Editor’s note: This story is part of a series recounting and exploring College Sports Mysteries. 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The public address announcer at Florida State’s Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center said Dwayne Schintzius’ name, and that’s the moment Schintzius and his Florida teammates and coaches knew what was in store for them.

Some would look back and say it’s the moment the Gators won their first SEC championship in men’s basketball history. It led to the events of a mythical evening weeks later at Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gym — events that remain hazy, disputed and angering to some, nearly 35 years later — that ultimately cost the Commodores a banner they still believe should be hanging in Memorial.

Florida State students hurled tennis balls at Schintzius when the 7-foot-2 junior center was introduced on that evening of Dec. 3, 1988. Eric Poms, CEO of the Orange Bowl for the past 17 years, was then Florida basketball’s head student manager. He estimated “hundreds” of balls hit the court, and he and others scrambled to get them picked up. Insulting messages for Schintzius were scrawled on many of them.

Massive, mulleted and outspoken, he was already a popular target for opposing fans. A fight outside of a Gainesville nightclub over the previous summer in which Schintzius reportedly wielded a tennis racket got him suspended for the first four games of the season. And it gave those opposing fans, who had no internet to utilize for mockery, easy fuel. The Florida State kids provided the blueprint.

“It was a wild ride,” said Livingston Chatman, a Florida sophomore forward that season, and it culminated on Jan. 25, 1989, in Nashville, against an excellent Commodores team in what was then one of the most hostile arenas in college basketball.

Florida got out with an 81-78 overtime victory. Schintzius hit two technical foul shots with one second left in regulation to force overtime, after a tech was called on Vanderbilt because its fans threw tennis balls on the court. Florida ended up winning the SEC with a 13-5 record. Vanderbilt finished 12-6.

“The funny thing is, Dwayne did something he probably shouldn’t have done, and it ends up rewarding them with rings on their fingers,” said Frank Kornet, a senior Vanderbilt forward that season. “And that’s the thing that’s hard. We should be wearing those rings.”

How many tennis balls? From which side of the court? Which one inspired official John Clougherty to call the tech? Who threw it? This is an attempt to re-create that night and answer those questions, with the first public comments on the matter from the man who has long been rumored as the primary culprit.

---

The Florida program had never experienced an NCAA Tournament before Schintzius arrived on campus. That 1986-87 team got all the way to the Sweet 16, losing by six to eventual national runner-up Syracuse, and it leaned heavily on the scoring of Vernon Maxwell and coaching of Norm Sloan. Maxwell starred again in 1987-88 en route to more NCAA success, then departed for the NBA, but Schintzius as a junior and Chatman as a sophomore were enough for the Gators to earn a preseason top-15 ranking.

Dwayne Davis and Clifford Lett gave the Gators four players averaging more than 60 points a game combined. Schintzius gave them a star with swagger and the maturity to lead on the court, his off-court aggression with sports equipment notwithstanding.

“A guy who was often misunderstood, but just a wonderful person,” Monte Towe, an assistant coach for that team, said of Schintzius, who died in 2012 at age 43 after a long battle with leukemia.

“Playing with (Schintzius), it was pure joy,” Chatman said. “That year was rough to start (including a 114-86 loss at FSU), but eventually we got rolling.”

The Gators were just 9-9, 3-4 in the SEC coming to Vanderbilt. A week earlier, they got the tennis-ball treatment in a loss at Tennessee, as in previous trips to Ole Miss and Georgia. The SEC had seen enough. Then-commissioner Harvey Schiller released an internal memorandum a few days before the Vanderbilt game calling for a crackdown on objects thrown at games — with a technical foul on the home team as a punishment to be warned and carried out if necessary.

“That was the directive,” Clougherty said. “The whole thing ended up being a total nightmare.”

It was already trending that way for Vanderbilt’s players. Several of them had the flu that week. And they were dealing with swarms of media from the state of Kentucky because their beloved coach C.M. Newton announced two days before Florida’s visit that he would be leaving after the season to become athletic director at his alma mater, Kentucky, and help navigate that men’s basketball program through a gutting NCAA probation.

“Talk about a surreal few days,” said Barry Goheen, a senior guard on that Vanderbilt team.

