ATHENS -- As he sat in his end-row seat in the horseshoe of Stegeman Coliseum as the first half of the Georgia-Kentucky basketball game roared on before him, Hugh Durham had a question for the reporter sitting beside him Saturday.
“What are they going to do with the kid from North Carolina, the freshman?” the Bulldogs’ legendary basketball coach asked.
Scrambling to come up with an answer, the reporter couldn’t think of a Georgia basketball player from North Carolina.
“No,” Durham clarified. “The linebacker. You know, he played a little bit last season.”
Ah, Jalon Walker. This was a football question. Durham was asking about the 6-foot-2, 225-pound linebacker from Salisbury, N.C. That’s about 100 miles from Durham’s home in Banner Elk, N.C.
No one who knows Durham well should be surprised to get football queries from him. He may be the winningest head coach in Georgia basketball history – and in Florida State history, for that matter – but he’s also a huge football fan. All football, really, but Georgia Bulldogs’ football, in particular.
Durham follows the Dawgs with a passion befitting the rest of football’s fan base. He stays up on recruiting and watches every game on television.
It goes back to his days coaching UGA’s basketball team. Durham arrived in Athens right about the time the late Vince Dooley’s football program made its meteoric ascension. For a while there, both programs were flying high.
That 1982-83 academic year was particularly good. The football team was undefeated before falling to Penn State in the national championship game in the Sugar Bowl. Three months later, Durham’s fifth Georgia basketball team would win the SEC Tournament and beat Virginia Commonwealth, St. Johns and Michael Jordan’s North Carolina Tar Heels on the way to the Final Four in Albuquerque, N.M.
That’s what brought Durham back to Athens on Saturday. His 1983 Bulldogs were honored on the occasion of 40th anniversary of that Final Four appearance. It remains the only one in school history.
Those familiar with UGA basketball understand what an incredible accomplishment that was. Before Durham’s arrival in 1978, Georgia had never played in a postseason tournament at all. He took them to the NIT finals in 1982.
Then there was the fact that Dominique Wilkins, inarguably the greatest basketball player to ever where the Bulldogs uniform, had left for the NBA the year before the Final Four run.
“We felt like if we had Dominique we might’ve won it all,” Durham said of Wilkins, with whom he remains close.
Fittingly, the ‘83 Dogs received a standing ovation from the sellout crowd during halftime on Saturday. Better still, the current Bulldogs paid homage by knocking off Kentucky before a sell-out crowd at the Steg.
“It was a special day honoring the Final Four team that came back and I look forward to spending time with them,” said Mike White, Georgia’s 23rd basketball coach and seventh since Durham left. “It was cool day for Georgia basketball.”
Back in ‘83, Georgia football had just won their third SEC Championship in a row and played for the national championship for the second time since winning the title in 1980. Durham had a front row seat for all of that.
That stands as Example 1 that Georgia basketball can be great at a “football school.” From 1981 to 1991, Durham led Georgia to five NCAA Tournaments, four NITs and the only SEC regular-season championship in school history in 1990. Accordingly, Durham was named SEC Coach of the Year four times.
Perhaps more impressive was the Bulldogs’ consistency during Durham’s tenure. They averaged 17.5 wins a year over his 17 seasons. If Durham was not fully appreciated by Georgia at the time – he was fired in 1995 – he certainly is now.
Georgia has had pockets of success in basketball since. There was the Sweet 16 run under Tubby Smith in 1996, a brief period of controversial succeszs under Jim Harrick, that crazy SEC “Tornado Tournament” championship in 2008 and a few one-and-done NCAA appearances in the last four decades. But nothing like what they had under Durham.
The thinking is that something similarly sustainable at Georgia might be possible under White. He had a fan in Durham even before White took the Bulldogs’ job last March. Ever the astute observer of sports, Durham picked up White’s scent at Louisiana Tech when White became a candidate for the Florida job.
Durham saw White come into Athens and beat the Bulldogs in the NIT and do the same thing to FSU a year later. He saw Louisiana Tech go into Oklahoma and put 100 points on the Sooners in Norman. He rightly predicted to some UF friends in North Carolina that the Gators would hire White, which they did.
Like Durham in Athens, White was not fully appreciated in Gainesville. White spent seven seasons at Florida, compiling a 142-88 record and leading the Gators to six postseason bids including four NCAA tournaments. Including his stint at La Tech, White averaged more than 22 wins a season in 11 seasons.
“I didn’t really know Mike White before, but you follow people and when he came here, I thought he was a really good fit for the University of Georgia,” Durham said Saturday. “I’m happy he’s here and I think a lot of people are happy.”
That said, Durham admitted to not watching Georgia basketball games very often. It’s not that he doesn’t care; it’s that he cares too much.
“I get nervous,” said Durham, who sat next to his wife Malinda and longtime friend Andy Landers as the Bulldogs played Kentucky Saturday. “I’ve been through all that I need. At home, I might go watch some movie on Hallmark or something. Malinda will feed the score to me and, if we’ve got a big lead in the last three minutes, I might watch the game.”
Such a scenario hasn’t presented itself often over the years. It was close Saturday, but the Bulldogs pulled away from Kentucky in the final couple of minutes.
It was a perfect bow on a perfect weekend. The 1983 team gathered at an Athens hotel on Friday night and reminisced. Not everybody was present. Richard Corhen was watching his son play at FSU. Three other players – Terry Fair, Lamar Heard and Troy Hitchcock – have since passed.
But they all were present and accounted for in Durham’s memory. Now 85, he meticulously recounted seemingly every detail of that magical season in a pregame press conference before Saturday’s game. Flanked by Vern Fleming and James Banks, his former stars hung on their former coach’s every word.
As ever, Durham owned the room.
