It's an understatement to say that tonight's NCAA Championship game is the biggest moment in the history of the University of Virginia men's basketball program.
 
It's also fair to identify a remarkable moment that occurred exactly 56 years ago today that involved the then head coach of Mansfield State Teachers College as being the turning point that led to the Cavaliers becoming the nationally prominent program of today.
 
On the morning of April 8, 1963, Bill Gibson was the wildly successful head basketball coach of the Mansfield State Teachers College – then an NAIA school whose enrollment was just over 700 students. Later that afternoon, Gibson was named the head coach of the Virginia Cavaliers, a school with more than 6,000 students who played in the Atlantic Coast Conference – the nation's most prestigious NCAA Division I basketball league.
 
The occurrence of a small-college basketball coach taking over as the head coach of a program in one of the nation's premier basketball conference was almost as unheard of 56 years ago as it would be today.
 
According to almost all who knew him during his seven-year tenure at Mansfield, Bill Gibson was one of those remarkable and rare coaches who managed to instill discipline, confidence and expectations into his players. He was tough and uncompromising but fair, with a skill for identifying and recruiting talented players and getting the most out of them. He seemly could will things to happen.
 
There was something magic about him.
 
Bill Gibson wasn't the founder the men's basketball program at Mansfield when he became the head coach prior to the start of the 1956-57 season – the Mountaineers played their first intercollegiate game back in 1900. However, during his tenure he turned Mansfield from a mediocre program into one of the most successful small college basketball powerhouses in the nation.
 
Seven years later, the 35-year old Gibson went south with the expectations of repeating the same magic at Virginia – and once again succeeded.
 
When Gibson left nearby Troy High School after just one year to accept the position of head basketball and baseball coach at Mansfield in the summer of 1956, the Mountaineer hoops program had been in a state of disarray.
 
Over the five seasons prior to Gibson's tenure, Mansfield had four head coaches. Ted Casey, a remarkably successful coach who directed Mansfield to state titles in football and basketball following the conclusion of World War II, left the school to take over as the director of the Scranton CYO after the 1951-52 season. He was replaced by his assistant coach Ed Rushin.
 
Rushin, like Casey, was the head coach for all three of Mansfield's athletic programs during that era (football, basketball and baseball). He was forced to relinquish his coaching responsibilities when he suffered severe injuries while working on his almost-completed new home on Brooklyn Street. The home, less than a week away from completion, exploded from a natural gas leak as Rushin opened the front door the evening after coaching the Homecoming football game in October of 1954. Severely injured, Rushin survived but his coaching career ended.
 
Ted Bescanceney, a Mansfield alumni and teacher and administrator at Mansfield High School who would be inducted into the Mansfield University Alumni/Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995, did a commendable job of stepping into the breech. He directed the team to seven wins during the 1954-55 season.
 
Bescanceney served as principal at Mansfield High School when the Tigers, under the direction of head coach Rich Miller and featuring All-American and future NBA player and U.S. Congressman Tom McMillan, won the 1969 Pennsylvania Class B State Championship. He made it clear from the beginning that his tenure was temporary until a full-time head coach could be identified.
 
Ed Stelmack was named head baseball, basketball and football coach that summer. After one year the Mansfield administration decided to split coaching responsibilities with Stelmack remaining head coach of the football program and hiring Gibson to serve as head basketball and baseball coach.
 
The players, some of whom had had three head coach in three seasons, and student-body noticed an immediate change in attitude and expectations under Gibson.
   
Mansfield hadn't posted a winning basketball record for 10 seasons prior to Gibson taking over the helm of the program for the start of the 1956-57 campaign. That trend that would continue with a 6-10 mark in Gibson's inaugural year.
 
That would also be the last time a Gibson coached Mansfield team failed to post a winning record. He instilled expectations in his players and created a disciplined culture of winning while recruiting players that had no equal. One of whom was a young man by the name of Davy Russell from Gibson's hometown of Donora, Pa. Russell is still considered by many of those who had the chance to watch him perform in the always sold-out Rec Center as the greatest player in school history.
 
Gibson brought others into the fold, some local, including Hall of Famers Bob Felt and "Jungle Jim" Turner. Others from out of the area included Hall of Famer Dick DiBiaso who would later become the head coach at Stanford University and earned PAC-8 Coach of the Year honors.
 
During his time at Mansfield, Gibson created an offensive juggernaut that crushed all opponents. In the 1960-61 season, the Mountaineers became the first team in PSAC history to go undefeated during the regular season. Their record improved to 20-0 after beating IUP in the first-ever PSAC Championship tournament. Mansfield was the only team in the 468-member NAIA to go unbeaten that year and averaged a hard-to-believe 90 points per game, long before the shot clock era.
 
