'71 Wildcats: Outcasts to heroes

In the heady aftermath of Villanova's recent rout of UCLA in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, a handful of balding, gray-haired men made their halting way through the Wachovia Center's dank corridors.

Members of the Villanova team beaten by John Wooden's UCLA in the 1971 national title game, they were about to experience the final act in their collective redemption, a locker-room meeting with their contemporary counterparts.

Curiously, the 2009 Wildcats' run to this weekend's Final Four also has concluded the '71 Wildcats' equally improbable journey from near-champions to outcasts and, finally, with a huge assist from the current coach, Jay Wright, to beloved ex-heroes.

The '71 team had gone, as guard Ed Hastings would later say, "from ecstasy to an asterisk."

Soon after their loss to the Bruins, the Wildcats had seen Villanova's name expunged from the NCAA record books when their star, Howard Porter, was found to have signed with a pro team midway through that season.

Porter, riddled by addictions and remorse, hid from his teammates and his past for decades.

Meanwhile, at Villanova, the '71 team was ignored, or maybe just forgotten, as the program slid into mediocrity during the 1980s and '90s.

"We just didn't feel totally involved in the program anymore," said Tom Ingelsby, a sophomore guard on that team and later an NBA player.

The healing began, not surprisingly, as so many of the Wildcats' plays had, with an unexpected move by Porter.

The 6-foot-8 Floridian made peace with himself, his demons and his teammates, a subplot that concluded tearfully at a campus service a week after he was murdered in 2007.

And when Wright took over as coach in 2001, he immediately reached out to the team and others from the program's neglected past.

Now, not long after the 2009 Wildcats gained a small measure of revenge for the '71 team by thrashing UCLA in their March 21 tournament matchup in Philadelphia, a manager escorted the older players into Villanova's locker room.

Wright's players awaited them. The coach introduced Ingelsby, Hastings, Chris Ford, Mike Daly. The younger players stood and applauded. The eyes of the older men glistened.

"I think it was Dwayne Anderson who got up and said, 'I hope that 35 years from now, we can come into a Villanova locker room and be remembered, too,' " said Daly, 58, a backup guard on the '71 team, coached by Jack Kraft.

For last weekend's East Regional, several '71 players traveled to Boston. After Villanova beat Pitt to earn the trip to the Final Four, Daly called Porter's widow, Theresa Neal. She will be joining the older players in Detroit this weekend.

"In the last 10 years of his life, Howard developed a deep connection to his teammates," Neal said. "They've reached out to me in such a caring way that I now feel that same connection. I think there's something similar in their story and his."

The turmoil began a few months after Villanova's loss to UCLA.

Like the '09 Wildcats, the '71 team, with Porter, Clarence Smith - two Floridians recruited by assistant coach George Raveling - and North Catholic's Hank Siemiontkowski up front, and with Ingelsby and Ford at guard, peaked late.

Those Wildcats opened the tournament by beating St. Joseph's by 18 points. Digger Phelps' Fordham fell next, by 10. In a rematch with third-ranked Penn in the regional final, the Wildcats destroyed the 28-0 Quakers, 90-47.

The Final Four took place in Houston's Astrodome, and the Wildcats barely survived their semifinal with Western Kentucky, winning by 92-89 in double overtime. That set up the 68-62 loss to UCLA, the four-time defending national champion.

"We did a great job on Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe," but a lightly regarded center, Steve Patterson, "was the difference-maker," Daly recalled. "We had UCLA on its heels down the stretch, but with no shot clock, they were able to hold the ball."

The NBA's Chicago Bulls selected Porter, but the Pittsburgh Condors of the American Basketball Association objected, contending that they had had his signature on a contract for months.

When it turned out they had, the NCAA reacted.

Villanova lost its status as the NCAA runner-up, its record-book citation replaced by an asterisk. Porter, who had 25 points against UCLA and had been named the tournament's most outstanding player, saw his name vanish, too.

He never did play for the Condors, spending seven years in the NBA. Afterward, feeling guilty and embarrassed about what he felt he had done to Villanova, he slipped into cocaine addiction and the shadows.

"He dropped off the map," Daly said. "But at the Final Four in 1985, his agent, Richie Phillips, or someone made an effort to get him to come to Lexington for the Villanova-Georgetown [title] game. He had a ticket but never showed. He said he just couldn't summon the emotional strength to get on that plane."

In 1989, Porter admitted himself to Minnesota's Hazelden Treatment Center. He kicked cocaine, became a beloved parole officer and met Neal.

"When we were dating, since he was 6-8, I asked if he'd played basketball," she said. "All he said was 'Yeah, I played a little.' "

His life was back in order, except for Villanova. Whenever his old teammates got together, and that was increasingly often, they talked constantly about "Geezer."

In 1996, its 25th anniversary, Villanova finally acknowledged the '71 team. Porter returned to see his friends and to witness the retiring of his number, 54.

"He told me that the reason that he did not come" to the '85 championship game was that "he was too ashamed," said Hastings, the guard. "He assumed incorrectly that he would be resented, not only by Villanovans in general but also by his teammates."

"We always supported Howard and took his side," Hastings said. The Wildcats "would never have achieved what we did without him, and we knew in our hearts that it would have been exceedingly difficult for any of us to have done anything differently than he did."

Wright succeeded Steve Lappas in 2001. Among his first acts was to embrace the school's old-timers.

"He put together a Legends of Villanova Basketball banquet and invited us all back," said Ingelsby, the guard. "He invites us to the basketball banquet each spring."

"In the past, there might have been one or two ex- players at the banquets," Daly said. "Now you'll see 30 to 35 there."

In 2006, the Big Five selected the 50 greatest players of its first 50 years. Porter finished second, behind his great rival, La Salle's Ken Durrett. Porter returned for the ceremony on the Palestra floor.

"He was overjoyed to be there," Daly said. "He was happy and completely at peace with himself."

A year later, on May 19, children walking down a trash-strewn Minneapolis alley saw a pair of legs jutting from a rolled-up carpet. Police mistakenly suspected that the victim, brutally bludgeoned, had been involved in a drug deal gone bad.

They later identified the dead man as Porter. He was 58.

"It turned out he'd been the victim of a robbery," Neal said. "One of those involved is now serving a life sentence. Another is in jail for 45 years. A third person was given a 10-year term."

His teammates and Villanova made one last gesture on his behalf. In between funerals in St. Paul, Minn., and Florida, they arranged for the body to be brought to campus. Players on the '71 team helped finance its journey.

On May 26, St. Thomas' Chapel was filled with Philadelphia basketball luminaries. Wright, Hastings and Neal eulogized Porter. His stricken teammates carried the coffin in and out of the twin-spired church that is the campus' landmark.

"They never had hard feelings toward Howard," Neal said yesterday. "And in the last years of his life, he knew that. They were his brothers. And now, as we all try to keep Howard's spirit alive, they are my brothers, too."