CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -The Citadel is enjoying a basketball revival under the unlikeliest of leaders – a Conroy.
With third-year coach Ed Conroy at the helm, the Bulldogs (17-10, 12-4 Southern Conference) have posted their most victories in seven years. Their 12 conference wins are the most ever by a Citadel team.
As they head into Wednesday’s game at first-place Davidson, the Bulldogs are on a nine-game winning streak, their longest since they won 13 in a row in 1927.
All this success comes under the cousin of author and former Citadel pariah Pat Conroy, whose scathing accounts of the military school in his books made the family persona non grata at the South Carolina campus.
Ed Conroy, himself a former Bulldogs player, recounts that tale whenever he settles into a living room or slides a chair up close to a kitchen table to talk with a high school player and his family. Sometimes it sounds more like one of Pat’s best-sellers than a recruiting pitch.
sketball coach and athletic director Les Robinson.
But unlike Pat’s memoir “My Losing Season,” about his senior year playing Bulldog basketball in 1967, this story could have a victorious ending.
It’s a remarkable turnaround – Citadel lost 23 and 24 games in Conroy’s first two seasons – accomplished by a man nearly run off the parade ground a quarter century ago.
“It is ironic because I do remember being recruited and my reaction was, ‘I’m not going there,”’ Ed Conroy says with a chuckle.
The Citadel was founded in 1842 and has rarely surrendered easily. School tradition points with pride to Citadel cadets firing on a United States steamer more than three months earlier than what historians consider the Civil War’s start in 1861. The school’s all-male status lasted well into the 1990s.
Conroy’s path to Citadel basketball success seemed blocked forever by Pat’s triumphs as an author, which were coupled with stinging words for South Carolina’s military college.
Pat Conroy’s first book, “The Boo,” was published in 1970 and was later banned on campus. His 1980 work, “The Lords of Discipline,” was a brutal portrait of integration at a Southern military school in Charleston.
But in 1984, Robinson, then Bulldogs basketball coach, had heard of a hard-working, smart point guard from Davenport, Iowa. His only drawback? He was named Conroy.
said.
The coach took the unusual step of vetting Conroy’s recruitment with the head of the school’s Board of Visitors. Robinson had some inside help from the Conroy family, particularly Pat’s father, Donald, made famous as the hard-driven, insensitive, parental bully, Marine Lt. Col. “Bull” Meechum in Pat’s novel, “The Great Santini.”
Donald Conroy, whom Ed described as a “favorite uncle,” encouraged his nephew to move South and embrace the challenge of military school life, no matter what his older cousin wrote.
Things did not always go well for the plebe with the polarizing name. Returning cadets sought him out and made a typically rigorous first year more difficult. Fiercely loyal alumni didn’t help with boos and catcalls at games that almost led Conroy to leave.
Conroy remembered a scrimmage before his freshman season when he was booed at the introduction. He told his teammates right then, “Boys, take a good look at this point guard because that’s it.”
But Conroy leaned on supportive teammates and several accepting cadets to make it through. Even “The Great Santini,” who died in 1998, stood by, watching Conroy’s games from under the basket at Citadel’s McCallister Field House.
“He’s probably laughing up there at this whole thing,” Conroy said of his late uncle.
utenant colonel in the corps of cadets – the highest rank ever achieved by a basketball player.
Robinson continued tracking Conroy after he left the Bulldogs and hired him at North Carolina State in 1990. Conroy spent the next 15 years in the coaching ranks, waiting for his chance when Robinson picked him again in 2006, this time as Citadel coach.
Robinson and Conroy acknowledge the return would not have been as smooth had Pat and the school not settled their estrangement in the early 2000s. Citadel’s one-time lightning rod received an honorary degree from his alma mater in 2000 and has held inspirational book signings for admiring cadets. With his cousin in charge, Pat attends Bulldogs basketball games when he can.
“I said when Ed got the job that ‘No one navigated The Citadel better than my cousin and no one navigated it worse than his cousin,’ but what he’s done and is doing with this team so early in his tenure at The Citadel is simply amazing,” Pat Conroy said. “I’m very proud of Ed’s work and extremely happy for the players and the college.”
Citadel senior Demetrius Nelson says Ed Conroy embraced his legacy and freely shares it with the team, warts and all. “If you’re on campus here, you can’t get away from it,” Nelson said.
success.
The Citadel’s coach has enjoyed the ride to the top. Within reach is the Bulldogs’ second-ever 20-win season, and first since 1979. Maybe there’s a shot at the NIT – Robinson is part of that tournament’s selection group.
“I wouldn’t want to put a lid on those guys,” Ed Conroy says.
There are still jokes from family members about the unlikely journey a young Midwestern kid, name of Conroy, took to bring winning basketball to The Citadel. It’s a story the coach hopes can keep Bulldog basketball thriving.
Even old guard alumni, staunchly proud of their school’s history, have slowly switched sides. “They tell me, ‘This is a Conroy I might like,”’ Ed said.
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