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Monday, March 10, 2003

John Paquette is the Big East Conference's associate commissioner of communications. A stoic, soft-voiced fellow based in the conference's Rhode Island headquarters, he doesn't habitually drop by a radio-broadcast position at courtside before a big Big East game, let alone one this late in the season. So when Paquette ambled to the far end of the scorer's table at the Petersen Events Center moments before Connecticut-Pitt last week and wanted to speak to Dick Groat and Bill Hillgrove, the latter could come to only one conclusion.

Uh-oh.

"I thought," Hillgrove said later, "we said something wrong."

There was no Pitt radio-network utterance about officiating that offended conference types. There were no unsportscasterlike conduct. No forthcoming censors or censure.

Rather, Paquette merely wished to inform the Panthers' radio broadcasters that they had said enough right things to merit the Big East's appreciation.

When conference officials dole out their player and coach of the year awards tomorrow night at the Grand Hyatt, tipping off tournament week in New York, they also plan to bestow an honor on a pair of steady winter voices: Hillgrove and Groat are this year's recipients of the Big East Media Award.

The award, inaugurated in the mid-1990s, is for outstanding contributions to college basketball by members of the fourth estate. It comes in the form of a clock -- "a beautiful clock," Paquette deadpanned -- that served as a tick-tocking token to CBS/ESPN's Bill Raftery and ESPN's Mike Tirico from television, Syracuse's Doug Logan and Georgetown's Rich Chvotkin from radio, plus the New York Daily News' Dick Weiss and The Associated Press' Jim O'Connell and the Newark Star-Ledger's Tom Lucci from the print medium. Groat and Hillgrove of Pitt flagship WRRK-FM become the first radio tandem so honored.

And believe Groat, he is honored.

"I was shocked," he said.

This is a former baseball shortstop who won a National League MVP. A onetime basketball guard who starred in college and the NBA. Yet here he is, pleased as peaches about winning an award the year after it was handed to a New Jersey sports writer known as Looch.

Groat first sat down alongside a veteran Pitt play-by-play announcer in 1979-80. Jimmy Carter was still president. Tim Grgurich was still the Panthers' coach. The Eastern 8 was their conference.

Ever since, they have been together for 24 seasons and most of 693 games together (Groat missed a few for surgery and Pirates fantasy camp, Hillgrove maybe a half-dozen to dozen more because of Steelers or Pitt football conflicts). They have worked six NITs and nine NCAAs. They have won one previous radio award that they can recall, a local Achievement In Radio plaque -- for their Dec. 1998 call of a Connecticut-Pitt fray -- and their current Pitt-network producer, Bill DiFabio, got that one because he was the program director of flagship WTAE-AM then.

It's about time they got something for their service, even if it is only a beautiful clock for each.

"I'm sure part of it is because we had to put up with Gopper all those years," Groat said, referring to their statistician and sidekick of the past 22 radio seasons, Al Goppman.

Hillgrove teased of the retiree who is their constant Panthers season companion, "That's the Lord's way of saying there is no hell."

The play-by-play man, who started calling Pitt games in 1969, convinced Panthers administrators and radio bosses to give Groat a try on the air. "He taught me everything I know," Groat said proudly. "He's the consummate professional."

OK, so maybe this radio tandem historically has been quick to criticize the officiating. Maybe these broadcasters feel too close to the players to ever mouth a bad word about them. Yet, they are professionals in the amateur realm, hometown announcers with that old-shoe feel. College announcers are unilaterally homers on the local broadcast level, and that certainly seems to be what the public wants from them.

A quarter-century together means they deserve a timepiece, even if they aren't retiring.

By the way, Paquette tried to inform them of this award earlier.

"I wanted to tell them in person," he said. "We were going to tell them at the Georgetown game. But we never made it to the Georgetown game."

That President's Day game in Washington was postponed a day because of snow.

Which goes to show: you never know what might happen, even after five coaches, broadcasting over four different decades and handling names from Sotiris Aggelou to Donatas Zavackas.

They should consider this Big East award a 24-year shot clock. That keeps on ticking.