Rauch, 94, is one of the four oldest surviving Blue Devil basketball players.

GASTONIA - When Duke University begins its 111th season of basketball on Friday night in the Basketball Hall of Fame Tip-Off Classic, the Blue Devils will be the No. 1 team in the country and a favorite to win its sixth NCAA title in April.

One of the school's oldest surviving former players is Gastonia's Marshall Rauch, who was in the Duke program when the school began crafting its history of success in the winter sport.

Rauch, who will turn 94 in February, is the fourth oldest surviving player from a program whose 1,983 victories trails only Kentucky (2,205), Kansas (2,183) and North Carolina (2,173) as the winningest in college basketball history.

When Rauch played for Duke, the Blue Devils would win the second and third of the school's now 24 conference championships, his coach was Eddie Cameron for whom the school's Cameron Stadium is named and that building was in its infancy.

"In all honesty, my basketball career was nothing you could write home about," said Rauch, a retired Gastonia businessman who was a N.C. state senator representing the 25th district from 1967 to 1990. "It's just that over the years friends exaggerate for you and make it sound like you did more than you actually did."

As much as Rauch may downplay his role at Duke, he was involved in a significant part of the school's basketball history.

A native of New York City, Rauch chose to attend Duke because, in his words, "I wanted to go school someplace other than New York and a couple of guys from my high school had gone to Duke."

His freshman year of 1940-41 was the second year of then-named Duke Indoor Stadium, which opened on Jan. 6, 1940 at a cost of $400,000. At the time the building opened with seating for 8,800 it was the largest indoor arena south of Philadelphia's old Palestra. The building was renamed (and remains) Cameron Indoor Stadium in 1972.

Since freshman were unable to participate on the varsity per the NCAA rules of the era, Rauch played on the school's freshman team for one season before spending his sophomore year on the Duke varsity.

Jim Bowman, Duke's oldest surviving player, had just left school as Rauch and his teammates prepared for the 1940-41 season in which the Blue Devils' varsity won the school's second conference basketball title; Bowman was a member of the school's first league champion in 1938.

When Rauch played, the two other oldest surviving Duke players also were in the program - William Wetmore (1941) and David Hubbell (1941-43).

Those Duke teams were filled with players from Durham High's acclaimed basketball teams, highlighted by Robert "Bob" Gantt and brothers Cedric and Garland Loftis.

"We were real good because we had some guys from Durham that had won national championships in high school," Rauch said. "The Loftis brothers Cedric and Garland and Bob Gantt were good players and I was a member of a championship team thanks to them."

When Gantt and the Loftis brothers were at Durham High, one of their teammates was Horace "Bones" McKinney, and the Bulldogs would win 73 straight games from 1937 to 1940 and claim five straight N.C. high school titles from 1938 to 1942.

McKinney would play at both N.C. State and North Carolina and later become more famous as one of the first stars of the NBA when it started in 1947 as well as becoming a championship coach at Wake Forest.

"Now I'm extremely proud of being on that championship team but those guys at Durham High were really good players and really brought a lot for us to win," Rauch said.

Ironically, Duke beat McKinney and N.C. State 45-34 in the 1942 Southern Conference tournament championship game at Thompson Gymnasium on the N.C. State campus; Thompson Gym was N.C. State's first indoor arena and paved the way for the 1949 opening of Reynolds Coliseum that would eventually host the first 13 ACC basketball tournaments.

"You know, I was just on the team and don't remember much about the championship," Rauch said with a chuckle. "I was a specialist. If the team was ahead by 20 points or behind by 20 points with a minute to go, they'd put me in to close out the game.

"But I do remember the first basket I ever made was against Davidson. It was at the end of the game. I brought the ball up and everybody was screaming, 'Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!' And I shot and it went in."

Rauch's bucket helped the Blue Devils close out a 75-40 Southern Conference win over the Wildcats in a season in which Duke went 15-1 against league opposition before winning the postseason tournament.

And while the NCAA tournament had begun in 1939, only eight teams were invited to the event and SEC champion Kentucky was picked from this region in a year in which Stanford would eventually win the 1942 national title behind MVP Howie Dallmar.

Unfortunately for Rauch and many of his teammates, they wouldn't play again in college as World War II was raging and many men their age would enlist for military service; Rauch did so in February 1943.

Three years later, Rauch did return to Duke to get his degree - and marry his wife Jeanne Girard.

"That's my favorite story from my basketball career," Rauch said. "I met my wife in Duke Indoor Stadium.

"It was my freshman year and I had been playing basketball. I just finished a game with Cedric (Loftis) and we're sitting on the bench and he said, 'See that girl up there? You ought to meet her.' She was a freshman there too. And a connection was made."

Rauch and Girard, a 1940 Gastonia High graduate, married and had five children. The couple also had 10 grandchildren and three great grandchildren when she died in August 2010.

As could be expected, Rauch's family members also have shown talent and interest in sports.

Son John White played basketball at Wake Forest and Catawba.

Daughter Stephanie played tennis at N.C. State and North Carolina, including for a time at the Tar Heels' Rauch Tennis Center for whom Marshall Rauch's financial donation helped build.

Grandson Josh White played soccer at Ashbrook and his two sons are currently active in local sports - Jackson as a freshman swimmer at Highland Tech and Jacob as an 11-year-old travel soccer standout.

And grandson Julian Rauch was game MVP for Ashbrook in its 2002 state football championship game, and helped Appalachian State to three straight national titles from 2005 to 2007. Julian Rauch is perhaps more famous for kicking the game-winning field goal in Appalachian State's 34-32 win at Michigan in 2007.

So, while Marshall Rauch is a former Duke basketball player, his family and his political service have pushed him more towards support of other schools.

In truth, his last two trips to Cameron Indoor Stadium were to see former Charlotte Hornets point guard Michael Holton, first as a UCLA assistant coach in 1998 (when future Hornets' guard Baron Davis was playing for the Bruins) and again in 2003 when Holton was head coach at Portland University.

However, he has still maintained a connection with his collegiate alma mater.

"For my 90th birthday, I had a shirt made with my number 61 for the 1942 Duke championship team," Marshall Rauch said. "And I sent one to (Hall of Fame Duke coach Mike) Krzyzewski and he was real nice. He sent back a nice letter. He said something to the effect of he was proud of what I'd become and hoped his student-athletes would be able to do the same.

"He's a real gentleman."

Richard Walker: 704-869-1841; twitter.com/jrwalk22