King Gaskins Number Retired

Is anything at HC named for a Perry?

Found these.

King Gaskins YES School Mural Project

www.facebook.com/KingofYES

Bill Raynor is in the photo. 

Did he go to any school after HC ?

digboston.com/throwback-special-for-march-madness-in-mass-the-king-of-boston-basketball/
Following high school, Gaskins followed his CM coach, Ron Perry, to the College of Holy Cross in Central Mass, where Perry had taken a job as the athletic director. If Perry’s stepping up from high school coach to AD at a Division 1 school was dramatic, so was his player’s choice of Holy Cross over more established programs like Notre Dame and USC. “It may be the best piece of news the people of Worcester have had in a long, long time,” Gammons wrote in the Globe.

“I think the reason he ended up at Holy Cross was because of his relationship with Ron Perry Sr.,” Titus says. “He thought going to Holy Cross was the right thing to do and he could carry them into the national spotlight.” In any case, Gaskins had little help on the court. In a season in which his undersized teammates dropped passes and blew wins late in the game, the King himself seemed to run out of steam. In his first five games, Gaskins averaged 19 points and eight assists; nevertheless, Holy Cross lost a string of heartbreakers and Gaskins, not accustomed to losing, became increasingly frustrated. After he scored 21 points in one win halfway through his freshman season, Gaskins vented his frustrations in the locker room. “Basketball isn’t fun anymore and it used to be my whole life,” he told one reporter.

The dust-up attracted notice from that week’s Sports Illustrated, which ran a short item on the All-American’s clash with the system. Stuck on a losing team, Gaskins started to falter. He averaged 14 points and five assists per game—enough to lead the team, but at nine wins and 17 losses, the season was a total failure. “I had just gotten in with the wrong people at Holy Cross,” Gaskins told Gammons. “Maybe because it was my first time away from home. I don’t know.”

Two months after basketball season ended, Gaskins was arrested for breaking and entering a dormitory room. With academic and disciplinary trouble on that front, he then transferred to Mitchell Junior College in New London, Connecticut, with plans to improve his grades and return to Holy Cross. He explained the slip to Gammons: “I had been there a while and this kid Larry, who had been at the Cross and then left, was living nearby and called me. Larry was kinda strung out at the time and he told me he had to get some money. I said no, but he convinced me, this one thing was so small and no one would ever know. We’d never get caught … I really hurt the people who were best to me. Mr. Perry, through high school and onto Holy Cross, was the man I most admired. He was like a father to me.”

Another arrest—this one apparently due to racial profiling, as he was charged with carrying a screwdriver in a white part of Cambridge—put an end to any hope of a Holy Cross comeback. Things only got worse when, a few months later, Gaskins’s older brother was found dead, riddled with more than 100 bullets. “The facts are still unknown,” Gaskins said years later. “He was murdered and it was a big strain on the family. It was a critical time for all of us.”

Still nursing hoop dreams, Gaskins enrolled in Iowa Lakes Community College in Estherville, Iowa, where he lived in student housing—a trailer—and watched the grass grow while dominating the best junior college opposition in the country. He played well enough to lure big-time recruiters, and was courted by major programs in California and Kansas, but Gaskins wanted to return home, and so in 1976 he committed to Boston College. It was to be a reunion for four of the Boston Six, with Gaskins joining his old teammates Collins, Smith, and Carrington. The relationship never materialized though, and Gaskins told Gammons that he never heard directly from BC why they chose not to enroll him. “I think the dream was still with me until then,” he said to the reporter.

“That kinda took it out of me. Really depressed me for a while. I really would have liked to have played with Billy, Bobby, and Wilfred. Remember the Boston

That team had plenty of talent with Jim Schnurr and the great Gene Doyle as real standouts.

The King Gaskins Facebook page is a treasure.

Look at the High School All America List!   An incredible list of names:  Phil Sellers, Luther "Ticky" Burden, The Chief, Cliff Pondexter, Quinn Buckner, Ron Lee, Adrian Dantley, Mo Howard.