Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 6, 1994 TAG: 9407060026
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Foster is a dollar-saver who packs a couple of polo shirts, a pair of khakis and a pair of docksiders and ``thinks he's two steps from the cover of GQ.'' So says Raveling.
Zings aren't the only things these two basketball coaches trade. When they began coaching the United States' Goodwill Games team Monday, their month-long assignment figured to reduce their postage bills but not their information exchange.
Foster and Raveling - head coaches at Virginia Tech and Southern California, respectively - are close friends and charter members of a nine-man coaches' roundtable that has shared insights on basketball and life for 15 years.
Foster's country twang and Raveling's gravelly, straightforward city voice first conversed about basketball after Raveling, then at Washington State, called Foster, then at Clemson, and asked if he could drop by the South Carolina school to talk basketball. It was a standard Raveling thing, Foster said - meeting with other coaches whose work he admired.
When Palatka, Fla. (Foster) met Washington, D.C. (Raveling), nothing in common became everything in common. Both are opinionated, both are avid readers (Raveling subscribes to more than 75 newspapers, according to his Southern Cal bio), both are financially astute (Foster's investments ensure he isn't coaching for the money).
``We just had an immediate comfort zone,'' said Raveling, 57. ``If anyone ever said anything bad to me about Bill, I'd be more suspect about that person than about Bill.''
Added Foster, 58: ``What you see with George is what you get. He's not on any ego trip, and he's hardly ever down.''
They've traveled to Europe and Asia together, and their families have vacationed together. Sometimes, Foster said, his wife and Raveling will go shopping; Linda Foster might say to a modeling Raveling, ``Oh, George, that's you.''
``He'll buy it, it doesn't matter what it costs,'' Bill Foster said.
Both men obviously value their friendship.
When Raveling was named head coach of the U.S. Goodwill Games entry, Foster said, Raveling called and said something like, ``If I do this, will you?''
Foster accepted, and joined Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson as Raveling's assistant for the Goodwill men's competition, scheduled for July 23-Aug.7 at the Lenin Sport and Concert Complex in St.Petersburg, Russia. Sampson is a friend to Foster and Raveling, the man he succeeded as head coach at Washington State.
``It's just amazing the compatibility among the three of us,'' Raveling said.
The international assignment is just a continuation of the basketball studies of Foster and Raveling. About 15 years ago, after Raveling's visit to Clemson, he, Foster and mutual friend Glenn Wilkes (then the Stetson coach) figured they'd make it an annual skull session. Ground rules called for each coach to invite two others to be charter members; one of Foster's invitees was Bobby Hussey. ``That's exactly why Bobby's with me now [at Tech],'' Foster said.
Other original members included: Del Harris, now head coach of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers; Mel Gibson, then the North Carolina-Wilmington coach; Sonny Smith, now the coach at Virginia Commonwealth; Gary Colson, the current Fresno State coach; and Murray Arnold, who has served as head coach at Tennessee-Chattanooga and Western Kentucky.
The current group includes Harris, Connecticut's Jim Calhoun and Kansas' Roy Williams. That group boasts two Final Four appearances (Williams), a 500-game winner (Wilkes 551) and more than 2,000 coaching victories, including Foster's 469 and Raveling's 336.
The host coach sets up a meeting agenda every year. Guests have included Purdue's Gene Keady, Utah's Rick Majerus and former Virginia coach Terry Holland.
``It's two to two-and-a-half days of concentrated exchange of ideas,'' Foster said. ``It's 75 percent basketball, 25 percent financial planning, contracts, recruiting, personal growth.''
The group is tight; the night before Harris took the Lakers' job, he called Foster to let him know. Foster said a struggling member may get phone calls or flowers from his comrades.
Raveling was a recipient when his first few Southern Cal teams went 35-77. Foster knows how it is, having won a total of 20 games in his first two Tech seasons. That's why Raveling brushes off the U.S. team's loss of Arkansas' Corliss Williamson (broken wrist), Wake Forest's Randolph Childress (shoulder surgery) and UCLA's Ed O'Bannon (summer school).
``It's just a challenge for us,'' Raveling said. ``Obviously, we're not going to send our best players. That's kind of the fun of the challenge. [Bill and I] have been survivors all our careers; we've had to do more with less.''
Both men got their first prominent head coaching jobs in a top conference at an out-of-the-way school: Foster at Clemson in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Raveling at Washington State in the Pacific-10. Similar career moves soon followed - Raveling (with a stop at Iowa) to Southern Cal, Foster to Miami. Los Angeles and Miami, Foster said, are ``event'' cities in which a major-college program has major competition for attention and status.
This month, however, Raveling, Foster and Sampson will lead USA Basketball's main international entry. Be assured this is a business trip, not a vacation. On the phone the other day, Foster asked Raveling if he knew of anything that needed to be done. Raveling asked Foster to scout a couple of Goodwill Games teams who were playing in a tournament - in Athens, Greece.
``If it fits in my schedule, I'll fly [from the U.S. workouts in California] to Greece, and meet [the team] in Helsinki,'' Foster said. ``[George figured] if they're playing, we need to send someone.''
by CNB