Good morning!
Tonight UMass will honor the 1995-96 men’s basketball team that went 35-2 and reached the Final Four. Sort of reached it. Indeed, if there was ever a bittersweet memory in the history of UMass sports, this is it.
Fans headed to the Mullins Center for the tipoff against Buffalo will pass bronze statues of Julius Erving and Jack Leaman, and of Marcus Camby and John Calipari, two who did it the right way, and two who did it the wrong way.
Leaman, who was hired after Johnny Orr left to coach Michigan in 1967, won eight league championships and retired in 1979 with a school record 217 wins and 126 losses. Two years after he was hired, assistant coach Ray Wilson recruited a kid from New York City, last name Erving, who would grow four inches in two years, play 52 games and lead the Yankee Conference in points and rebounds.
Leaman wasn’t a controversial coach. He didn’t throw chairs or bait refs. The angriest I saw him was when he threw a towel onto the court during a game against BC at the Boston Garden. When the ref wheeled around, Leaman pointed at a pool of water a few feet away.
After he retired, Leaman enjoyed going to the Hinsdale dog track and being the team’s color analyst on radio. He died in a Washington airport while the team was switching planes en route back from the regular season finale against Richmond in 2004. He was 71.
When Leaman left, Ray Wilson, Tom McLaughlin and Ron Gerlufsen went a combined 76 – 172 and UMass hired a rising up-and-comer who was known for his ruthless recruiting tactics. Calipari was good looking, charming and had basketball smarts. Only 29 years old, he went to a school where as he told ESPN “no one wanted the job, everyone turned it down.”
Calipari’s record rapidly accelerated from when he won ten games in 1988-89 to 1994-95 when UMass was 29-5 and finished No. 7 in the AP Top 25. A lot had happened during that time. The Mullins Center opened and fans found themselves shelling out big bucks or be relocated into the nosebleeds. The Minutemen beat Temple for the first time causing Owls coach John Chaney to attack Calipari in a postgame presser, and 6-foot-11 center Marcus Camby was becoming the best college player in America.
One win from glory
In 1995-96 UMass was ranked No. 1 for nine straight weeks and had won 26 straight games until George Washington beat them by 10 points in the Mullins Center on Feb. 4. They regrouped, won their last two regular season games and the A-10 tourney, and reached the Final Four by beating UCF, Stanford, Arkansas and Georgetown.
At the Meadowlands, Kentucky coach Rick Pitino masterfully used his bench to wear down the Minutemen and win, 81-74, despite 50 points from Camby, Donta Bright and Carmelo Travieso. Two nights later Kentucky beat Syracuse, 76-67, to cap a 34-2 season.
Marcus Camby was named the national player of the year, Edgar Padilla was an AP Honorable Mention All-American and Calipari was named the NCAA coach of the year. Two decades later he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Master manipulator
Six of the first 11 games in 1995-96 were against ranked opponents and UMass won them all.
Marty Dobrow was covering the Minutemen for the Daily Hampshire Gazette and writing a book about the team called “Going Bigtime: The Spectacular Rise of UMass Basketball.” Published in 1996, it included numerous examples of Calipari’s ability to manipulate and spin damage control.
One example was before a Wake Forest game when Camby told Sports Illustrated that Demon Deacons’ star center Tim Duncan was “soft… He’s afraid of me.”
Deperate to avoid giving Wake Forest bulletin board material, Calipari dictated an apology letter to an assistant publicist and called in Camby to read and sign it. “During his radio show the next night,” wrote Dobrow, “Calipari mentioned that Camby had written a letter of apology, and stated, ‘But that’s the kind of kid Marcus is.’”
It was only a scintilla of what Calipari did to win. Tony Barbee was a sought-after guard from Indiana who told Calipari his brother needed a football scholarship. Calipari said no problem, and football coach Jim Reid reluctantly agreed. Tony Barbee played 126 games on the UMass hardwood; Chris Barbee made the football team but never played a down on the UMass gridiron.
What goes up
The would-be basketball dynasty ended June 4, 1996, when The Hartford Courant reported over the fold: Camby, friends took cash, gifts.
