As Jim Reynolds prepares for his milestone broadcast tonight, he's humbled by the accolades from UTC. "It's really nice for the university to kind of go out of their way and say yes, you are appreciated. The thousand. I'm going to do a thousand more because I'm too poor to retire. So I'm going to be here for awhile."
Reynolds first Mocs basketball game was on November 29, 1980. He was up in the crow's nest at McClellan Gym. "My physics teacher told me that heat rises. Yes it did. When you were up high, it was hotter than Hades up there."
So how did Reynolds keep cool? He said jokingly,"Speedo. I went speedo on that."
Road trips are always fun for Reynolds because you never know who you will run into. "We were going to play Western Carolina. We get snowed in in Cullowhee at the Holiday Inn in Maggie Valley. And also snowed in with us was Jane Hathaway from the Beverly Hillbillies. Whatever her real name is. She was visiting there. She got snowed in with us. The longer we were snowed in, she started looking better and better as time went on."
And sometimes it's not always the games that Reynolds cherishes the most as the Voice of the Mocs. "Might have been the first NCAA tournament game that we played in 1981. We set up a Pac-Man tournament in the hotel bar with the players. The bar wasn't open at the time. But the Pac Man machine was on. We drew up brackets. We had bracketology going on. I think Nick Morken won that Pac Man Championship. It's things like that you remember. The silly things on the road."
So has Reynolds considered writing a book on Mocs basketball? "I can give you enough stories I think, but I think it might be interesting to about five people."
Reporter-"Jane Hathaway, come on." Said Reynolds,"Well that's chapter one. I'm worried about chapters two, three, and four, if it's going to be worth my while."
