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Valley's Bill Varner was a standout 6-7 player in 1979 who went on to play at Notre Dame. Here, Varner looks around Dan Flaherty of Burrell during a loss to the Bucs in a WPIAL quarterfinal game at the Civic Arena. Valley bounced back and won a state championship.
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A look back at the 1979 state champion Valley basketball team

Post-Gazette

A look back at the 1979 state champion Valley basketball team

 The star player from the Valley High School team 40 years ago lives near Hollywood these days and works as a body guard for Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Bill Varner has no mementos from that 1979 season, except for a few photos stored somewhere at his home.

But he has hundreds of pictures in his head.

Varner can still picture his father dancing in the bleachers after Valley crushed defending state champion Schenley in the PIAA quarterfinals.

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“Those were some of the best times of my life,” Varner said.

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This from a man who played at Notre Dame, was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA and enjoyed a long, highly-successful career playing professionally overseas.

This is the 40-year anniversary of a Valley team that should long be remembered for doing the first Lazarus impersonation in WPIAL history, coming back from a devastating loss in the WPIAL playoffs to win a state championship. In 58 years of PIAA championship play before 1979, 36 teams from the WPIAL had won state titles. Thirty-five of them were WPIAL champions and the other lost in a WPIAL final. Then came the Valley Vikings.

The vaunted Vikings of 1979 were left for dead after being knocked off by rival Burrell in a WPIAL quarterfinal on the first Friday of March, before 7,040 fans at the Civic Arena. Get this: The Valley players and coaches thought their season was over, not knowing of a relatively new PIAA playoff system that called for six WPIAL teams to make the PIAA tournament. Valley would have to win a “play-in” game to qualify, but the Vikings didn’t have any idea. They left the Civic Arena thinking they were history.

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“Back then, nobody knew all about the playoffs. It’s not like it is now where everybody has the information,” said Jim Patterson, Valley’s coach in 1979. “The extra spots for the state playoffs were new. I don’t exactly remember when I found out, but I think my athletic director told me. I remember getting the team together Saturday, the day after the game, and telling them, we could pack it in or make amends and go all out. It was a second chance that we didn’t know we would get.”

Ron “Mack” McNabb was Valley’s senior point guard in 1979 and now is Knoch High School’s coach.

“I just remember walking off that Civic Arena floor, thinking that I can’t believe this is the way my senior year is going to end,” said McNabb. “To this day, I remember the bus ride home and you could hear a pin drop. We didn’t know about the state playoffs. I do remember going to the gym the next day and we heard. It kind of got our hopes up.”

Twenty-two days after the loss at the Civic Arena, McNabb and Valley walked out of the Civic Arena again — as state champs. From that point on, the lives of some of the coaches and players were filled with joy, but also plenty of disappointments and even tragedy. Varner went on to play for Digger Phelps at Notre Dame, a decision he “regrets” to this day. Patterson never coached another game at any level. Gosby Pryor, another one of the star players, was killed four years later while hitchhiking.

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Devastation and death threat

Valley basketball was as good as any in Western Pennsylvania in the mid to late 1970s. But the Vikings kept coming up short. Two teams led by B.B. Flenory, one of the WPIAL’s all-time greats, and coached by Mike Rice Sr., came up short of WPIAL titles. Valley lost in the WPIAL championships to Uniontown and Farrell in 1975 and ’76.

In 1979, Varner was recruited heavily and offered scholarships from big-time colleges across the country. He was a 6-foot-7 senior and one of the first “big” players in the WPIAL who was skilled enough to take his game to the perimeter. Varner averaged 27 points and 17 rebounds that year and scored well over 1,000 for his career. Pryor, a 6-2 guard-forward nicknamed “Goose,” averaged 22.

McNabb was the tough little point guard. The other starters were Dale Parsons, a 6-2 senior who played center, and Chipper Harris, a junior who developed greatly as the season progressed. Mike Fuquay and Joe Marzullo were the top two reserves.

But Valley’s hopes for a WPIAL title were killed by the Bucs of Burrell. Joey Myers, the 6-6 kid with the curly blonde hair who was nicknamed “Sonar,” finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds to bring Burrell back from an 11-point deficit for a 50-48 win. Brian Sharick scored 13 for Burrell and Dan Flaherty 11. Varner had only 14 and made 5 of 15 shots.

“That game was very devastating because those guys were our rivals,” Varner said. “We didn’t play well together that day and we felt like our season was over. We were lost.”

Patterson was only 34 in 1974 and in his third year after taking over for Rice. A few days after the Burrell loss, Patterson got a death threat on the telephone. His wife, Phyl, took the phone call.

“We called the police. The FBI got involved,” Patterson said. “We found out a few years later it was a kid. Nothing ever happened.”

Valley’s second life began a few days after the Burrell game in the first of the play-in games. Valley qualified for the PIAA playoffs when Varner scored 26, Pryor 21 and McNabb 21 in an 88-78 victory against Chartiers Valley. Valley then beat Fox Chapel, 79-60, in the game to decide the No. 5 and 6 seeds for the PIAA playoffs. On to states.