The article was written by Desmond Conner and Greg Garber who reported that Camby together with family members and friends had accepted jewelry and other favors from Hartford lawyer Wesley Spears and cash from sports agent John Lounsbury of Wolcott, Connecticut, in exchange for representing Camby after he turned pro.
“The opportunity was just there and I took it,” Camby told The Courant. “People got close to my friends and I didn’t step in to stop it.”
Camby graduated from Hartford Public High School and was raised in the poverty-stricken Belleview Square section where Gold Gloves coach Johnny Duke helped Marlon Starling become a WBA welterweight champion. After the fame and money disappeared, Starling would sign autographs for cash outside the Boxing Hall of Fame in western New York.
Lounsbury didn’t face criminal charges but declared bakruptcy.
Spears was charged with extortion and promoting prostitution but was sentenced to probation after promising prosecutors he was ready for a holy war. Feeling he was the one being wronged, his attorney Hubert Santos read from a sworn statement that Camby made to the prosecution: “I knew we were just scamming Spears at that time ’cause I had already signed with ProServ, but we decided to take him for one last time.”
The NCAA cleared UMass of wrongdoing but vacated its tournament wins and ordered it to return $151,617 in tournament revenue. Camby, who made over $130 million in the NBA, covered the school’s losses. He lives north of Hartford and is part owner of the White Lion Brewing Company on Tower Square in Springfield.
Cal moves on
Three days after the Camby story broke, Calipari left to coach the New Jersey Nets but found he didn’t have the same leverage with pro players that he had in college. After they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, Dan Garcia of the Newark Star Ledger gave him a D-Minus. The next time Calipari saw Garcia, he called him a “Mexican idiot” and NBA commissioner David Stearns fined him $25,000.
Calipari was fired shortly into his third season after a 3-17 start and a career record of 72-112. He was hired by Memphis but left when the shool was put on probation for using an ineligible player. At Kentucky he won the national championship but stepped down two years ago after 14th-seeded Oakland beat the Wildcats in the first round.
At Arkansas he made $8 million last season, second only to Kansas Jayhawks coach Bill Self who raked in $8.8 million. At this writing the Razorbacks are 9-4 in the SEC and 19-7 overall. This afternoon they host Missouri at Bud Walton Arena.
Faded glory days
UMass basketball teams are a cumulative 476-450 since Calipari left town. Five coaches have come and gone and the sixth, Frank Martin, is 62-59 and made $2.185 million in 2025.
On Tuesday in front of more than 7,500 fans at the Mullins Center, UMass led undefeated Miami-Ohio 62-60 with less than 10 minutes left but lost by nine points. It was a typical performance by a team that doesn’t have the bench depth to keep up. If it finishes with the same 7-11 record in the MAC that it had in the A-10 last season, it should change its name to the Wheel Spinners.
The glory days are over. Fans who come to tonight’s game will only be there to say thanks for the memory.
SQUIBBERS: The top eight teams qualify for the MAC men’s and women’s hoops tournaments at Rocket Arena in Cleveland March 11-14. The UMass women are in third place (10-3; 18-6) but the men (6-8; 15-12) are in seventh place, only a half-game up on Buffalo. … Bill Belichick’s UNC football team will play UConn at Rentschler Field on Nov. 7, two weeks after the Huskies host UMass. … MLB Pipeline’s Jonathan Mayo, on Orioles prospect Samuel Basallo: “The guy can hit. He’s a serious rookie of the year candidate.” … Basketball coach Jerome Tang was fired this week by Kansas State, the same school where Frank Martin got his start. … Searching for Gavin MacKenna’s uniform number I mistakenly typed in Sean McKenna and landed on a player born in Asbestos, Quebec. The town is considering changing its name to Cyanide Hills. … MacKenna wears jersey No. 72, by the way. … Word’s out there was a scene at the South Deerfield Polish Club on Super Bowl Sunday between Kid Rock fans and a member of the Bad Bunny Fan Club. … When Team USA manager Mark DeRosa asked Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes to play in the World Baseball Classic, Skenes answered, “I’m in. I want to do it for every service man and woman who stands and protects us.” … Overheard by a student at Big Y in Hadley: “I don’t like coconut in my dessert. Tastes like sunscreen.”