For 40 years, Bill Hillgrove and Dick Groat were an inseparable team calling Pitt basketball games on the radio.
The University of Pittsburgh will put them together again Sept. 13 when they will be inducted into the Pitt Athletics Hall of Fame. Groat, who died last year at the age of 92, will be inducted posthumously.
Athletic director Heather Lyke made the announcement — a surprise to Hillgrove — Saturday on former Pitt quarterback Pat Bostick’s radio show on KDKA-FM.
Bill Hillgrove and Dick Groat will be inducted into the Pitt Athletics Hall of Fame ????
Listen as @Pitt_LykeAD delivers the news to Bill pic.twitter.com/QtkDWtyoxB
— Pitt Panthers (@Pitt_ATHLETICS) April 6, 2024
“Just an incredible relationship,” Lyke said of the broadcast team. “The quality of person that Dick was and is in all of our hearts is really special.
“Wow. I am floored,” said Hillgrove, 83, a Duquesne graduate who said he believed only Pitt grads could join its Athletics Hall of Fame.
That’s not the case.
“(Those who) have served all of our coaches and student-athletes and people who have impacted our athletic program are eligible (for induction),” Lyke said.
Hillgrove, who will be the first inductee who wasn’t a coach or student-athlete, retired in February after 30 years doing play-by-play of Steelers radio broadcasts. He will continue calling Pitt football and basketball.
“I’m bowled over,” Hillgrove said. “This is really, indeed, a great honor.”
Dan Rooney, Pittsburgh Steelers president at the time, chose Hillgrove to replace Jack Fleming in 1994. Hillgrove did not even submit an audition tape.
Sports Broadcast Journal reported last year that Hillgrove was the third-longest continuously tenured play-by-play announcer with one team in the NFL.
Hillgrove’s Pitt broadcasting career stretches to 1969 when he was the color commentator for basketball games. The recently completed season was his 57th in a row behind the microphone. This fall will mark Hillgrove’s 53rd calling Pitt football games.
Upcoming Local Events
Groat was a two-time All-American basketball star at Duke who played for the NBA’s Fort Wayne Pistons before becoming the starting shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He won the National League batting title and MVP honors in 1960 when he helped lead the Pirates to a World Series championship against the New York Yankees. He was inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame last year, getting word of his election shortly before he died.
Groat became the first player inducted into both the college basketball and baseball halls of fame.
Drafted third overall by the Pistons in 1952, he played one season of professional basketball before switching sports. He amassed 2,138 hits, won two World Series rings — one with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 — and became a five-time All-Star during a 14-year major-league career.
“He’s one of the greatest athletes we’ve ever seen in Western Pennsylvania,” said his late Pirates teammate Bob Friend, who died in 2019. “He had some of those qualities that you just don’t get in athletes.”
The remainder of the Pitt Hall of Fame class will be announced at a later date. The class will inducted Sept. 13 and will be honored the next day at the Pitt/West Virginia football game at Acrisure Stadium.
Jerry DiPaola is a TribLive reporter covering Pitt athletics since 2011. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in 1993, first as a copy editor and page designer in the sports department and later as the Pittsburgh Steelers reporter from 1994-2004. He can be reached at jdipaola@triblive.com.