Fred Shabel, who coached the UConn men’s basketball team to pioneering victories in 1964, died Sunday at his winter home in Clearwater Beach, Fla. He was 90.
“It was peaceful, fast and he left looking out at his favorite beach,” said Shabel’s wife, Irene, on Monday.
Shabel had a 72-29 record and a 72 win percentage while coaching the Huskies from 1963-67. His teams won four Yankee Conference regular-season titles and earned three NCAA Tournament bids.
“I thought I was a successful UConn coach. I did not like losing,” Shabel told a reporter in 2022. “One of the reasons I got out of coaching is I just didn’t like losing, at all.”
Shabel had been an assistant at his alma mater, Duke, for six years when UConn hired him at the age of 30. He immediately found success his first year as the Huskies went 16-11 and reached the Eastern Regional Final before falling to none other than the Blue Devils.
Shabel’s two 1964 tournament victories, highlighted by a second-round win over a Bill Bradley-led Princeton team, were viewed as reasons to believe UConn could compete on the national stage.
“I think he’s a guy who’ll be remembered for a long, long time,” said Dom Perno, 81, whose name captured national newspaper headlines after he stole the ball from Bradley to preserve a 52-50 victory. “He did an awful lot for our athletic program.”
In the 2022 interview Shabel said his biggest goal was to upgrade the program from regional to national prominence.
Many of Shabel’s players and supporters have long believed his winning record and accomplishments should have earned him a place in UConn’s Huskies of Honor and for years former players have pleaded his case.
“He’s an icon,” said Maureen Bialosuknia, whose husband, Wes Bialosuknia, lobbied for years to have Shabel included into the Huskies of Honor. Wes Bialosuknia died of cancer in 2013. “We talked a lot. He seemed forever young.”
Shabel took the UConn job following the untimely death of revered coach Hugh Greer, who had coached UConn for 16 seasons.
Brash and opinionated, Shabel was confident as he confronted UConn brass, especially when it came to seeking full scholarships to recruit the best players.
Shabel recalled pressing a reluctant then-althletic director J.O. Christian, to provide a full scholarship to the highly recruited Bialosuknia. Shabel said for several weeks he repeatedly called or visited Christian’s office to try to convince him to sign Bialosuknia, who had verbally committed to Syracuse. When Christian finally relented, Shabel made a late-night, 120-mile drive to New York and convinced Bialosuknia to become his first recruit.
At UConn, Shabel coached many stand-out players from Toby Kimball to Bill Corley to Bialosuknia.
Shabel had his greatest success in the 1965 season when he combined the talents of senior center Kimball, junior Dan “Spider” Hesford and sophomores Bialosuknia, Tom Penders, Bill Holowaty, Dick Thompson and Ron Ritter. That 23-2 team won the Yankee Conference and was ranked 15th in the nation before it lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
“He was much more than a basketball coach. He was such a great leader,” said Ritter, 77, in a telephone interview from his Chesapeake, Va., home. “He’s a mentor for life.”
Shabel was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., March 1932. His family moved to Union City, N.J., when he was young. Shabel was an all-state basketball player at Union Hill High school. He later played at Duke from 1952-54. His teammates included future Hall of Fame coach Charles ‘Lefty’ Driesell and baseball star Dick Groat.
“He was a great guy,” said Groat, 93, in a telephone interview from his Pittsburgh home, shortly before Shabel died. “Great memories of those days.”
Shabel loved telling the story of how he substituted for Groat’s last home game in 1952. After scoring 48 points, Groat was substituted with bench-warmer Shabel with seconds remaining, Shabel said. The raucous home crowd at Cameron Gym gave Groat a standing ovation. Also cheering in the stands, Shabel’s Russian, Jewish immigrant father, attending his first basketball game, stood stunned at the reception he thought was directed at his son.
“He died at 90. We never told him different,” said Shabel, laughing over the 70-year-old story.
Shabel’s four-year stay at UConn ended unceremoniously in 1967. He applied for the athletic director’s job but was rejected by then-UConn President Homer Babbidge.
He left UConn that year to become the athletic director and later a vice president at the University of Pennsylvania. He left Penn in 1980 for an executive job at Comcast-Spectator, the sports management and cable TV company in Philadelphia. He worked there for nearly four decades, retiring in his late 80s.
“I think we got something started here,” said Shabel, in the October 2022 interview.
In addition to his wife, Irene, Shabel is survived by a son, Alan, and daughter, Lisa.
Funeral details were unavailable Wednesday.
