Are sudden cardiac traumas a modern-day problem in college basketball? USC basketball assistant Eric Mobley would tell you otherwise, for the simple reason that he was right on the court when a memorably and painfully traumatic incident occurred over 30 years ago.
Yes, Eric Mobley was on the court when Loyola Marymount star Hank Gathers collapsed in 1990.
(h/t Ryan Kartje of The Los Angeles Times)
“(USC assistant Eric) Mobley had witnessed an unsettlingly similar incident decades before as a senior captain at Portland. He was matched up against Hank Gathers in March 1990 when the Loyola Marymount star suffered cardiac arrest during a West Coast Conference tournament game. Gathers was rushed to the hospital but didn’t survive. An autopsy later revealed he suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. As Mobley laid Iwuchukwu down on the Galen Center sideline more than 30 years later, he couldn’t help but think of that moment and of Gathers.
“‘Things were happening so fast,’ Mobley said. ‘I was just yelling at him and shaking him and slapping him in the face, like, ‘Stay with the light!’ You could tell he was fighting. You could tell he could hear me, but it was like he couldn’t do anything.’”
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