He’s Trying to Gather Enough Strength

Hank the Bank comes back from the doctor’s office. Looks tired. No pep to his step. He’s been prodded and poked, X-rayed and wired to machines. He’s had his head examined. Had his heart checked. So far, so good. He feels fine. Feels strong as a lion. He’s sick and tired, all right--sick and tired of being tested.

“But the doc’s got a job to do,” Hank Gathers said with a sigh, grabbing a chair. “If he clears me to play basketball, and then I go out there and collapse again, he’d better be able to show that he ran every test there was on me.”

College basketball’s leading scorer and rebounder for 1988-89, Hank (the Bank) Gathers of Loyola Marymount wanders around Gersten Pavilion these days, waiting for a clean bill of health. He fainted at the free-throw line during the Dec. 9 game against UC Santa Barbara--just blacked out and buckled at the knees--and hasn’t played or practiced since.

This is a huge, huge week coming up for the wizards of Westchester, a week that could catapult the 5-1 Lions into the national rankings. They play Tuesday at Oregon State, then entertain Oklahoma Saturday--at 9 p.m., PST. (Thanks, ESPN.) For a week such as this, Loyola needs all hands on deck.

And Gathers is eager to go. If he plays against Oklahoma, a spare scoreboard should be kept handy, in case the current one blows a fuse. The over-under should be between 250 and 300 points for this one, because Oklahoma has already scored 173 points in one game this season, Loyola 152--both against U.S. International, the team that has been to defense what Julio Iglesias has been to rap music.

Loyola plays a demanding schedule, unlike some people we could mention.

Oh, heck. Let’s mention them.

“I was watching Oklahoma play Las Vegas on TV, and on the screen they put up the names of some of the teams Oklahoma has been playing,” Gathers said. “They played one team that I have never heard of in my life. I never heard of a couple of them. Whoever’s scheduling those teams, he’s cheating his own players. You can see Oklahoma is a great team. He’s cheating them by making them play nobodies like that.”

It’s a tell-it-like-it-is quality such as this that Gathers intends to bring to his radio-TV career. This guy is busier than Brent Musburger. SportsChannel cable people have him doing his own short pregame interview program--”I guess I’ll call it the ‘Hank the Bank Show’ “--before every Loyola game they televise.

Channel 5’s Ed Arnold has been taking Gathers to Clipper games and such, so he can take notes on interviewing. And KXLU, the on-campus Loyola station, is lining up Gathers and teammate Bo Kimble for a regular gig.

Gathers, a 6-foot-7 senior who averaged 32.7 points and 13.7 rebounds a game, intends to put as much work into a possible sportscasting career--post-NBA or whenever--as he did into his basketball career.

That’s why Gathers went to Roy Englebrecht’s Sportscasters Camp last summer with 120 other would-be Vin Scullys and Chick Hearns. He has wanted to work a mike ever since, as a kid from the Philadelphia projects, he used to imitate Dave Zinkoff, the Spectrum’s famed public-address announcer, now deceased.

“I had the pleasure of having Mr. Zinkoff do my high school championship game, and when that man announced your name, that’s when you knew you’d finally made it big,” Gathers said.

At sportscasters camp, Gathers went with several fellow trainees to an Angels-Seattle Mariners game at Anaheim Stadium, where he discovered that when it comes to announcing baseball, he might choose to stick to basketball.

“They played my tape at the camp, and everyone was laughing at it, it was so funny,” Gathers said.

He’s learning, though.

“My man at SportsChannel, he calls me One-Take Hank. The only bloopers we had weren’t my fault,” he said.

Honesty is Hank the Bank’s policy. He doesn’t mince words. “That’s why I’ll make somebody a good analyst someday, don’t you think?”

Before then, Gathers could become a popular pro wherever he ends up, provided his game is anywhere near as good as it has been on the college level.

Clippers Coach Don Casey, whose team practiced Friday against Loyola, is impressed by Gathers’ skills. But Casey believes Gathers would be a lot better off to land in Denver or San Antonio or Orlando or anyplace that runs a wide-open, take-no-prisoners offense, rather than with someone such as the Lakers or Detroit or even Minnesota that specializes in a patient, lots-of-ball-movement attack.

Gathers is smart enough to realize that not everybody takes his scoring and rebound totals as seriously as they might if he played someplace else--at a more prominent school, for instance, or on some team that doesn’t shoot five seconds after it crosses the center-court stripe.

“If I was in the Big East, no, I probably wouldn’t be the leader in the big categories,” he said. “But it’s not like my talent level has been affected by being here instead of there. The WCC (West Coast Conference) isn’t as reputable as the Big East, but there’s good basketball being played here.

“And you look and see what my totals were when I play the big teams. See if I can’t handle it.”

Uh, OK. Last season, Gathers lit up Oklahoma for 27 points, Arkansas for 28, Pepperdine for 31, DePaul for 32 and Oregon State for 34. He also topped the 40 mark four times, including a 49-point, 26-rebound spree against Nevada Reno. And just think how Hank the Bank would score if he could make free throws--last year, he hit 56%; this year, he’s doing even worse.

It was at the line, after laboring for 23 minutes against Santa Barbara, where Gathers suddenly fell into a heap.

“I noticed that I wasn’t breathing well. I was getting short breaths while I was running, and I’m probably one of the best runners we’ve got, if not the best. I was kind of tired, unusually tired, when Eric McArthur fouled me and I stepped to the line.

“I wiped my face off, took a deep breath, and suddenly I felt a little light-headed. Felt a little rush coming on. That’s when I blacked out. For a second of time, I could feel myself falling, real slow. When I was on the floor, I was awake. My memory’s picture-perfect about everything else, but I lost a second or two somewhere on the way down. I remember wanting to get up, but a couple of my teammates grabbed me. I wasn’t so much frightened as confused.”

What was wrong?

“I still don’t know,” Gathers said. “Neither does the doctor. He’s tested me for everything. I’m glad he’s being careful, but we’ve got to get me back in the game.”