Parallel universe of court kings
Groat was Trae Young before there was a Trae Young
If you’ve watched any college basketball this season, you’ve likely heard of Trae Young, Oklahoma’s wunderkind point guard who leads the country in scoring (27.5 points per game) and assists (8.9 per game). If you knew that factoid about the record-setting freshman, you might have also heard that if he keeps his lead in those two major categories, he’ll be the first player to do so at the highest level of college basketball.
Except for Swissvale native, former Pirates MVP and current Pitt broadcaster Dick Groat, who did all that as a star guard at Duke — sort of.
When most sportscasters make reference to Young’s eyepopping numbers so far, they stress that he’s trying to become the first to lead the country in scoring and assists. But Groat remembers it differently.
“No, that’s wrong,” Bill Hillgrove, Groat’s partner on Pitt basketball broadcasts, piped up upon hearing the notion that Young’s potential feat is unprecedented.
“That’s not true,” Groat agreed. “And I’ve heard them say it just the other way, and use my name.”
It has been cited in many a Groat biography that in his particularly stellar senior year, the 1951-52 season, he became the only player to lead the country in scoring (26.0) and assists (7.6) — to this very day.
“That was before the 3-pointer, and the one-and-one!” Hillgrove bellowed.
“That was at the beginning of when they started keeping assists,” Groat added.
And therein lies much of the confusion over what Groat did or didn’t accomplish. The NCAA’s official record book doesn’t credit Groat with leading the country in scoring or assist average. But he definitely led the country in total points in 1951, and his assists that year are lost to history.
Still, there is more concrete evidence of Groat’s points-and-assists wizardry than former NCAA scoring champions such as Oscar Robertson, Rick Barry and Pete Maravich, all of whom did it at a time when assists weren’t tracked officially or nationally.
Groat, 87, hasn’t seen Young play but once or twice but remembers watching him “the night West Virginia held him to only one assist.”
“It’s a lot of what’s in your head — how you think, and how you’re taught,” Groat said of Young’s success and, by extension, his own more than 60 years ago. “If you’re a scorer, which I was, give it up! I mean, not many people have that philosophy anymore. They’re just ‘Give me the ball, I wanna shoot it.’ It’s just the way the game has changed itself. Plus, when you’re a scorer, you draw a crowd. Many times, somebody’s gonna be open when they double-team you. I never gave it a thought.”
A natural follow-up seemed to be asking Groat if his style was at all similar to Young’s.
“I shot a lot of jumpers, but I think he forces it further than I did,” Groat said. “And again, I guess it’s the type of teaching you had. I was lucky enough as a sophomore at Duke to have Red Auerbach as my coach, and he taught me when you’re a shooter or a scorer, give the ball up. Your teammates will give it back to you, and they’ll bust their [behind] to set screens for you and set you up.”
One other thing the two have in common? Scrutiny, apparently. Young’s performances and approach have been debated ad nauseam, and while there was no “First Take” in the 1950s, legendary sportscaster Bill Currie had this to say about seeing Groat for the first time:
“There was a kid in the Duke lineup that everybody in the South and everybody in the country was talking about. He was a thin, serious-looking dark-haired lad by the name of Richard Morrow Groat.”
Replace Duke with Oklahoma and Groat’s name with Young’s, and that could be a sentence from 2018. Oh, and Currie also mentioned that “Groat was the whole team,” and even criticized his first-half play, saying he didn’t look much like an All-American — until he scored 28 of his 32 points in the second half to rally Duke from a 29-point deficit, a comeback that stood as the biggest in Division I basketball until just last week.
That all might sound familiar if you’ve followed Young all season. And after considering all the parallels, well, it would’ve been a shame not to ask the original who would win a game of 1-on-1 in their primes.
“I don’t know how big he is,” Groat said with a laugh. He’s listed at 6-foot-2. “I was right at 6 feet, so it’s an even matchup. I don’t know how good a defensive player he is.”
It’s considered a weakness of his.
“See, I don’t have any idea; I only saw him play one or two games against West Virginia and somebody else. I can’t answer that question. And I know in college, it’s not a fair comparison, because I always got the worst player on every other team, because they didn’t want me to foul out. In the NBA, it’s a different world. The fact that I had Red Auerbach as as a coach, he taught me what the game was all about and made me a defensive player, and I really loved it in the 30-some games I played in the NBA. I always got whoever had the hot hand on the other team.”
So, you would’ve been guarding Trae Young, then? “I’m sure,” Groat said with a smile.