Newton had restored pride in a tradition-rich program, in a city with no major league professional sports at the time and nothing of more sporting consequence than Vanderbilt men’s basketball. When Lucy Jones and her husband, Doug, were a young married couple in 1966, Doug’s boss offered up two of his season tickets to them, at $22 apiece per season.

“That may as well have been $2,000 for us at the time,” she said. “But back then, someone had to die before you got a Vanderbilt basketball ticket. So we borrowed half of it and saved the other half.”

Which meant no more driving to the highest point in the city at the time, Love Circle Park, and parking, which the couple started doing when they were dating — so they could get clear reception on Vanderbilt basketball radio broadcasts. The Jones family still has its Section L floor seats, and Lucy was an outspoken presence at games well before she became Vanderbilt’s ticket manager in 1982.

On this cold 1989 night, Vanderbilt came in after its own slow start but had won three of four, losing only to Chris Jackson and LSU, by a point on the road. The Commodores were 10-8, 4-2 in the SEC, trying to follow up on the program’s first NCAA bid in 14 years. The 1987-88 team stunned a loaded Pittsburgh team to reach the Sweet 16 before losing to eventual national champ Kansas, but that team was built around senior center Will Perdue.

This team started to hit its stride when Newton moved the 6-9 Kornet from power forward to center, going smaller with Derrick Wilcox into the starting lineup at point guard. Kornet held his own in the post, and Wilcox was able to get more shots for senior stars Goheen and Barry Booker. Those three seniors, Kornet, Goheen and Booker, came together in the fall of 1985, Newton selling them on one of the best atmospheres in the sport and on the idea of taking a program near the bottom of the SEC to the top.

“Our goal was to flip it all the way around,” Kornet said. “That was the team to do it.”

Florida was a primary obstacle, despite the Gators’ early struggles. After doors opened and long before tipoff, Vanderbilt athletic director Roy Kramer was busy in the student section. Kramer was less than a year removed from taking over as SEC commissioner and doing much to modernize and strengthen the league. On this night he was telling arena workers to look out for kids armed with fuzzy green orbs.

“We did all we could,” said Kramer, now retired, 93 years old and living near his hometown of Maryville, Tenn.

“Roy was hellbent,” retired Vanderbilt spokesman Rod Williamson said. “He was in the student section telling the ushers, ‘Confiscate any tennis balls, no questions asked.’ He’s all in the aisles during the game trying to make sure no one throws a tennis ball. He tried to put the fear of God into those people.”

Vanderbilt’s PA announcer addressed the crowd before the game, letting fans know that per league directive, this would serve as a warning about objects being thrown on the court. And that if it happened, the home team would be assessed a technical foul.

All smugglers of tennis balls held them close as Schintzius and the Gators were introduced. They gripped them through an ugly, 49-point first half. And through runs for both teams in the second, with the ever-clutch Goheen nailing a 3-pointer, plus the foul and free throw, to put Vanderbilt up 71-70 with 27 seconds left.

That was still the score when Kornet grabbed a Florida miss in traffic and was fouled with six seconds showing. It was all one-and-one at the time on non-shooting fouls in the bonus, and Kornet nailed the first. His second free throw missed and bounced right, costing Florida time as the ball was gathered and thrown ahead in an attempt to beat the Commodores down the floor. The pass was errant and rolled out of bounds. One second showed on the clock.

It was over.

“I remember sitting down and saying, ‘Ugh, we’re done,’” Poms said.

“I immediately thought about the celebration in the locker room we were about to have,” Goheen said. “And the IV I was going to get.”

And then it happened.

“You try so hard to keep it from happening,” Williamson said. “And then you lose like that on a completely unforced error. No pun intended.”

---

There is no broadcast copy of this game available because it was not televised. If any Nashville television news crews got footage of the conclusion of the game, that footage is no longer available, per responses to inquiries at all of those stations. Vanderbilt basketball did film the game, however, and a Vanderbilt spokesman was able to find and provide to The Athletic a copy of that game film.

It is cut down to basketball only. As the errant Florida pass trickles out of bounds, Vanderbilt fans are seen rising in celebration. Then the film cuts ahead to Schintzius standing at the foul line.

