Recalling a wild ride on the L-Train

NOT EXACTLY sure where the time went, but Saturday at Gola Arena, La Salle will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the team that won more games than any in school history. The top four scorers from the 1989-90 team combined to score 8,516 career points and are ranked first, 10th, 12th and 16th in school history. The top scorer, Lionel Simmons, scored 3,217 points. Only two players in college basketball history have scored more.

I caught a ride on the L-Train late in Lionel's freshman year and never got off. I was just learning about Philadelphia basketball and what a classroom that was - with head coach Speedy Morris, assistants Joe Mihalich, Fran Dunphy for a while, Randy Monroe, Rich Prendergast, Sam Rines, players Simmons, Doug Overton, Randy Woods, Jack Hurd, Bobby Johnson, Bron Holland, Keith Morris, Tim Legler, Craig Conlin and Rich Tarr, head managers Mike Watkins and then Michael "Gus" Carr. What a crew that was.

Road trips were movable feasts as much as they were games. The '89-90 team was so good that most of the road games were over by halftime and the stars, three of whom (Simmons, Overton and Woods) would go on to play in the NBA, spent most of the second halves on the bench signing autographs.

Train got the only 40-point game of his career on Feb. 10 at Manhattan. Think about that. He was so consistently good that he scored all those points while getting 40 just that one time. I remember having the story at Loyola written in my head before the game because the result (110-81) was pre-ordained and there was no way Speedy was going to let Simmons score his 3,000th point in Baltimore. That would be 2 nights later at the Civic Center against poor Manhattan again when 3,000 balloons descended from the rafters when Train hit that free throw.

That team did not have the right ending. I am good on covering journeys, very bad on endings. But you control what you can and I just remember how good that team was and how easy they made it to cover them.

Woods, a first-year sophomore on that team, ended up with 1,811 points and had one of the great individual seasons in Big 5 history in 1991-92 when he got the Explorers to their last NCAA Tournament prior to 2013. Hurd, also a sophomore in 1990, finished with 1,693 points and made so many big shots in his career that I lost count. Overton, a junior in 1990, finished with 1,795 points and if he didn't injure his ankle late in his senior season in 1991, I feel confident 1992 would have ended a five-year run of NCAA appearances. Overton, one of my all-time favorite people, also found time to deal a school-record 671 assists and get a school-record 277 steals.

I loved it when Johnson, Simmons' Southern High teammate, came in as the sixth man and started firing from anywhere and everywhere. He had no fear and no conscience, a great exacta for instant offense off the bench.

Simmons is first in blocks (248) at La Salle, second in rebounds (1,429) to the Great Gola and second in steals (239). Why he is not already in the College Basketball Hall of Fame is a mystery that needs to be solved. He was the 1990 national player of the year. I have never covered a player who could do absolutely everything so well every time he stepped on the court. Consider this number: He scored all those points and also found time to deal 355 assists, 15th on the all-time list. If you were open, Train found you. If Train was open, the ball found him and ended up in the basket.

That team did not just beat Metro Atlantic opponents although they pounded almost all of them. Only two of the 19 games were decided by single digits. They also won at DePaul, beat Ohio State and Florida to win the Sugar Bowl Classic in New Orleans, beat a really good Notre Dame at the Civic Center and went 4-0 in the Big 5, the last La Salle team to win the City Series.

The most unforgettable moment was that Sunday night in Albany when word came near the end of La Salle's MAAC Tournament semifinal win over Siena that Hank Gathers had died while playing for Loyola Marymount. He was Overton's teammate at Dobbins Tech and the star, along with another Dobbins grad Bo Kimble, for the only team to beat La Salle in the regular season, a 121-116 classic at the Civic Center that really never should have ended. They just should have played forever.

I walked over to the bench near the end of the game to tell Mihalich, but word was already filtering through the gym. I remember sitting in Morris' hotel suite a few hours later as he tried to explain the unexplainable to teenagers and young adults who had the same feeling of immortality that Gathers must have had.

I remember it all like it was yesterday. But it wasn't, of course. It has been almost 25 years. Through their tears, that team went out and played a conference championship game the next night they didn't really want to play, a game Fordham coach Nick Macarchuk offered to forfeit. But that La Salle team played and they won their 29th game in a season that would finish 30-2. I can see every bit of it still.