By Cash Michaels | SACOBSERVER.COM WIRE SERVICES

“I came along at just the right time in history to witness and to play a small part in the crossing over of black sports talent. What I experienced . . . was an awakening on the part of white people that the time had come to let black people compete on equal terms.”- Coach Clarence “Big House” Gaines from the book, “They Call Me Big House” (Blair Publishing Co.)

WILMINGTON, N.C. (NNPA) - The world of college basketball and the city of Winston-Salem in North Carolina have joined together in saying goodbye to a legend who not only taught many how to win on the hardwood, but generations how to win in life.

Clarence E. “Big House” Gaines, the head basketball coach of Winston-Salem Teachers College (later Winston-Salem State University) from 1946 to 1993, has died after reportedly suffering a stroke.

He was 81.

It has been week of fond remembrances by former players, students and colleagues. They’ve all expressed pride in just knowing the man who, when he retired 12 years ago, was the winningest college basketball coach in history with 828 victories.

“His legacy will be more about how he helped create men and women while they were at Winston-Salem State,” NBA Hall of Famer Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, who played for the NBA champion New York Knicks years after he led the WSSU Rams to their 1966-67 NCAA Division II national championship for Coach Gaines, told The Winston-Salem Journal this week.

Because Coach Gaines was a master at weaving strong individual play with good team play, Monroe was able to score an average 41.5 points a game that championship season. Gaines became NCAA Coach of the Year – the first Black to do so – and Monroe was NCAA Player of the Year.

“We were all on the same page, and it started because of Coach Gaines and the way he treated all of us,” Monroe said.

In his piece “Seeing the Game Through Pearl Vision,” for ESPN2 online, sportswriter Ralph Wiley interviewed Coach Gaines about his greatest player.

'Never seen anything like it before or since,’ Gaines told me few years ago, “Wiley wrote. ‘Was there anything Gaines could tell [Monroe]?’ “Yeah,” said Gaines. “Told him he needed a little dental work. About basketball. …Well ... he advised me.”

Indeed, everyone knows about how Coach Gaines brought out the best in Monroe, a player so gifted that Coach Gaines used to say that The Pearl “…made me a darned good coach.”

But few recall that Coach Gaines also helped train a young, promising WSSU track star named Eugene Walcott, who also enjoyed singing. Today Walcott is known better as Nation of Islam Min. Louis Farrakhan.

‘He was a legend,” WSSU Men’s Head Basketball Coach Phillip Stitt said in a statement. “He knew more about basketball than anyone I have ever met, and I, and my coaching staff, tried to get our young men around him as much as possible. His passing is a huge loss for the University, the Winston-Salem community, and anyone who is a fan of college basketball. Nothing that we do to honor him could possibly be equal to what he was meant to this community.”

Popular ESPN college basketball commentator Dick Vitale said Coach Gaines was a man of class who was always held in the highest esteem by his peers.

On a Winston-Salem television station’s message board, those who had the privilege of knowing Coach Gaines during his 47 years at WSSU, paid solemn tribute to him, and condolences to the coach’s wife and two adult children.

“I was at Winston-Salem State during the 70’s,” a writer who called himself “wssu77” wrote. “Coach Gaines was a legend but he was also my friend. He was always concerned with how I was doing and what was going on in my life. Our school was smaller then and as students we felt the love from him all the time. I will miss him.”

Another message board writer, “csjjj5,” wrote, “There are really no words to describe the great man that he was. He was not only a teacher on the court but he tried to teach you about life. You did not have to play for him for him to care about you. He told you what he wanted you to know.”

Even players who played against Coach Gaines expressed great respect. “I also remember Coach Gaines because I played against him for Livingstone when he got his 800th win, “Jerome Morris II wrote. “He was and still is one of the best coaches ever.”
[He had] insight and integrity, “one Amazon. COM writer wrote. “His real commitment was to the students he coached.”

Clarence E. Gaines was born in Paducah, Kentucky on May 21, 1924.

He attended Morgan State University on a football scholarship after a successful academic career in high school.

All of 6-feet-5-inches tall and 265 pounds as a freshman, Gaines earned the nickname “Big House” from the team manager, a moniker that would become his trademark for the rest of his life.

Gaines made All-America twice as a football player, but considered himself just average as a hoopster.

After receiving his degree in chemistry, young Gaines joined the staff of Winston-Salem Teachers College as an assistant coach. The job was supposed to be temporary, but in 1946 at age 23, Gaines became the head coach in football, track, basketball, and virtually every other sport at the school.

In three years, Coach Gaines would become athletics director and limited himself to only basketball coaching.

This story comes special to NNPA from the Wilmington Journal.