The events that took place in a matter of seconds between those two things were chaotic. Frantic. Unforgettable. Yet hard to remember, exactly.

The Vanderbilt student paper, The Hustler, wrote that tennis balls “came from all sides of the gym” and “rained down on Florida center Dwayne Schintzius” in that moment, with one tick left on the clock but some fans apparently thinking the game was over. The Tennessean wrote that “a person or persons in the crowd of 15,498 threw at least four tennis balls.”

A retrospective story on the Vanderbilt official site several years later also put the number at four. A Florida Sun-Sentinel story off the game put it at eight to 10. Individual accounts are all over the place.

Kramer: “There weren’t eight to 10, I can tell you that. Ask me to swear on a stack of Bibles and I can’t tell you there was more than one. I remember one. Two or three, that’s possible.”

Goheen: “I thought there were two.”

Towe: “They were all over the court. It wasn’t like one or two. It was a bunch.”

Kornet: “I’d say seven to 10.”

Chatman: “It was a rain of tennis balls.”

Poms: “It was a few. Not a tremendous amount.”

Williamson: “I only remember one ball. I’ve since heard people say they remember a couple. Maybe.”

“Initially,” Jones said, “it was just the one.”

Clougherty said he remembers only one for sure, but that’s where the question of location comes into play. The Tennessean wrote that tennis balls came from the Vanderbilt student section, which is across from the scorer’s table. Some believe Clougherty, who was turned toward the scorer’s table, wouldn’t have seen the first ball (or balls) but that it (or they) was (or were) thrown back onto the court from the donor seats behind the scorer’s table.

That’s how Jones, who was in her floor seats behind the home basket with the student section to her right and scorer’s table to her left, recalls it. Same with Booker.

“My recollection is several coming from the student section, then thrown back the other way,” Booker said. “Then I remember Dwayne grabbing one of those coming back the other way and giving his angry look. I still think Clougherty, given any opportunity to overlook that situation, would have done so. But the balls being thrown back made the difference.”

Clougherty stepped toward the scorer’s table and signaled a technical foul.

“In a dramatic sort of way, like he was the king of Broadway or something,” Goheen said.

There’s no disputing the quantity of boos that ensued. They rained down on Clougherty from all corners of Memorial Gym. The late Newton, typically all class and composure on the sideline, expressed his disbelief loudly, among many others on the Vanderbilt bench. He would later call it “the most bitter loss I’ve ever been associated with.”

“It was regrettable,” Clougherty said, nearly 35 years later. “No official wants to do that. But I couldn’t not call it. It was too clear. And my crew and myself would have been in hot water for not calling it. I will tell you, I never got any pushback after the fact from the league office or our supervisor of officials. They would have been contradicting themselves.”

Florida still had to hit two technical shots to tie the game. Sloan opted for his 7-2 center. Towe said Sloan pointed at Schintzius and said: “You got us into this mess, now get us out of it.”

“I remember thinking, ‘No way he makes both of these,’” Goheen said. “I don’t think either one touched the rim.”

They didn’t. Schintzius pumped his fist emphatically after the second one went down. He had seven points in overtime before Vanderbilt got a bucket. And shortly after leaving the floor in exultant celebration as Vanderbilt players and fans trudged out quietly, Schintzius said to reporters: “Tell whoever it was that threw the balls that Dwayne Schintzius thanks them very much. If the guy’s stupid enough to do it, he’s stupid enough to pay for it.”

Newton always led a prayer after each game in the Vanderbilt locker room, win or lose. That had to be delayed for a few moments as Kornet raged through sobs.

“I really just lost it,” he said.

Newton told reporters the culprits couldn’t be Vanderbilt fans, they had to be “two damn yokels who got carried away.” Goheen said: “Whoever did it better run. They’ve got about 12 guys after them.”

Later that night, Kornet was back in his dorm room and said he got a call from a university official.

“He told me, ‘Frank don’t do something dumb,’” Kornet said. “Like we were actually going to find who did it and do something to them.”

Instead, the Commodores won seven of their next eight games, routing LSU, Kentucky and Tennessee along the way, to make it a race to the finish. And a culprit was never identified. Though one name emerged shortly after the incident and has been mentioned often over the years, including by several people who were interviewed for this story.

