want to see it done right. But they have an opportunity, and if they do it right, this can be a really good thing for Seattle."

For most of the first 30 minutes of this coming-out party, Seattle U. played nervously. This team that already has D-I road wins over Louisiana Tech and UC Irvine and played Oregon State tough three days early, seemed uncomfortable on this grander stage.

The Redhawks had difficulty with Loyola's 2-3 zone, missed 10 of their first 14 shots, committed eight turnovers in the first 14 minutes and fell behind 21-12.

"We know we're going to get our heads bounced around for a couple of years," O'Brien said. "It will be somewhat painful in some ways. It will take a little while, but we're actually doing better than what I thought we'd be doing.

"Somebody asked me how long it's going to take to get back [to prominence]. I told them probably five years, unless we find the next Elgin Baylor and then it starts immediately."

Richardson is right. The process of transitioning from NCAA Division II to D-I is arduous. The recruiting base has to be expanded.

"I don't know how you can come into something like this very fast," said Miles, who played in the early 1960s and remains the third all-time leading scorer. "You've got to get out there and recruit, and that's going to take a little while."

This Redhawks' win shows how far they've come and how far they still have to go. In the final 10 minutes, shots finally dropped and their depth wore down Loyola.

And, as Chris Gweth dribbled out the final seconds, the enthusiastic crowd of 4,835 gave the team a standing ovation. This was Seattle U's March Madness in January.

"I was trying not to cry," said Cox, who came to the school in 1977. "I've only cried twice. The first time was when we dropped out of Division I and the other time was in the last 18 seconds of the game tonight. This was a great night."

A return to the future.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists