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Date Posted: Thursday, April 04, 05:48:00pm
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HERNDON, Va. — Mary Eileen O'Connell was watching March Madness on TV the other day when the announcers mentioned her late husband, who played basketball at Niagara University a lifetime ago. Andy O'Connell's name came up because his grandnephew plays point guard for North Carolina State — and Michael O'Connell's Wolfpack will be in the Final Four come Saturday.
"Michael reminds me of Andy, the way he plays," Mary says. "I keep thinking of the two of them and what they have in common. Basketball brings out certain traits in you. And I think they both had ways of bringing out the best in their teammates."
Andy O'Connell
Propped up on a dining room chair is a framed drawing of Andy O'Connell in his Niagara uniform.
Her smile at this thought is happy and sad at the same time. Andy died in 2020, at 79. It's nice to have him remembered. They met as freshmen at Niagara in 1959, and began dating as juniors. He came from Brooklyn to play basketball. She came from five minutes away, in Lewiston, one of nine children in the Thomas family.
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"There were not many women at Niagara then, and people always said, 'You're lucky, you have the pick of the crowd,' " she says. "But I didn't think of it like that. You only need one person."
Mary, 82, is sitting in the dining room of her well-appointed home in Northern Virginia, old scrapbooks spread out in front of her. Newspaper articles, yellow and brittle, tell of Andy's exploits at Niagara in the early 1960s. Propped up on a dining room chair is a framed drawing of Andy in his Niagara uniform. It's as if he were there at the table with us.
"I watched him at Niagara all those years, and you could see the development," she says. "He was always a good player, but he became an even a better player and a captain of the team. You could see his leadership skills develop."
Andy averaged 18.7 points per game in 1962-63, his senior season. Ten years later, he was inducted into Niagara's Athletics Hall of Fame. Taps Gallagher, the legendary Niagara coach, once called him "cooperation personified. Andy's a player with all heart and tremendous courage. Valuable assets in sports, business, or any walk of life."
Such traits are essential in the walk of life he chose as a member of the U.S. Secret Service. The walls of their home are lined with framed Christmas cards signed by an array of the presidents he protected. This way, Mary keeps Christmas close year-round. And Andy, too.
Michael O'Connell is the grandson of Andy's brother, Jim. Mary traveled to Raleigh in January to see Michael play. The Wolfpack beat Virginia that night. UVa won the regular-season rematch. Then the schools played again in the semifinals of the ACC tournament. The Cavaliers led by three points with five seconds to play, with Isaac McKneely, an 85% free-throw shooter, on the line for a one-and-one. He missed, and Michael took a quick pass and dribbled swiftly up court. He let fly a desperation shot from the left wing that struck the backboard, rolled around the rim a full 360 degrees — and fell through.
"Michael O'Connell banks in a prayer!" bellowed the TV announcer. The Wolfpack won in overtime, and they've been winning ever since. Their only path to the NCAA Tournament was winning the ACC Tournament's automatic bid. Michael's miracle shot made this Final Four run possible. He'll be a legend in Raleigh forever.
"Wasn't that amazing?" Mary says. "It doesn't get much better than that."
She got to see Andy play the hero, too. One of those yellow clippings tells of the night he scored 31 points in a home win against St. Bonaventure. Niagara led 59-58 with seven minutes to play when Gallagher switched Andy to defend the Bonnies' Fred Crawford, who was on his way to 32 points. Andy immediately stole the ball from Crawford at midcourt and raced in for a layup, the first two points of a 15-point run as the Purple Eagles pulled away for an 80-63 victory. (Crawford would go on to play several seasons in the NBA, including a brief stint with the Buffalo Braves.)
Andy took a blow to the chin that night that took several stitches to close. He pulled a muscle on that game-changing steal and layup but stayed in the game. "Modest Andy O'Connell downplayed his own heroics," wrote Cliff Spieler in the Niagara Gazette. " 'It was one of those nights when we had it when we needed it,' he said as he sat in the locker room anticipating a session with the doctor."
Mary didn't miss many games in those days.
"Going to the games was our main occupation," she says, laughing. "What else are you going to do at Niagara in the winter? Everything revolved around basketball in our time."
Michael O'Connell played basketball and lacrosse for Chaminade High School on Long Island. He signed up to play lacrosse at the University of Maryland but instead decided to play basketball at Stanford University. He played four years there, got his degree, and then transferred to NC State, where he is a graduate student. Oh, and now a legend.
"I think Andy had the quality of never give up, no matter how bad things are," Mary says. "Michael has that. Attitude makes a difference.”
That artist's rendering of Andy O'Connell shows him as young and handsome, just as Mary remembers him. The 1963 Niagara Gazette story by Don Glynn that ran with the drawing is in one of Mary's scrapbooks. The lead paragraph says the Niagara captain would soon be an Army lieutenant. That wasn't coming until the fall, though. In the meantime, he hoped to work at the Cerrone Trucking Company in Niagara Falls as he had the previous summer.
"There's another reason why Andy would like to stay here again this summer," said the last sentence of the story, "but you'll have to ask him about that."
No need to ask. She is sitting right there at the dining room table, smiling amid the memories.
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