Feb. 9, 2011
Commodore History Corner Archive
If there were ever a person in Nashville to be named “Mr. Basketball” one of the nominees would have to be Ron Bargatze. The former Vanderbilt assistant basketball coach was a three-sport athlete that excelled in football, basketball and baseball in Nashville’s Antioch High School. Antioch made it to the baseball state finals in Bargatze’s junior year losing to Chattanooga Central. Bargatze graduated in 1961.
“Basketball became my favorite sport,” said Bargatze who was a point guard. “But probably my best sport as far as accomplishment was baseball. I recruited myself to Belmont and fortunately some of their guards left so I was able to become a three-year starter. I developed into a pretty good player in my junior and senior years.
“We really had good teams back then as we set a school wins record my senior year and we upset Western Kentucky. That was probably the biggest win in school history at the time. I called them and they did give me a very small scholarship that fortunately grew over my four years there.”
Belmont was a member of the Volunteer State Athletic Conference at the time. Bargatze would become All-Conference in both basketball and baseball.
“We had very good baseball teams every year and even back then our games with Lipscomb were very big in both sports,” said Bargatze. “They didn’t call it the `Battle of the Boulevard’ then. We had some great games with them. My highlights playing basketball were in my junior year we won the conference championship and set a school record at the time with 21 wins.”
After graduating from Belmont, Bargatze received his masters from MTSU while at the same time was an assistant basketball and baseball coach for Belmont.
“I would commute to Murfreesboro every day and take my classes in the morning,” said Bargatze. “Then I’d teach a couple of classes at Belmont and prepare for that afternoon’s practice. It was a wonderful time for me. I was a young single man and my life was about sports. It was like a hog in slop. I was getting to coach and teach while earning my masters degree at the same time. There weren’t enough hours in the day, but I enjoyed every second of it.”
Bargatze left Belmont after one year and became the head basketball coach at Cocke County (Tenn.) High School (Newport) where his boy’s teams were in two seasons 20-8 and 21-7.
“I didn’t know anybody there,” Bargatze said. “I took the job over the telephone. I had to find where Newport was on the map. One of the school board members called and offered me the head-coaching job there. I wanted to be a head coach so that was a good way to get my feet wet. I was the girls’ and boys’ head coach and taught six classes everyday. It was two very busy years there.”
When Bargatze’s second season at Newport concluded, he was back in middle Tennessee to become an assistant basketball coach at Tennessee Tech where he also coached the freshmen basketball team. The head coach at Tech at that time was Kenny Sidwell who had been Bargatze’s head basketball coach at Belmont as a sophomore and junior. Bargatze had to balance two jobs, as he also became the head baseball coach.
Bargatze juggled his two coaching jobs at Tech for just one season as Vanderbilt’s head basketball coach asked Bargatze to join his SEC Commodores as an assistant. So why would Skinner ask Bargatze to join his staff without a great deal of college coaching experience?
“That’s a great question,” Bargatze said. “I wish he were around to answer that. I was indeed fortunate. I grew up as a big Vandy fan particularly when I was about eight years old in the early 1950s. Memorial Gym opened up and I sold programs for football and basketball games at Vanderbilt. It was quite a thrill to grow up in a rural school like Antioch, which it was at that time and then play at a small college [Belmont] just a couple of miles away. And then to be able to coach on the basketball staff at Vanderbilt was a fortunate break for me.
“When Belmont’s team beat Western Kentucky my senior year at Belmont, Coach Skinner was there to scout Western since Vanderbilt was playing them later that season. I first met Coach Skinner at the post-game meal. I guess he knew me there and when I was at Tennessee Tech. Coach Skinner had an assistant coach, Bobby Bland, who passed away at a very young age.
“Bland was a guard at Vanderbilt and was on Coach Skinner’s staff. He got sick and passed away so the job came open. Coach Skinner first offered the job to Charlie Anderson who was the coach at Strafford High School at the time. Charlie had a number of years in the Metro system and the Vandy job did not pay all that much so he would have taken a big pay cut and lost benefits. When Charlie turned down the job, Coach Skinner offered it to me.”
Bargatze joined the Vanderbilt coaching staff in 1969 at a time the Commodores were in a rebuilding stage. He would coach the freshman team and have a large part in the Commodores recruiting process. The Commodores would win the school’s second SEC championship for the 1973-74 season, but lost to Marquette in the NCAA Tournament. SEC Player-of-the-Year, senior Jan van Breda Kolff, led Vanderbilt that season.
“When I got to Vanderbilt in September 1969, Vanderbilt had recruited some really talented players,” said Bargatze. “Thorpe Weber was a highly sought after player and Steve Turner, the 7-foot-4 center, was highly recruited. We had guys like Chris Schweer, Van Oliver, Ralph Mayes and Rudy Thacker. All those guys were there and they had the nucleus of a good team. But those were the two worst years for Coach Skinner as far a record.
“I coached the freshmen team the first two years, but I also recruited full-time and was on the bench as a varsity assistant as well. There were a lot of responsibilities. I got to coach my own team for a couple of years, which was very good experience. But those were two tough years for the varsity. Those two teams just didn’t quite jell very well. My second year there, my freshman team had Jan van Breda Kolff, Terry Compton, Lee Fowler and Bill Ligon, which was one of the best recruiting classes at Vanderbilt. I was very involved in the recruitment of those players and I got to coach them on the freshman team.
The 1969-70 Vanderbilt basketball freshmen team, coached by Ron Bargatze (far right)
“We didn’t have an experienced big man on that team. We were very interchangeable. That freshman team became the cornerstone of that championship team when the F-Troop came along two years later. We also had Rod Freeman and Ray Maddux who were very good players. Ray was a great rebounder and Rod was a good all-around player that gave us a lot of muscle. Then you put the van Breda Kolff class with them, that team was 20-6 in my third year. That team laid the groundwork because the next year, when the F-Troop came in and freshmen were eligible, that became a great roster of players.”
Van Breda Kolff would become one of the Commodores’ greats to play basketball at Vanderbilt. Not only was he a two-year team captain, SEC MVP, and nine-year professional basketball player, but also van Breda Kolff became Vanderbilt’s head coach (1994-99) after Eddie Fogler’s resignation.
Van Breda Kolff did not display great offensive scoring stats, but was exceptional in all parts of the game.
“Not only did Jan have versatility as a player, but he brought a totally unselfish attitude to some very talented players,” Bargatze said. “He was an outstanding leader on and off the court. Jan had grown up with his father [Butch van Breda Kolff] being one of the best coaches of the day. When Jan came here, his dad had just left the Los Angles Lakers and coached the Detroit Pistons.
“Jan learned the game watching his hero Bill Bradley play for his dad (at Princeton) and was around a terrific program. He learned a lot from that. Jan had an unbelievable impact on the program since he was a 6-foot-8 guy who could play point guard or center. He could be our offensive point guard and defensive center, which is an unbelievable combination. His assist, rebounding and all around game set the stage for that SEC championship team. There was no doubt who the player of the year was in the conference.”
Van Breda Kolff was from Palos Verdes, Calif. and his recruitment to Vanderbilt has an interesting story. Bargatze found van Breda Kolff by accident on a trip he wanted for most of his young life.
“I had grown up through the Davy Crockett days and was a big Walt Disney fan who always wanted to go to Disneyland,” said Bargatze. “I thought `heck, I need to go recruit a player in California.’ I was looking in the Los Angeles Times where I read that Ranchos Palos Verdes High School had five major college prospects starting on their team. I went out there originally to see a center (Tim Stare) that eventually went to SMU. On that first trip, when the plane landed, I got my rental car and went straight to Disneyland and stayed there all day by myself and got to the high school game that night.
