COMMENTARY : Big Time at LMU Now Big Headache

Loyola Marymount’s little affair with big-time basketball didn’t result in a national championship. But it may well result in what lots of big-time basketball’s dates have come home with--investigation by the NCAA for possible violations.

Yes, little LMU, the school whose run-and-gun basketball team caught the nation’s fancy last spring with its plucky tournament play after the sudden death of star Hank Gathers, may soon be standing alongside such basketball powers as Nevada Las Vegas, Kentucky, and Maryland, all of whose programs have been studied under the NCAA’s magnifying glass.

At the moment, the NCAA is merely observing as a lawsuit unfolds. But the disclosure that Gathers’ mother has said, under oath, that her son was given money by Albert Gersten, a Loyola booster, almost assures that the NCAA will take a close look of its own.

The circumstances demand that the NCAA be very careful in this one--a fallen hero is involved here--but the booster-athlete relationship is one of the NCAA’s pet peeves. Lots of great basketball programs that were financed by unscrupulous or overzealous boosters have been torpedoed by the NCAA.

And what is the NCAA likely to see when it looks?

Well, certainly it will see whatever the Gathers family’s wrongful-death suit against Loyola turns up. If the evidence fails to support the charge against Gersten--and with Gathers dead, the charge will be difficult to prove--the NCAA may also have no case.

But the NCAA need not confine itself simply to the issues of the Gathers lawsuit. With its broad powers, it can go poking around wherever it thinks it may find something. And chances are, it will poke and dig well beyond the Gathers case.

That’s because Gathers didn’t perform as a single. He and teammate Bo Kimble were an entry. You talked of one, you mentioned the other. It was Hank and Bo, Bo and Hank.

They came West, together, from the same poor section of Philadelphia, the same high school, to play at USC. And when that didn’t work out, they left, again together, moving on to the pretty school on the bluff overlooking Marina del Rey, the school with the respected but failed pro coach who was looking for someone to build a program around.

And with Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble playing Paul Westhead’s unique style of running basketball, Loyola Marymount got its taste of the big time.

A taste was all it got, though. Gathers is dead, and Kimble and Westhead have moved on to the pros. Basketball at Loyola, once again, is pretty ordinary.

That starburst, though, and the subsequent return to normality, aren’t what will intrigue the NCAA. The Hank-Bo tandem will. For if there is a possibility that Hank Gathers was getting some of a booster’s money, isn’t there an equal--indeed, likely--possibility that Bo Kimble was getting some of it, too? That is what the NCAA will probably investigate.

As things stand now, with only the Gathers case in question, the worst thing that could happen to Loyola would be penalties down the road--reductions in scholarships, sanctions against postseason play and TV appearances, that sort of thing. Gathers, after all, did not play in the NCAA tournament last spring, so the money Loyola earned in its most recent visit to March Madness is safe.

But a Kimble investigation could change that. Kimble did play in the tournament, starred in the tournament. If the NCAA investigates and finds that Kimble got money from a booster, Loyola may well have to return its winnings and forfeit its tournament victories.

So far, publicly at least, there is only an accusation--no proof--of payments to Gathers. Kimble has scarcely been mentioned. And before Loyola can worry about the NCAA and what it thinks, it has to concern itself with a serious lawsuit, one that could cost the university serious bucks.

But chances are, in the not-too-distant future, the NCAA will come knocking, asking pointed questions and demanding specific answers.

About that time, Loyola Marymount may find itself wishing it had said no to the honey-voiced entreaties of big-time basketball.