Mansfield won the PSAC title again in 1961-62 posting a 20-2 overall record, defeating Edinboro in the PSAC Championship game. Gibson's reputation as a coach of unparalleled success was nationally-known by 1962-63. After an 18-2 start that year, Mansfield lost to Slippery Rock in the PSAC title game before unexpectantly dropping its opening round matchup in the NAIA playoffs.
   
Things had not been nearly as successful in Charlottesville for the University of Virginia Cavaliers basketball program. The locally nicknamed Wahoos finished the 1962-63 season with a 5-20 record while posting a 40-106 mark over the last six years.
 
Virginia Athletic Director Steve Sebo was looking for someone with a proven record of turning around struggling programs and building winners.
 
After sorting through a large pool of candidates, Sebo – who came to Virginia after serving as the GM of the New York Titans prior to them changing their nickname to the Jets - was willing to take a chance on a proven winner.
 
Gibson went 102-37 in his seven seasons at Mansfield including a phenomenal 58-7 mark over his last three campaigns, taking a perennial underperforming program into one of the most feared and respected small-college organizations in the country.
 
Even with Gibson's success, it was a gutsy move for Sebo to hire him. Both of their careers would be on the line. It seems as if Sebo fell under the influence of the Gibson magic.
 
Gibson got a big welcome to the world of big-time college basketball, suffering a respectably-close loss against the University of Kentucky and legendary head coach Adolph Rupp in the opening game of the 1963-64 season. Gibson's first Division I game was played on November 30 - eight days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
 
It would take a bit longer for Gibson to build the program at Virginia than it did at Mansfield. It's hard to believe now, but it may have been tougher for Gibson to recruit players to Virginia than it was Mansfield.
 
Virginia, like today, had an outstanding academic reputation when Gibson showed up on campus. What it didn't have was women.
 
Females wouldn't be admitted until the freshman class of 1970 – six years into Gibson's tenure. The Wahoos played their home games in Memorial Gymnasium. The facility was built just after the turn of the century and seated less than 3,000 fans. It would not be until 1970 that Virginia had its first scholarship black student-athlete in school history when Gibson signed Al Drummond out of Waverly, N.Y., a town close to Mansfield.
 
In his third season at Virginia, the Cavaliers moved into University Hall – a new and ultra-modern facility that could hold more than 8,000 fans. Still, the rebuilding process took longer than Gibson may have expected.
 
Fans and conference opponents could see improvement in the program although not yet enough for a winning season.
 
Finally, everything started to come together. The Cavaliers, who finished a then school-record third in the ACC regular season, stunned Dean Smith's North Carolina Tarheels 95-93 in the opening round of the 1970 ACC Tournament. Gibson still had a recruiting base in Pennsylvania and signed Barry Parkhill out of State College in 1969. Since freshman were ineligible for varsity play for the 1969-70 season, Parkhill first played in 1971. The sophomore averaged 15.9 points per game as Virginia made its first-ever appearance in the national AP Poll after beating Georgia Tech to improve to 11-2 midway through the season.
 
The toughest ticket to come by in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia was in University Hall during the 1972 season. Gibson's "Amazin Cavaliers" opened the season with 12 straight victories – 10 of them on the road. After a loss to North Carolina, Virginia reeled off six more wins to improve to 18-1 and were ranked No. 6 in the nation.
   
The Cavaliers ended the season with a school-record 21-7 mark and remained nationally ranked for the entire season. Parkhill was named the ACC Player of the Year and Gibson became the first head coach in Virginia history to be selected the ACC Coach of the Year. Gibson beat out both Dean Smith – whose Tarheels won the ACC and finished third in the NCAA Tournament -- and Maryland's Lefty Driesell whose Terrapins led by Mansfield High School's Tom McMillen and won the NIT.
 
It had taken nine years but Gibson – like he had done at Mansfield – finally put Virginia basketball on the map.
 
Gibson stayed at Virginia through the 1974 season before becoming just the second head coach in the University of South Florida's basketball history.
 
Always the magic man, Gibson was eager to turn around the fortunes of the Bulls as he did at Mansfield and Virginia.
 
The first person he recruited in Tampa wasn't a college basketball player. It was a supporter by the name of George Steinbrenner who happened to be the owner of the New York Yankees.
 
Gibson led South Florida to a 15-10 season in 1975 with high expectations to be even better for the upcoming year.
 
Tragically, Gibson suffered a heart-attack prior to the start of the 1976 season and passed away after a second heart-attack.
 
True to his style, even in death Gibson was magic. The Bulls, then under the direction of former Virginia player and assistant coach Chip Conner, posted a 19-8 mark in 1976. That .704 winning-percentage is still the highest in school history.
 
Here's hoping some of that Gibson magic will be with his Cavaliers tonight.
 
Wouldn't that be something.

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Steve McCloskey, a CoSIDA Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, retired from Mansfield University as the Director of Athletic Operations and Information in 2017.