“When I watched them play, I was very impressed with van Breda Kolff. Obviously his name was familiar, but I loved this 6-foot-5 guy who played all over the court, gave the ball up, played defense, rebounded and did everything it takes to win a basketball game. I always thought of Jan as a Bill Russell-type guard. His versatility and competitiveness impressed me. I hung around after the game and talked to him. At that time you could make contact after games and I told him I was from Vanderbilt. Jan said if it was good enough for Bill Bradley its good enough for him.
“At that time I had not known that Bill Bradley had narrowed his choices to Kansas, Vanderbilt and Princeton. In 1965, Bradley was the National Collegiate Player-of-the- Year and had played for Jan’s father at Princeton. I kept in close contact with Jan and he came to Vanderbilt. One of the things that helped get Jan was that Lee Fowler was being heavily recruited from Columbia, Tenn. by Auburn, Tennessee and North Carolina. Lee was a very versatile 6-foot-6 guard/forward type player with good ball handling skills. We sold Jan on the idea that we would have the biggest backcourt in college basketball with him and Lee Fowler. I’ve got a clipping that was written in the Los Angeles Times about me recruiting Jan and the title of the article is `He Wanted to See Goofy.'”
The famed Vanderbilt F-Troop of Butch Feher, Joe Ford and Jeff Fosnes have been become a famed part of Vanderbilt basketball history. Bargatze told the story of the recruitment of this trio.
“I was going out to Tucson to see a point guard and on the flight out there I picked up an Scholastic Coach magazine,” Bargatze said. “It had a story about the Wheat Ridge Shockers High School (Lakewood, Co.) and this pair of 6-foot-6 players who happened to be the starting forwards in basketball and the quarterback and wide receiver on the football team. Fosnes was the quarterback and a great basketball player, but his teammate was Dave Logan who was drafted in three sports. Logan played at Colorado and was a starter in his freshman year in football, basketball and baseball. He went on to play football with the Cleveland Browns.
“That was an intriguing story and I also read where Jeff was a potential pre-med student. I thought if he were that good of an athlete and that smart, I’d go up to see him. I changed my flight from Tucson to Denver then to Nashville. I got off the plane and without having any contact I called his high school coach who told me Jeff was going to Kentucky. I knew I had not read that anywhere.
“So I looked up Fosnes in the phone book and called his dad. Mr. Fosnes told me that coach wasn’t being honest with me that Jeff was not committed anywhere. His dad didn’t want Jeff going to a coastal school, but an inland school where he could get a good pre-med degree and play basketball in a good program. Jeff visited here, liked it and he was really underrated as being one of Vanderbilt’s all-time greats.
“I told van Breda Kolff, who was working in camps around the country, that if he saw any good players to call me. He called me and told me there was a guy up here in the Eastern Michigan camp that he liked a lot. It was Butch Feher. I called his high school coach, who happened to be his dad in Alpena, Mi.
“When I went up there to visit him, I got off the plane wearing my heaviest topcoat. It was -23 degrees with a 20-mile per hour wind. They were having the national snow mobile championships in Alpena that weekend. I about froze to death. I really hit it off with the family very well and Butch liked it here on his visit. Two-thirds of the F-Troop was in the bank when those two guys got signed.
“Of course, Joe Ford was the third one. He was from Mayfield, Ky. Joe was the only player, while I was at Vanderbilt, that we signed and Kentucky had offered a scholarship. Therefore we had the F-Troop.”
With all the great successes Bargatze and the other Vanderbilt coaches would enjoy there had to be some great basketball players the coaches could not land.
“We thought we had a really good chance to get Leon Douglas from Wheaton, Al., but he went to Alabama and the pros and was a great player. In the F-Troop class, we came extremely close to getting whom I thought was the best player in the country that year. He was from Putnam City High School in Lawrence, Kansas. His name was Alvan Adams.
