A good guy calls it a career, Roth Kroger Report, 2/20/02
We lost another one of the good guys this week when West Virginia University head basketball coach Gale Catlett announced his retirement after 24 years and 439 wins at his alma mater.

As it turned out, Catlett's last game as WVU's coach was against Virginia Tech on Feb. 13th in Morgantown. The Hokies walked out of the WVU Coliseum following their 78-63 victory with no clue they had faced "The Cat" for the last time.

"I was shocked when I heard the news," Hokies' coach Ricky Stokes said. "He has done such a fantastic job there over the years and I had gotten to know him at BIG EAST meetings and playing them the last two or three years. It's a real shock to see him step down."

It's a surprise and a bit of a disappointment knowing that Gale Catlett won't be on the sidelines for the Mountaineers any longer. He was one of the old school coaches who preached teamwork and implored his kids to "play with great pride to represent the name on the front of your jersey -- West Virginia." The gold and blue meant a lot to him - and for good reason. He grew up in West Virginia, played for the Mountaineers, and became that school's all-time winningest coach.

He was a tremendous teacher of basketball who believed in unselfish play, was strong on fundamentals, and loved his players. Of course, this is a new era of college basketball now, and players have changed dramatically in the last few years.

Kids today are more concerned about making SportsCenter than making a good pass. They'd rather set up their Sony Playstations then set a good pick.

That's a real challenge for any old school coach who has a hard time understanding the Îme - first' mentality of so many of today's players. Ask M.K. Turk or Sonny Smith or Denny Crum or Bill Foster or Wimp Sanderson. Each was a terrific coach who was successful for decades at a high level. Yet each one will tell you that the sport they love so much, and specifically at the college level, really changed in the last 10 years. These guys loved to coach, just like Catlett. Each stepped down with a lot of wins and memories, but a funny taste about the state of the game they love so much.

"It used to be when you made a home visit to recruit a kid, you had mom, dad, the player and the high school coach in a living room with a plate of cookies and five glasses of milk," Smith told me a couple years ago before he stepped down at VCU. "But now, none of the kids has both a mom and a dad there, and the high school coaches aren't involved at all. You deal with the AAU coach and an Îuncle' or Îfriend of the family' who always wants to pull you aside and discuss something in another room when the home visit is over. It's not the same anymore."

It is true, however, that coaches today have changed too.

There's a lot more pressure on these guys. They are expected to win and win quickly and thus are -- as a group -- a stressed, competitive bunch who stay on their cell phones and fly from camp to camp to scout out the best prospects.

I recall back in the 80's when Sanderson, who was coaching at Alabama, and Crum, who was at Louisville, skipped their teams' noon-time practices to speak to the Blacksburg Sports Club. Try finding a coach today who would miss one of his team's practices to speak (for free) to a group of boosters from the other team.

After playing in Blacksburg for the last time, Southern Miss coach M.K. Turk invited the media to the hotel bar at the old Marriott on Prices Fork Road.

"We've played here for the last time and I can tell ya, we ain't comin' back," Turk laughed as he raised his drink to a toast to the Southern Miss-Virginia Tech series which had produced some great games, but was ending with the demise of the old Metro Conference. Believe me, coaches do not take the media out for drinks after games these days.

We're running low on these old school coaches these days, that's for sure. And now Gale Catlett has joined the ranks of Îformer coach' himself after taking WVU to 16 postseason appearances in 24 seasons.

While he never got the credit he deserved in his own state - perhaps because of a somewhat icy relationship with the West Virginia media - anyone who competed against Catlett would tell you this guy could flat out coach basketball. Five Virginia Tech coaches faced Catlett and his tough-as-nails zone press - Charlie Moir, Frankie Allen, Bill Foster, Bobby Hussey and Stokes. That five-some finished with a 12-14 record against Catlett.

But now, he's gone, and so starting next year, there will be a new man leading WVU's program, and it won't be the same.

We'll miss seeing that tall figure in front of the WVU bench.   We'll miss that leather sports coat and hearing those pregame comments about Coach Rupp and his days at Kentucky.

We've lost another old school coach to the golf course, or the color analyst's role, or wherever Catlett chooses to go.   We're truly sorry to see him go.