HARTFORD — For Purdue, just being here today represents triumph, the Boilermakers being in the NCAA Tournament, a championship already won during a season that began unevenly and truly had every reason to.
For Larry Clisby, it represents much more.
“Being here today, I am incredibly thankful,” Clisby said. “Eight months ago, I could have made the case that I might be dead.”
Back in the summer, the radio voice of Purdue’s basketball program for generations now was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer and metastatic brain cancer, the beginning of a grueling fight for his life, in every sense. Since, he’s been pounded by chemo, propped up by medicines of all varieties and bounced between as many as a half dozen doctors between his two states of residence, Indiana and Florida.
All of it to simply make it, to survive, to live.
But for Clisby, living hasn’t been a pursuit to merely exist.
And so for him, being here in Hartford, it’s really something.
He’s survived, in a situation where months, even weeks, sometimes can’t be promised. The predictive data that comes with any Stage 4 diagnosis typically isn’t pleasant.
Today, Clisby’s here, things having gone for him about as well as could have been hoped last July. The cancer’s under control, the outlook as positive as one could hope, though again, nothing is promised in these situations.
He doesn’t move like he used to, but that’s a small price to pay.
The medicine messed with his memory there for a while, but things have gotten better in that regard.
“I got my brain back,” Clisby says.
And again, that too was a small price to pay.
The reality is that Clisby has lived, but also lived, because the 72-year-old’s spent the year doing what he’s done the majority of his adult life.
In the throes of the fight of, and for, his life, Clisby missed all of two games this season, Purdue’s trips to Florida State and Michigan. That wasn’t the cancer keeping him home, it was the effects of treatment, the medicine.
It was difficult.
Clisby battled memory issues, obviously far from ideal for his role, whether it be doing games or hosting Matt Painter’s radio shows during the week, a responsibility he largely handed off to Rob Blackman this season.
But Clisby was there for games, almost every one of them.
There were days, Clisby said, he asked himself, and those around him, whether he should quit, whether it be members of his radio team, Purdue Radio Network officials or the basketball staff.
“I just said, ‘I should quit,’” Clisby said. “No one said that I should quit.
“They said to keep going and try to get better and that is what I did. By January — yes half the season was over by then — I could be on the air and not embarrass myself.”
Saturday night, Clisby will call Purdue’s Round of 32 meeting with Villanova, his story in some ways having paralleled that of the team whose games he narrates.
He’s here when he maybe wasn’t supposed to be.
Purdue’s here when maybe it wasn’t supposed to be.
That they’ve done it together seems like something more than just a nice story.
It’s difficult to put into words Clisby’s role in the basketball program. There can’t possibly be a radio guy in college basketball with a closer relationship to the coach, and coaching staff, he works with.
Early in his career as Purdue’s coach, when he was a young coach with far less to his résumé than he carries today, at a stage of his career where coaches typically choose their administrative battles carefully, Painter stood up for Clisby when Purdue was intent to move him out.
Years later, Clisby stood up for Painter, officiating his wedding this fall.
Even before he got sick, Clisby always spoke about gratitude, to Painter, to Elliot Bloom, to Purdue, to Blackman and his engineer, Wes Scott. Blackman and Scott "did so much of my work for me this season," Clisby says.
Today, Clisby says he couldn’t have “survived” without them, all of them.
He’s asked if he only means surviving professionally. There’s a couple different contexts to consider there.
“Well, maybe not,” Clisby says. “There aren’t a lot of people that would take a Stage 4 lung cancer patient along as their play-by-play announcer. I don’t know what I will have in the future. Will I have two or three more years? I don’t know. If I have to do it the way I am doing it now (in broadcasting), I can survive. If I have to do it the way I did it back in January and December, I don’t think I could have survived.”
This has been important to Clisby.
But it’s been just as important to Purdue.
“In the summer, we were looking down the road at maybe going through a season without him,” said Bloom, Purdue’s superviser of basketball operations and Clisby’s close friend. “You know, Purdue basketball’s going to go on after all of us are gone, but we thought of how different and how much less enjoyable — less enjoyable for me, for sure — it would be without him. The fact he’s here is great, the fact he’s getting stronger is great and these players know the situation.
“And then to cap the season off with a Big Ten championship when no one saw it coming in a quote-unquote rebuilding year, and having him along for the ride, it kind of put the cherry on top of the sundae.”
For Clisby, this hasn’t just been about preserving his life in a literal sense, but also in a figurative one. Purdue basketball has been a central part of that life for 40-some years.
This season, he got the chance to keep living.
“So now I owe them the best I can give them,” Clisby said.
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