Gonzaga basketball has second home with McCartheys in Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY – Inside the Walker-McCarthey Mansion, one of many great, old houses that share Salt Lake City’s South Temple street with spire-laden temples, vast stone administrative buildings and a Jimmy Johns, there are many Gonzaga basketball totems and memorabilia.

Some are obvious, such as the four autographed basketballs commemorating GU’s best teams. Others, like the guitar signed by members of the Rolling Stones purchased at a benefit for former Zags star Ronny Turiaf, are less conspicuous.

But nobody who visits the historic jewel can miss the Gonzaga flag that proudly waves from the front of the house when the Zags are in town, when they’re winning, or simply when Phillip McCarthey wants to tease his rival across the street, Utah Governor Gary Herbert, who attended BYU.

It is ironic that the Zags have come to visit their most prominent booster in Salt Lake City, since Phil and his brother, Tom McCarthey, funded the construction of the $25 million McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane. They did it so the Zags would have an arena befitting a perennial NCAA Tournament team.

And that’s just one way the brothers, who have both served on Gonzaga’s Board of Trustees, helped shape the program to its current form.

Phil McCarthey recalls a hot day in Spokane in July, 1999, when then-coach Dan Monson was offered the chance to leave for the University of Minnesota head coaching position after taking the Zags to the Elite Eight. Shortly after, a meeting was held with young Zags assistant coach Mark Few.

“The one thing we asked of him was would he be here. Would he stay,” Phil McCarthey recalls. “He said Spokane was his home and his intention was to raise his family there. And so we said, OK, what can we all do together?”

So Few, the McCarthey brothers, and athletic director Mike Roth, among others, came up with a to-do list of what could be done to sustain the nascent program’s recent success.

“(Phil and Tom) serve the university beyond just athletics,” Roth said. “Helping as trustees, they are the policymakers for the institution. They work with the president very closely on who we are, what we’re about and what we’re trying to do as an institution.”

First and foremost the program needed a new facility to bring in the type of athletes who can sustain winning programs. The group also decided they wanted to bring in a certain type of athlete, the kind that has produced three players who were both All-Americans and Academic-All-Americans.

“The idea of having one-and-dones at Gonzaga is kind of preposterous. I think the young people that come understand Gonzaga is a little bit different. It’s still co-curricular. The idea of taking the basketball players and putting them off someplace, and nobody gets to talk to them, they in turn get to have real roommates and classmates. It’s the one thing we all insist on.”

The McCartheys make between five and 10 trips to GU games each season, although they wish big-name programs like Duke and Kentucky would be willing to meet the Zags on their home court, if only for the experience.

There is an empty space reserved in the middle of Phil McCarthey’s mansion mantle for an autographed ball from a GU team that wins a national championship. He would love to fill it, and has played a small but important role in making that a possibility.

He and his brother have helped change the face of GU basketball. But he does not want to change what GU basketball represents.

“I say with all sincerity that the day winning basketball games becomes more important than our total mission, then we’re all doing the wrong thing,” he said.