Not a Digger fan

Pitt and Duquesne wanted Varner badly. Varner visited Tennessee and actually took a trip to Hawaii. “Just to visit there,” he said with a laugh.

Notre Dame got involved late. Varner said he originally signed a letter of intent with Marquette, but got out of it and signed in June of his senior year with Notre Dame.

“It would’ve been my best bet to stay at Pitt,” said the 58-year-old Varner. “I think so. I know so. I loved Notre Dame, but in four years, I didn’t have fun. I would’ve been better off if I played for Tim Grgurich at Pitt.

“Coach Patterson was the best coach I ever had. He yelled at us and things of that nature, but he knew how to talk to us. I was looking for a coach like Patterson who believed in me, but Digger Phelps was the total opposite. He wasn’t pleasant to be around at all or play for. This all brings back so many memories, good and bad. I remember my father and four of his friends drove up to see us play UCLA. Digger put me in for, like, the last 30 seconds. I remember walking home crying because I knew I had made a terrible mistake playing for this man. But after two years, I just stuck it out.”

Varner became a starter as a junior, averaged 10 points and then 11 as a senior. He was drafted in the ninth round by the Milwaukee Bucks, but enjoyed a great career overseas.

Road to the title

Patterson and even McNabb will tell you Varner took his game to another level in the state playoffs. He averaged 26.2 points in five games and had games with 18, 13 and 11 rebounds.

The PIAA playoffs started with a 63-59 victory against Altoona, which featured 7-footer Ricky Tunstall, who would play at Duquesne. Then came a 75-61 victory against South Hills of the City League, a team that featured 6-7 standout Cleveland “Shang” Bibbens.

Then came the ultimate win. In front of a sellout crowd at IUP, Valley clobbered defending PIAA champ Schenley, 75-45. The 30-point spread was shocking. Varner had 30 points and 13 rebounds. Larry Anderson, who went on to play at UNLV, was held to 18 points.

“I remember Schenley coming out in warmups and putting on, like, a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition,” said McNabb. “They were doing things behind their back, and this and that. But none of our guys were intimidated. I remember getting on the bus afterward and it was just a different feeling, almost like, ‘We can do this.’”

Next came the semifinals at the Civic Arena against WPIAL champ Beaver Falls, which featured Damon Bryant and Dwight Collins. Valley won, 66-60, as Varner led four players in double figures with 20.

In the title game, Valley led by 16 points in the third quarter before Allentown Allen sliced the deficit to two twice in the fourth quarter, the last time at 66-64. But Valley won, 72-66. Varner had 28 points and 11 rebounds, Pryor 22 and 8 and McNabb 12 points. The game ended, how appropriately, with a Varner dunk.

What came next

McNabb went on to a nice career at IUP (“I wasn’t even on IUP’s radar until after the Schenley game,” McNabb said). He has his two uniforms and a net from the state championship game framed in his basement.

Pryor scored 1,448 points at Gannon before the accident less than two months after he graduated took his life. Parsons didn’t play college basketball. Harris enjoyed a stellar career at Robert Morris.

Varner said he had to put on probably 60 pounds of muscle to work as a bodyguard for Kim Kardashian. When asked what it’s like to be around the Kardashians, he said, “It’s different, that’s for sure. Some are nice, some aren’t.”

Patterson never coached again after the 1979 season.

“My wife said it was either basketball or our family,” said Patterson, who has two daughters.

He chose his family and has no regrets. Patterson, now 74, and his wife recently moved to a smaller home in the North Hills. It was a downsizing move and the family threw out many things from their bigger home. But Patterson brought with him the PIAA gold medal, a plaque, a scrapbook and an old, red Wilson scorebook that is held together with masking tape. Written on the front in black marker is “1979 State AAA Basketball Champs.”

“It’s amazing that after 40 years, I still have this tremendous feeling about what we accomplished,” Patterson said. “My dad was on the school board at the time. The day after we won the championship, he told me, ‘It will never happen again.’ He was right.”

All Valley needed was a second chance.

Mike White: mwhite@post-gazette.com and Twitter @mwhiteburgh


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BOYS STANDINGS: WPIAL | City League
Team Pages | Schedules and results

GIRLS STANDINGS: WPIAL | City League
Team Pages | Schedules and results

First Published: March 7, 2019, 12:00 p.m.

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Valley's Bill Varner was a standout 6-7 player in 1979 who went on to play at Notre Dame. Here, Varner looks around Dan Flaherty of Burrell during a loss to the Bucs in a WPIAL quarterfinal game at the Civic Arena. Valley bounced back and won a state championship.  (Post-Gazette)
Jim Patterson holds the PIAA gold medal and the scorebook from the 1979 season for the Valley High School boys basketball team. Valley won the PIAA title in 1979.  (Mike White/Post-Gazette)
Bill Varner
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