This was a big moment for Joe Ponsetto, fresh to the Illinois attorney general’s office. For the first time he would argue a case before the Appellate Court and, as he approached the bench, he was stern, somber and properly decorous.
But this was in 1982 and trailing him was the legend he had created as a rugged and emotional forward at DePaul. Ponsetto was stone cold as a competitor, a back-alley brawler who didn’t back down. Never was his willfulness more evident than when the Blue Demons bumped up against Notre Dame.
This was a wondrous rivalry in the days he played, a meeting between regional rivals who were also Catholic and independent and looking to establish themselves on the national basketball map.
“In the Midwest you had Marquette, DePaul, us and Dayton as independents, and to get into the tournament you had to have one of the best independent records,” recalled former Bull John Paxson, who played for the Irish in the early ’80s after his brother, former Blazer Jim, played at Dayton.
“So we approached it as a conference game. Everything about a game with DePaul had a conference atmosphere.”
“Beating Notre Dame was a way for us to make our mark and get into the tournament,” Ponsetto said. “So they became incredibly big games for us.”
That was the setting when DePaul visited Notre Dame in February 1978, and it accentuated a moment that trails Ponsetto still. He was strolling onto the court after halftime, with the Irish fight song blaring, the fans screaming and this little electric car whirling around the floor at the command of the leprechaun mascot.
“It was very convenient,” Ponsetto recalled with a mischievous smile.
So convenient that he stopped and kicked the little car and sent it flying.
“I still feel very comfortable saying Notre Dame can be obnoxious in its presentation of stuff,” Ponsetto declared. “It can grate.”
His kick surely grated on Irish fans, who booed him lustily that afternoon. It still clearly bothered them on this day four years later as Ponsetto stood for the first time in front of the Appellate Court.
On the bench was Daniel McNamara, who graduated from Notre Dame. Even before Ponsetto had a chance to address him, the justice looked down at him and said, “Mr. Ponsetto, I just want you to know that the car you kicked belonged to my grandson.”
They met for the first time on Feb. 24, 1912, at Notre Dame, where the Irish won 58-11. But their rivalry would not take on a life until Ray Meyer landed at DePaul in 1942. He had gone to Notre Dame, played for Notre Dame and coached at Notre Dame, and the two schools would meet at least once a year through Dec. 10, 1994. That’s when Irish coach John MacLeod shut down the series, citing Notre Dame’s Big East commitments.
But Saturday it will be resurrected when the Blue Demons meet the Irish in the second game of the Dell Classic 4 Kids doubleheader at the United Center. Texas opposes Stanford in the first game.
“It is the type of game that should be played,” Paxson said of a series that featured a bevy of stars from George Mikan to Austin Carr.
Yet it didn’t fully blossom until Digger Phelps took over at Notre Dame in the early 1970s and Meyer launched his own second coming.
Phelps was a flamboyant showman on the make, and in 1978 he took his Irish to the Final Four. Meyer was a grandfatherly figure to be cherished, and in 1979 he went to the Final Four with his Blue Demons.
Matched against each other the two were a mesmerizing mix, and they guided a steady stream of talented players. John Shumate and Adrian Dantley, Bill Laimbeer and Kelly Tripucka, Orlando Woolridge and Bill Hanzlik. Each of them starred for the Irish in the ’70s.
Against them DePaul threw Ponsetto and Dave Corzine, Gary Garland and Clyde Bradshaw, Terry Cummings and Mark Aguirre.
“Those games were a lot of fun for us,” Ponsetto recalled. “Our age group, in our last years of grade school and in high school, we followed Notre Dame a lot more than DePaul. Digger had that national image. Before our games [became] big deals they had those wins over the great UCLA teams.
“So when we were coming around, starting to get notoriety again, it was appropriate for us to play them. It was an easy vehicle for us to get attention by knocking them off.”
As befitting a showman, Phelps loved the stage–and Chicago was a favorite.
“It was a natural. It was like going back to the old CYO days,” he said. “You get two Catholic schools playing, it was the CYO carryover. The DePaul campus is one parish, the Notre Dame campus is the other parish. It creates a rivalry. It was like two neighborhoods having their own teams.”
Meyer has a similar recollection.
“It was a neighborhood rivalry,” he said. “We felt it was the biggest game on our schedule and if we won that game our season was successful. There used to be a lot of razzing. My friends would say, `When are you going to play that little school south of here?’ They wouldn’t even name it. It was a great rivalry. But win or lose, we were still friends. I think that’s a great way to play opponents. You fight like hell during the game. But after the game, you go out together.”
They were such good friends that Phelps, when asked for a memory, immediately mentioned Meyer’s late wife, Marge:
“She was like a second mother to me. A sweet lady. Ray, one of the classiest people ever.”
Yet raw emotions still suffused the games, and during one of them Phelps’ daughter Karen was so upset by the taunts thrown at her dad that she fled Alumni Hall in tears.
“I told her to get used to it,” Phelps said.
The games often were played out on a national stage, and on occasion were instant classics. The afternoon Ponsetto kicked the car the Blue Demons won by a point in overtime, but in a regional final rematch in March the Irish triumphed en route to the Final Four. The next year, DePaul’s Final Four season, it beat the Irish by four, but in February 1980 the Demons went to Notre Dame 25-0 ranked No. 1 and lost in double overtime.
“I still remember Kelly Tripucka lying on the floor and kicking his feet in the air after that one,” Meyer said.
As so often happens when the series is recalled, he talks of the afternoon that made Ponsetto famous and how his Blue Demons came back to win on a half-court shot by Garland.
The game started out as a regional telecast, but eventually was carried throughout the country when the national offering between North Carolina and Syracuse grew one-sided.
“I got a letter from a priest in Buffalo who said, `I won the game for you. When I saw you were behind, I put a statue of St. Vincent de Paul on the TV,'” Meyer recalled laughing. “Then I got a letter from a nun who said, `I won the game for you. When I saw you were losing, I knelt down and prayed for you.’
“It was funny. I wish I would have saved all those letters. That game got us national attention. We were dead, but they didn’t bury us. We came to life again.”
Villainous reputation aside, Ponsetto has warm memories of the game as well.
“That year focused a lot of attention on the series,” he said. “There were a lot of neat angles: Digger being the young buck; Coach coming back to national prominence. My goofiness made it more fun. I remember those games–they’re something that shouldn’t ever have been stopped.
“I’m glad they’re playing each other again. But they probably need some quirky things to happen to really get it going again.”
ON TV Stanford vs. Texas, 11 a.m. Saturday, Fox Sports Net DePaul vs. Notre Dame, 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Fox Sports Net
