Gavitt Heads for the Hall

UPDATE: Check out Bob Ryan's column on Dave Gavitt in today's Boston Globe. ... Perhaps fittingly, the day after a less-than-riveting NCAA men's basketball championship game we'll start with a nod at the hardwood where former Dartmouth player and coach Dave Gavitt won the expected election to the basketball hall of fame. Bill Reynolds concentrates a great deal of this column on Gavitt's Dartmouth days and his invention there of a character known as Big Daddy. ... On a personal note, during my years at the newspaper I did interviews with a great many well-known people in the world of sports. As far as I can recollect, Dave Gavitt was the only one ever to call me back a day after my deadline to apologize for not getting back to me sooner. The reason, he said, was he'd been in the hospital. Classy guy. ... Buddy Teevens is bringing in some big guys next fall, but perhaps the biggest got away. This 6-7, 290-pounder chose Vanderbilt over HYP and Dartmouth. ... Columbia spring football has kicked off. ... UNH football starts spring drills this weekend. ... Brown, by the way, will be playing both USC and Texas in coming years. OK, that's not really true. It was in the school newspaper's April Fool's issue. Interestingly, there's a whiff of reality in the quote the paper made up for the school athletic director: "(W)e still do not get to prove ourselves in the Division I-AA playoffs, so logically the only way we can make a ripple on the national scene is by lining up schools like USC and Texas." ... It was 70 degrees in the Upper Valley last weekend. Moments ago I looked at the thermometer and it was 31.9 and going down. The wind is absolutely howling, a blowing rain is supposed to turn to snow and the wait for the school bus this morning was about as nasty as it has been all year. My kids were actually happy to see it show up!