“Adams became a great pro player for the Phoenix Suns, but we pretty much had him committed. Then his mom passed away suddenly during his senior year in high school. His dad was an out of work geologist who was in the oil business. The oil business wasn’t going too well at the time. When John MacLeod was hired at Oklahoma that spring, they had built a new arena at the same time at the University of Oklahoma. All of a sudden his dad got a job. We finished second on Alvan Adams, who along with the F-Troop clearly would have been the best class ever at Vanderbilt. It was close, but no cigar on him.”
So what was Bargatze’s most memorable game he ever witnessed as a Vanderbilt assistant coach?
“The one game I remember most was winning at Alabama,” said Bargatze. “It was a classic. I have that game on audiotape and every five or six years I go back to listen to parts of it because it was so interesting. Van Breda Kolff blocked a shot by Leon Douglas late in that game and got the ball back for us. Terry Compton had a steal and a lay-up, another steal and was fouled and made two free throws in a game on paper seemed impossible for us to win. We won 67-65. They had a phenomenon team in Douglas, Ray Odums and Charles Cleveland. We were co-champions with Alabama in 1974. We beat them both times so we got to represent the SEC in the NCAA Tournament.”
Skinner surprised the SEC, the Vanderbilt community and fans with his sudden retirement from coaching basketball at the end of the 1975-76 season. He was a four-time SEC Coach-of- the-Year with two conference championships. Skinner (1959, 1962-76) is Vanderbilt’s all-time winningest coach with a record of 278-135.
“I was totally shocked,” Bargatze said about the retirement. “It almost took the wind out of my lungs. I didn’t know he had resigned until we left the gym that night after Alabama had beaten us in overtime in February 1976. Alabama had tied the game on a follow-up shot by T. R. Dunn late in the game to put the game into overtime where they won. It was the F-Troop’s last game. We hung around the gym awhile and when I got home that night Coach Skinner called me to say he was resigning.
“He asked me to tell the players. I was almost too shocked to drive to the campus since I really didn’t know what was going on. After their last game of the year, those college kids are not going to be sitting around the dorm room. It was quite a journey that night for me to track down the players and tell them. It was a time where nobody had cell phones and it was very difficult to get a hold of everyone. But I finally chased them down. For being in the middle of the night I think I got all of them, but two. Then I went back home to get a few hours of sleep because I could only imagine what the next day was going to be like with the news breaking.
“Coach Skinner only told a few people, but John Bibb (Tennessean sports writer) had called him a couple of months earlier and said he found out that Skinner was going to resign. Coach Skinner asked Bibb to hold on to that story. At that time the Banner and Tennessean were very competitive with each other. Bibb would agree to do that if Coach Skinner promised that he would get the story. It was a very well kept secret. I don’t know why he asked me to tell the players. The next few days were extremely chaotic.”
Even though very few people knew about Skinner’s resignation, Bargatze was given consideration as the new Vanderbilt basketball coach. Vanderbilt’s athletics director, Clay Stapleton, considered Bargatze, but not enough to interview him or take the matter into his confidence. Assistant coach Wayne Dobbs replaced Skinner.
“I didn’t know there was any running at all until after the fact,” Bargatze said. “When John Bibb found out about Coach Skinner’s resignation, he also found out that Stapleton had told Dobbs in January that if Coach Skinner’s resignation did not get out in the media, the job was his. When Bibb found out about it, Dobbs went to Bibb and begged him not to run that story because it would cost him the job. Bibb was very kind not to do that. I think Bibb did that because Dobbs personally appeared before him. So Wayne was named the head coach the day after Coach Skinner resigned.”
Dobbs had been head basketball coach at Belmont during Bargatze’s senior year as a player. Dobbs was an assistant coach at George Washington University (1966-67) and the GW head coach the following three years. He lost his job after the 1969-70 season.
“I came to Vanderbilt at the same time as Ray Estes,” said Bargatze. “I suggested to Coach Skinner that when Ray Estes resigned to return to coaching high school in Indiana that he consider Dobbs. Coach Skinner and Coach Estes didn’t get along very well. Both were great people, but Coach Skinner and Ray Estes were as opposite coaches as you could ever imagine.
