Eerie Moment at Gersten Pavilion : The scene: The moment started as a typical one for a great player. But it suddenly turned into a moment of horror, sending out shock waves.

It was a spectacular, alley-oop dunk.

Hank Gathers, at full speed from the right wing and high above the rim, took a 35-foot pass from Terrell Lowery with his right hand and stuffed it through the basket--with a Portland player between him and Lowery.

It was patented Gathers. He, as the center of one of the greatest offenses in college basketball history, was known and admired for those kind of acrobatic antics.

“That was a big-time dunk. NBA style all the way,” Portland forward Steve Hutchinson said.

At the time of the incident, Loyola Marymount had just taken a 25-13 lead over Portland with Gathers dunk shot.

As is Loyola’s style, Gathers then hurriedly jockeyed into his normal position in the Lions’ daunted full-court pressure defense near mid-court.

He turned to face the inbounds pass, took a couple of steps to his right and crashed to the floor with a thud.

“If you didn’t see it, you heard it,” said one fan.

It was 5:14 on a Sunday afternoon. A gathering of 4,000 people never sounded so quiet.

IT HAPPENED AGAIN

Most of those in attendance for a West Coast Conference semifinal tournament game against Portland knew of Gathers mysterious fainting incident in December against Santa Barbara.

Many immediately remembered that night here when Gathers fainted at the free throw line in the second half. It was eerie then; eerie now.

Suddenly, it was happening again. Only this time, Gathers would not get up.

One hour, 40 minutes later, at 6:55 p.m., Gathers was pronounced dead at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital.

The cause of his death will not be fully known until an autopsy is performed, but doctors believe Gathers sustained a sudden loss of blood pressure significant enough that it killed him.

Nearly everyone was stunned, certainly distraught.

Here was a magnificent athlete, capable of amazing feats of strength and endurance. And he was dead at age 23.

“Words are hard right now,” Loyola Coach Paul Westhead said, in a prepared statement. “This is the hardest thing I’ve experienced.”

Said Portland Coach Larry Steele, “We’re all stunned, saddened, and just feel so helpless at the moment.”

Steele, who himself missed two games this earlier this season with a heart condition, said his and his players’ thoughts and prayers “are with Hank’s family, the Loyola Marymount team and the university.”

HELP DOESN’T HELP

After two or three seconds of apparent convulsions, Gathers seemed to snap out of it. He appeared to be like a boxer who had been knocked down but not out.

But that moment was brief, too. He slumped back down, could not get up.

A swarm of coaches, players, family and medical personnel soon surrounded him as he lay on his back, a few feet across the center line, on Loyola’s offensive side of the court.

Four minutes went by before the 6-foot-7 senior was lifted onto a stretcher and carried out the south exit of Gersten Pavilion. It would be another 15 minutes before the ambulance left for Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital. In that time, various attempts to revive him had only been temporarily successful.

WATCHING, WAITING

An announcement came over the public address system that the players had gone to the locker rooms for 10 minutes. They would not return for a game--not on this night.

“I had chills going through me, and I knew about his condition,” said Portland’s Hutchinson. “I figured he just fainted again and would be all right, but that wasn’t the case.”

When the crowd was released at 5:45--one-half hour after Gathers first fell--and informed that both the Loyola-Portland game and the USD-Pepperdine game, scheduled for 7 p.m., had been postponed indefinitely, it broke into applause, and people exited without incident.

Very little information was made available concerning Gathers’ condition, other than he had been taken to Daniel Freeman Hospital.

At the hospital, everything that needed to be known about what had happened could be seen on the faces of family members and teammates who had gone to the hospital, hoping to wish Gathers well. There was nobody to wish well. He had died at 6:55 p.m.

Chris Knight, a 6-10 sophomore at Loyola, emerged from the emergency room backdoor, looked into the night air and shouted, to nobody in particular: “I can’t believe it. It can’t be.”

THE CAMPUS HEARS

Sophomore Jerry Neglia said that he heard the news while he was studying in the campus library.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Neglia said. “Then I heard someone say that it was serious, really serious. I believed it after that.”

Sophomore Oscar Arce said that he heard that Gathers had died while he was in the student center, The Lair.

Arce said that he and Gathers were in a class in English poetry together and that the class “isn’t going to be the same. Just having him in the class was an honor.”

Sophomore Greg Miller said he was at the game and that he was shocked to see Gathers fall, especially since he stayed down for so long.

Miller said he didn’t think that Gathers’ death had “sunk in yet with the campus as a whole.

“I think it’s really going to be bad this week.”