(Courtesy of Jeff Hartsell, The Post and Courier)

 

 

"I took off as fast as I could with the Corps exploding around me, the Corps breaking as I ran, and the noise held me aloft in its hallucinatory power. I sped along on its amazing wave."

 

That's how Pat Conroy remembers Citadel basketball in his memoir of his senior year in 1967, "My Losing Season."

 

"That's really how it was," the famed writer said the other day as he watched his cousin, Ed Conroy, guide the current Bulldogs through practice at McAlister Field House. "Any time we played here, the Corps was here. And it was magnificent.

 

"I remember being on the break, and Holy God, the Corps would break with you, and there was nothing like it in the world. I'm telling you, it was hard for other teams playing here."

 

And that's how the Conroys - Pat, 61 and once regarded as a traitor by Citadel men, and 39-year-old Ed, the ideal cadet-athlete and now the Bulldogs' coach - hope Citadel basketball can be again. Win or lose, but have fun and make it mean something.

 

"What I would dearly like to happen," Pat Conroy said, "is that Ed becomes so good as the coach that the book he and I will write becomes 'My Winning Season.' "

 

Basketball, the Conroy family game, has brought Pat and Ed - the sons of basketball-playing fathers from the Midwest - together again. And in many ways, the game also brought Pat Conroy back together with The Citadel, the military school whose secrets he laid bare in his 1980 novel, "The Lords of Discipline."

 

That book "put up a Berlin Wall between The Citadel and me," Pat Conroy once wrote, and his later support for Shannon Faulkner and her effort to open The Citadel to women didn't help matters.

 

So controversial was the Conroy name that Les Robinson, then The Citadel's basketball coach, sought advice from the school's Board of Visitors before he would sign a young point guard named Ed Conroy in 1985. And so deep was the rift that Pat Conroy felt like he could not come watch Ed play at McAlister Field House, the same building known as the Armory when Pat played for the Bulldogs from 1965-67.

 

"I was a bit controversial then, and when Ed was here they still did not like seeing me on campus," Pat Conroy said. "So I went to his away games, sometimes with my dad and Ed's dad.

 

"My brother Jim is still bitter about this. He says my dad attended one varsity game I played at The Citadel, but he attended 46 of Ed's games."

 

Pat's dad, Don Conroy, is where basketball began for the Conroy family. The model for the abusive father Pat recalled in his novel "The Great Santini," Don Conroy was a basketball player good enough to outscore future NBA great George Mikan in one game and to be recruited by UCLA legend John Wooden.

 

"My dad was the first great basketball player the family produced, and still the best," Pat Conroy said. "Ed is second, and I'm about 10th. We even have some girls who were better than I was."

 

Pat was a standout player at Beaufort High School while his father, a Marine fighter pilot, was stationed at Parris Island. He played high school ball all over the Lowcountry in the 1960s against schools such as Berkeley and Garrett and St. Andrews, and came to The Citadel as a walk-on, averaging 11.8 points as a senior.

 

Don Conroy was the oldest of nine brothers. His youngest brother, Ed, also was a standout player, at St. Ambrose in Davenport, Iowa, and is Ed Conroy's father. Another of Ed's sons, Duffy Conroy, is an assistant coach at Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

 

"Ed's father is tall, and so was my dad," Pat Conroy said. "But what our fathers did was marry midget women, so we all became very small when we grew up."

 

Though he had to watch Ed's Citadel career from a distance, Pat liked what he saw.

 

"I could see myself in Ed, if I had been good," Pat said. "I marveled at how well-coached he was, and how disciplined. When I was growing up, we moved all the time and I always had a new coach. I never had a coach until I came to The Citadel who had played basketball. I came here not knowing what I was doing. I was so bad, and what was wonderful to me with Ed was to see what I could have been if I had been coached well all along."

 

Ed's career - he averaged 10.9 points as a senior in 1988-89, was team captain and held the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Corps of Cadets, the highest rank achieved by a basketball player in The Citadel's modern era - also helped Pat heal his relationship with The Citadel. Pat received an honorary degree in 2000, spoke at commencement in 2001 and gave the eulogy for "The Boo," the beloved Citadel figure Lt. Col. Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, earlier this year.

 

"Ed going to The Citadel, that was a great repair in my relationship with The Citadel, and a great repair in our family," Pat said. "I had been controversial for so long, and suddenly we have this kid come in, and he does everything right. His cadet career was a dream, nobody has ever done it better than Ed Conroy did it."

 

Now, Ed's job is to turn the Bulldogs into a competitive Southern Conference team. Having Pat Conroy around will help, he said.

 

"One of the things I tell our guys is that basketball should be fun," Ed said. "And Pat is one of the most enjoyable people to be around. Having him around helps bring some fun to McAlister Field House."

 

Pat, who makes his home on Fripp Island, follows the Charleston basketball scene closely. He watched the Tom Herrion-Gregg Marshall-Bobby Cremins episode at College of Charleston with interest, and knows The Citadel's players well. He's bought season tickets and hopes to finish his latest novel by January, so he can attend as many Citadel games as possible.

 

When the Bulldogs open their season on Friday night, Pat plans to be there with members of his team from "My Losing Season" and lots of Conroys.

 

"I like Ed's presence on the court," Pat said. "I've seen him in practices and I know the way he treats kids. His love for the kids, that has always gotten across to them. And I think these kids will kill themselves for him."