“Ray was a very successful high school coach in Indiana whose teams sold out every game with standing room only for tickets. He had to go into a secondary role at Vanderbilt. It was a clash of coaching cultures. They just did not get along well. Ray and I came in together, but he only stayed for two years.
“I suggested to Coach Skinner that Coach Dobbs might be a guy that would be good for our staff. He came in and worked with us the first year part-time and then became a full-time assistant. Wayne and I were the two assistant coaches for those several years together. Then Coach Dobbs got the head coaching position when Coach Skinner resigned.”
Bargatze would work for Dobbs for two years, but left Vanderbilt to become the head basketball coach at Trevecca Nazarene. Dobbs coached Vanderbilt in three seasons (1977-79) and was named SEC Coach-of-the-Year during his final year. The university suddenly and mysteriously dismissed him.
“Of course Wayne was my college senior coach and a dear friend,” Bargatze said. “It put us in a tough position for several days. Since I had been there longer, and recruited most of the players there, I felt like I would have been given more consideration for the job. The way it went down Coach Skinner didn’t have any input into it. It wasn’t his style anyway. But Wayne asked me to stay with him.
“We were in the midst of recruiting a very good class that year which included Mark Elliott, Tommy Springer, Greg Fuller and Charles Davis. I was very involved in the recruitment of each of those guys. If I looked at it from his standpoint, I wouldn’t want to jeopardize getting those guys to sign. They represented the next wave to take over because the F-Troop had just left and the cupboard was pretty bare.
“Wayne and I had a good working relationship, but I’m sure his motivation for asking me to stay on was primarily that I was close to those four guys in that class. In the upcoming class we had Mike Rhodes in and that represented the cornerstone of the next few years at Vanderbilt.”
Bargatze’s Trevecca squad (1978-79) was 14-18. After that lone season with Trevecca, Bargatze moved on to Austin Peay. Bargatze compiled a 39-67 record in four seasons (1979-83) in Clarksville.
“The day after I took the Trevecca job the Belmont job came open,” said Bargatze. “I would have gone there, but I had already committed to Trevecca. After I had been out of coaching one year the president of Belmont offered me the Belmont coaching job, but I turned it down because I had resigned from coaching at Austin Peay in July 1983. I was offered the Belmont job in summer 1984, but I was involved with the real estate construction business so I couldn’t take the job. But I suggested he talk to the head coach at Lincoln Memorial who was Rick Byrd. That is how Belmont learned of Rick Byrd and the rest is history.”
Bargatze has always been around basketball. He was a color analyst for the radio broadcast of Vanderbilt basketball games for 15 years (1985-2001) as well as a sports radio talk personality. Bargatze worked for four different play-by-play guys with four different head coaches. He has stayed close to the Vanderbilt basketball team and is a longtime season ticket holder.
Bargatze was Sports Medicine Director at Baptist Hospital and helped put together the contracts with the Titans and Predators. He was a non-medical guy that also initiated that Baptist relationship with the TSSAA, which is still in place. Bargatze is an avid golfer and once managed the Bear Trace Golf Club.
In 1993, Bargatze was working radio at Vanderbilt when Nashville Sounds owner Larry Schmittou put together a deal to purchase the Music City Jammers of the Global Basketball Association. Bargatze was the team’s president and general manager. The games were played in the Municipal Auditorium, but due to low attendance the team moved to Jackson, Tenn.
Bargatze is also a member of the Belmont Sports Hall of Fame. So, how does Bargatze describe himself?
Said Bargatze, “I’m just a gym rat.”
The team photograph accompanying this story is the 1969-70 Vanderbilt Freshmen. (Back row, left to right) Assistant Coach John Russell, Gary May, Rod Freeman, Ray Maddux, Alex Thompson, Coach Bargatze. (Front row, left to right) John Cattelino, Zach Holmes, Bob Bressler, Paul Rula and Doug Bates.
If you have any comments or suggestions you can contact Bill Traughber via email WLTraughber@aol.com.
