PHILADELPHIA— There’s little mystique surrounding the home court of the University of Southern California men’s basketball team.
It doesn’t hold the history of UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, or the cramped madness of Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena boasts a roof, though, and from where Trojans’ head coach Henry Bibby stands, that’s not too shabby.
The well-traveled fifth-year coach has found himself in worse situations, and isn’t shy about reminding his players of them for a variety of reasons: to scold, to teach, to entertain.
“It’s tidbits here and there,”USCsenior Brian Scalabrine said. “He’ll get on us and he’ll say, ‘I’ve been in Puerto Rico, where the birds fly into the gym because it’s outdoors.’ When they’d poop on the court, he had to go out there and mop it up, and we’re like, ‘Whoa, what the heck is going on here?’ and then we’ll go back to practice.”
Bibby, 51, accumulated countless stories on his long, winding road to the USC head coaching job. It started as a kid back in Franklinton, N.C., about 30 minutes from Duke University, tonight’s opponent in the NCAATournament’s East Region Final.
It included a playing career at UCLA and nine years in the NBA. He spent 10 years coaching throughout the Continental Basketball Association, and yes, in summer leagues in Puerto Rico and Venezuela before finally getting his shot.
“It’s been a long road. It’s not the typical way you get to be a college basketball coach,”Bibby said. “Puerto Rico, every minor league city in the CBA, Venezuela and now an opportunity to coach here.”
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Opportunity didn’t always find Henry Bibby.
Franklinton is located just 30 minutes from Raleigh, but Bibby didn’t venture there very often. Mostly, he stayed in the town of 1,300 and worked the family farm.
“It’s a great place to grow up. If I had to do it all over again I would be happy to have been raised on a farm where there’s tobacco, corn, cotton and cucumbers and all this stuff you get up and work on,”Bibby said. “It was a great environment for me to grow up in, and I understand what hard work is all about.”
He also left time for basketball, and the prep All-American excelled in his all-black high school. Bibby always had dreamed of attending North Carolina, or some other Atlantic Coast Conference powerhouse, but didn’t get the chance.
“I grew up in 1968 with integration and segregation, so I never got the opportunity to consider going to Duke, N.C. State or Wake Forest,”Bibby said. “I really wanted to go to the University of North Carolina, but things didn’t work out that way.
“I’ve spoken to DeanSmith quite a few times and he’s said he wished the opportunity was there for me to play at North Carolina, but during that time, there were very few black athletes that went to the ACCschools.”
Bibby did take a long look at squads in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association — of which Salisbury’s Livingstone College is a member — and thought about attending historically black schools like N.C. Central, Johnson C. Smith or Winston-Salem State.
But the principal of Person-Albion High, his cousin, stressed just how lucky Bibby would be to attend UCLA.
“I ended up going out to Los Angeles and it was probably the best thing that happened to me,”Bibby said. “You’re always close-minded until you put something in front of you that you’ve never experienced. Going to California opened up a whole new life for me of common-sense learning.”
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Los Angeles presented one stunning new experience after another.
Four-lane highways, steaks, salads, cinnamon rolls, corn flakes, bagels — all things Bibby said were foreign to him.
“It was very scary. I took my first airplane ride back in 1968. I remember United Airlines leaving Raleigh-Durham airport, one little terminal,”Bibby said. “I was sitting next to this gentleman. I was holding onto the seat so tight, he said ‘You’re not going to fall.’ ”
When he arrived at UCLA, Bibby was a stranger everywhere but on a basketball court. He joined John Wooden’s legendary squad and, as the starting point guard, led the Bruins to NCAAtitles in 1970, 1971 and 1972.
He made an immediate impact in the NBA, winning a championship with the New York Knicks in 1973. Nine years later, he left his playing days behind in search of his next goal — coaching.
He guided the Lancaster Lightning, a CBAsquad just outside Philadelphia, to a championship in his first season in 1982.
He joined the Arizona State staff in 1983, just in time for the Sun Devils to become entangled in an NCAA rules violation. With a black cloud from the scandal hanging over him, Bibby returned to the minor leagues, coaching in Baltimore, Tulsa, Savannah and Oklahoma City — but never getting his shot at the college game.
He found plenty of success in the minor leagues, but his enthusiasm was waning.
“He was the trainer, he was the coach, he was the assistant coach, he was the bus driver,”Scalabrine said. “He was everything, that’s all he had.”
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Bibby took his talents overseas in the early 1990s, coaching in Venezuela and Puerto Rico. He still maintained close contacts in the States, and kept sending out feelers.
“I was walking the roads in Puerto Rico eight or nine years ago and you really have to humble yourself to pull yourself back up at times,”Bibby said. “I’ve played on great teams, around the greatest athletes, and all the sudden you’re in Puerto Rico.
“You really become godly when nothing is happening for you. I say, ‘God, why am I here. What’s going on?I think I’m a pretty good coach, people tell me I should be coaching in college basketball, the NBA, but I’m not there. What’s the deal here? This ain’t fair.’ ”
But Bibby, who said he became a Christian during those tough times, was buoyed by hope from above.
“I heard this voice tell me — and don’t blow this out, I don’t hear too many voices — ‘Wait, Henry, it’s not your time.I’ll put you where Iwant you to be.’ ”
A few years later, Bibby was driving between cities in Puerto Rico when he got a page. An assistant coaching position at Southern Cal had opened up, and he had a phone interview with then-head coach Charlie Parker.
Parker gave Bibby the best news he’d heard in a while: You’re hired.
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Bibby replaced Parker on an interim basis when the Trojans fired the former coach. With nine games left on the 1995-96 schedule, it was Bibby’s time to shine after less than a year as an assistant.
USC promptly went 0-9.
“Ilost all those games at the end of the year and I didn’t think I’d get the job,”Bibby said. “There were powers that were bigger than what was happening at work and it happened for me.”
Bibby guided Southern Cal to a 17-11 record in his first full season and a spot in the NCAATournament. After a 9-19 campaign in 1997-98, the Trojans went 15-13 and 16-14 the next two years.
Now, though, USCfinds itself at 24-9 overall, one game removed from the Final Four.
Bibby’s Trojans are playing Duke for the second time in two seasons, and this time he’s hoping all the friends and family back home will be rooting for his team instead of the Blue Devils.
“When we played Duke last year I thought my mother was pulling for Duke,”Bibby explained.“I said, ‘Mom, gosh, I’m your son!’
“She said, ‘Henry, this is what we look at every day.’ ”
Despite the trials of growing up in the South, Bibby remains close to his family and close to the Tar Heel state. But he feels perfectly comfortable in Los Angeles, too.
Right at home in the closed-in, fully air-conditioned L.A. Memorial Sports Arena.
“I cherish this opportunity, I cherish being part of getting this program started and putting it where it is,”Bibby said. “I really appreciate that. I’m happy to be a part of this.”
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Sportswriter Steve Hanf is covering Duke in the NCAA Tournament.
Steve Hanf