Next year, the Chaminade University basketball program will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its historic victory over then-No. 1 Virginia and, as such occasions occasion, Tony Randolph will field a fresh round of calls from local, national and international sports journalists seeking fresh insight into what is broadly considered the greatest college basketball upset of all time.

Randolph, as always, will answer their queries with grace and humility. He will use words like "blessing" and "fortune" and "gratitude" — carefully emphasizing each one so his listener understands that this isn’t some canned speech polished by three decades of telling.

But as much as the athlete once known as Miracle Man understands and appreciates people’s fascination with what he and his Silversword teammates accomplished that night, there is also a part of him that would just as soon let the phone keep ringing.

"I like to keep it low key," Randolph says. "It’s very humbling that people still remember it the way they do, but the Lord has also led me to do other things … "

Randolph was a young man in 1981 when he transferred from Oklahoma Panhandle State University to Chaminade. And he had no idea how his life would only get better after that evening in December 1982 when he outscored three-time NCAA player of the year Ralph Sampson — despite giving up some eight inches in height — en route to an astonishing 77-72 victory.

Randolph would go on to play with the Harlem Globetrotters and later a team in New Zealand before returning to Hawaii to complete his degree in criminal justice.

After a stint as an assistant coach at Chaminade, Randolph took a job as a counselor at a youth detention center, where he mined the experiences of his own rough childhood — he was orphaned by age 12 — to help youth offenders correct their course. "My message was that even when it seems like everything is stacked against you, you can still overcome. God will move mountains if you let him."

After 10 years at the detention center, Randolph spent the next 13 as a senior counselor at a youth shelter. Last year, he decided he wanted to expand the scope of his message. "I had worked a lot with kids in the system and I learned a lot from that experience," he says. "But I also wanted to work with kids who might need the same type of guidance outside the system."

For the past six months, Randolph served as St. Francis School dean of discipline, a job he says allows him to foster the sort of positive growth to which he has devoted his adult life. "It’s nice when you see someone you worked with be successful and happy," he says. "Spiritually, we’re all here to help each other out. That’s what I’ve tried to do with my life."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.