---

George Armistead, known by many as “Big George” — he’s 6-7 and played basketball at South Alabama — was a Nashville Metro Councilmember at the time. He was, and is, an ardent Vanderbilt supporter. His cousin Jimmy Armistead starred on the gridiron for Vanderbilt football in its heyday under coach Dan McGugin, leading the nation in scoring in 1927.

Armistead and his wife, Lydia, had seats for many years in the section behind the scorer’s table at Memorial Gym. They were in those seats that night. And if there’s one theory from longtime Vanderbilt supporters that has gained traction over the years, it’s that he was the one who threw a ball back that came over from the student section, forcing Clougherty to call the tech.

“I did not throw it,” Armistead said. “And I never would have done that.”

But he’s familiar with the theory. It made more sense, at least, than another popular one, the idea that a Florida fan or fans in the stands caused the havoc.

“I’d say probably around 10 times over the years, I’ve been asked about throwing the tennis ball,” Armistead said. “Trust me, if I would have done that stupid act, I would have admitted it.”

Armistead said his seats were in Section E — near the baseline and the visiting bench — and 16 rows up. From there, it’s hard to imagine a tennis ball from the student section reaching him. So how did his name come up in the first place?

“Joe Biddle wrote that I did it as a joke,” Armistead said of the late writer, who was a sports columnist for the Nashville Banner at the time. “I guess people ran with it.”

At least one person has admitted involvement, but his name has been lost to history. Jones said she was visited in Memorial Gym a few days after the game by a graduate student who came in to apologize for throwing one of the tennis balls.

“He said he threw the second one,” Jones recalled. “But the first one had already torn the game apart anyway.”

Jones said Kramer met with the student, thanked him for his honesty and decided to let him keep the activity card that got him into games. Everyone moved on. The Commodores took their hot streak into a rematch in Gainesville, built a double-digit lead, squandered it and lost 83-80 — then absorbed some tennis balls from Florida students. Those fans waited until time had expired.

“That’s why I’ve never bought that the tennis ball game cost us the SEC title,” Goheen said. “Win the (second meeting) and it’s just an amusing footnote.”

Both teams went on to first-round losses in the NCAA Tournament. And Clougherty took on the villain role in Memorial Gym for the rest of his career. Some in the Vanderbilt camp don’t think that’s fair.

“I just don’t think he had a choice,” Booker said.

Some do.

“I was there for some of the games he reffed at Memorial, and I joined the other 15,000 people in booing the crap out of him,” said Goheen, who recently published a book, “Buzzer Beaters and Memorial Magic,” detailing this and many other experiences as a Vanderbilt player. “He was a terrible, terrible official, which he proved, by the way, in the Final Four that year.”

Clougherty called the controversial late foul on a hand check that gave Michigan two free throws to beat Seton Hall in the national title game. A year later, he allowed a Kenny Anderson shot after the buzzer in a Georgia Tech win in the Sweet 16 over Michigan State, and did not get a Final Four assignment as a result. But Clougherty was one of the most respected officials in the game in a 30-year career that included 12 Final Fours. He retired in 2016 after 11 years as the ACC’s coordinator of officials.

During a Vanderbilt game in the late 1990s, he had an interaction with Jones during a timeout.

“It’s been 10 years, and these people still boo me,” he told her.

“Yeah, John, we just pass it down to the next generation,” she said. “We’re gonna boo you until you die.”

In fact, they boo anyone with the name “Clougherty,” as John’s son and college basketball official Tim Clougherty has discovered.

“You can’t make it up,” Clougherty said. “They carried it over to my son.”

The feelings are warmer on the Florida side. Poms thanked Clougherty for the call at an ACC convention just a few years ago. And the Gators still love reliving that game.

In September in Gainesville, they had a 70th birthday party for Towe that served as a team reunion. They shared memories of that 1989 night, and of Sloan and Schintzius. Towe received a gift that will get a proper framing in his household — a tennis ball the Gators took with them that night. A Penn 3.

“It’s the real deal,” Towe said. “It looks like John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg might have played with it.”

On it are written two words, faded but still legible after all these years: “Dumbass Dwayne.”

More College Sports Mysteries:

(Top illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo courtesy of Vanderbilt athletics)