That’s not why I asked the Washington Post to let me write about him — although that would have been a legitimate request.
Donoher – Mick or Mickey to his friends – was the first college basketball coach I met. I was 11 years old. He and his wife, Sonia, who died in 2020 after 66 years of marriage, were friends I cherished long after his college coaching career ended in 1989.
If you’re one of those people who roll their eyes when I tell stories about how or why I knew coaches, stop reading here.
My father was never a big sports fan, but having attended City College of New York when it was still a big basketball school (before the betting scandals of the 1950s), he always had a Weak for college hoops when I was growing up. He also had a friend named Fred Podesta, who was high up in the hierarchy at Madison Square Garden and who could find us very good seats.
Most of the time, I was alone buying tickets to the Knicks and Rangers and regular season college basketball games. But during the NIT, when all the games were played at Madison Square Garden, Dad would get tickets from Podesta and we would go there, starting with the quarterfinals.
In 1968, when only 23 teams made the NCAA Tournament, the NIT was still a big deal. The final team that year was Dayton, which had struggled for much of the season following its run to the national title game, where it lost to Lew Alcindor’s first UCLA team.
“We were lucky to lose that game by 15,” Donoher said years later. “Coach [John] Wooden pulled back for the final six minutes to allow us to bring the score closer.
Dayton had reached this game by beating North Carolina in the national semifinals, in Dean Smith’s first Final Four.
A year later, still a little consumed by the ecstasy of its journey, Dayton started 6-9. An independent at the time, the Flyers needed to win their final nine games to advance to the NIT. In the quarterfinals, they met Fordham, one of those New York teams that I followed and rooted for. While I was cheering for the Rams (loudly), my dad noticed three women sitting a few seats away from us who were shooting with just as much enthusiasm for Dayton.
“I bet,” my father said, “those are the wives of the Dayton coaches.”
When future Fordham athletic director Frank McLaughlin missed a jumper at the buzzer to allow Dayton to escape with a 61-60 victory, I sat somberly waiting for Game 2 to begin.
I looked up to see a beautiful woman standing above me. My father was right. “My name is Sonia Donoher,” she said. “My husband is the coach at Dayton, so I can’t honestly say I’m sorry your team lost. But you know your basketball, right?
I knew enough to know that Don May of Dayton was a great player. Sonia introduced herself to my dad and we talked about hoops for a few minutes. She asked if we were going to the semi-finals. When I said yes, she asked if we could please shoot for Dayton.
We did it and the Flyers beat Notre Dame in overtime. On Saturday afternoon, they defeated Kansas and Jo Jo White to win the title.
“Would you like to come meet Don and the players?” » asked Sonia.
When Sonia introduced me to her husband, he said to me: “Sonia told me a lot about you. She says you know your hoops.
He then took me to the locker room and introduced me to the whole team. Two weeks later, a package arrived from Dayton: it contained a sheet with the autographs of the entire team. And an autographed photo of Don May, signed: “To John. Thank you for helping us win the NIT.
Thirteen years later, I was a young Post reporter covering the Final Four in Philadelphia. Before the first game on Saturday, I was killing time by looking at all the men in the coaches seating section. I noticed Coach Donoher (he was always “Coach Donoher” to me) and I walked over and introduced myself. I started to tell him how we met at the 1968 NIT when he interrupted me and said, “Little Johnny Feinstein!” Sonia and I wonder if the stories we read in The Post were written by the same little boy we met in 1968. Were SO proud of you!”
It turned out that one of Donoher’s sons lived in Annapolis and had sent the diary to his parents.
Four years later, while living in Indiana and writing a book about Donoher’s friend Bob Knight – Don had been one of Knight’s assistants on the 1984 US Olympic team – I I made the two-hour drive from Bloomington to Dayton to have dinner with the Donohers. . On more than one occasion, Mick – which came from a nickname he was given as a child in Toledo in honor of a local fighter named Mickey Donoher – and Sonia brought me out of the sadness that I was feeling after a particularly difficult day with Knight and his mercurial personality.
“I promise,” Mick said one evening. “He’s not going to like the book.” It’s just who he is.
He was obviously right.
We stayed in touch over the years and I was proud to tell him that the US Basketball Writers Association had selected him as the third winner of the Dean Smith Award, established to honor a coach who upheld the principles Smith embodied.
Years ago, my friend Gary Nuhn — who died last month — wrote an article about his first encounter with Donoher as a young reporter for the Dayton Daily News. Dayton had lost a close game to DePaul. Gary stood outside the locker room, thinking it would be at least 15 minutes before he had a chance to talk to the losing coach. There were no formal rules at the time regarding post-match interviews.
“I wasn’t there more than a minute,” Nuhn wrote, “when Donoher stuck his head out the door and said, ‘Are you on schedule?’ “Yes,” I said. “Come in,” he said. He was that way until the day he was fired (and ever since).
That was Don Donoher, whether an understanding reporter at deadline time or a wide-eyed 11-year-old. He was always classy, all the time.
