At the Ruck Funeral Home in Towson one night this week the conversation turned to Naval Academy basketball. Naturally.
The visitors there were paying last respects to Don Lange, who, in the 1950s, was one of Navy's all-time great basketball players.
A former Marine who moved back to Baltimore with his wife six years ago, Lange died suddenly of a heart attack last Saturday. He was 64.
"In my youngster [sophomore] year, I was really looking forward to playing with Don, who was a senior," said Dave Smalley, who played at Navy then, coached the team from 1966 to 1976 and is now an assistant athletic director at the academy.
"But Don had played part of a season for a small college in the Midwest before he joined the Navy. The NCAA ruled that he couldn't play his senior year for us. That was quite a blow to us and to Ben Carnevale."
This has been a tough time for Carnevale, retired and living in Williamsburg, Va. He coached Navy from 1946 to 1966.
Lange, one of Ben's greatest players, has died. John Clune, Lange's teammate and possessor of the highest scoring average in Navy history (22.3), died two years ago. Frank McGuire, the Hall of Fame coach and a Carnevale contemporary, died this autumn.
Navy is not known as a basketball school, but it has had its moments. Under Carnevale, Navy was in the NCAA tournament five times, when the fields were comparatively tiny.
Navy went back to the NCAAs in the '80s, thanks to David Robinson.
Last year Navy won the Patriot League championship under Don DeVoe in his second year at Annapolis. The present team is 3-2 and next plays Monday at Drexel.
"Don is perfect for our place," said another funeral home visitor, Joe Duff. "He's a classy gentleman who knows the game and knows how to teach kids like ours, who have 1,400 SAT scores. Hell, Don's been through all that other stuff."
If anyone knows Navy, it's Joe Duff. He was Carnevale's basketball assistant for 16 years. He was head baseball coach for 32 years.
Joe Duff and Dave Smalley have spent most of their lives in Naval Academy athletics. When they give their stamp of approval to a coach, it means something.
What Duff meant when he said DeVoe had been through "all that other stuff" is the sort of thing George Raveling referred to in a recent issue of the NCAA News. Raveling, once Lefty Driesell's assistant at Maryland, was coach at Southern California until injuries from a recent auto accident forced him to the sidelines.
