@Zalvira with a great column on azfootballarchives

Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/n...ing-arizona-high-school-football-s-hidden-gem

The lawsuit…


There were some great moments at Camelback for us. My wife got a job there as a French teacher, we bought a home right down the street that we still live in, and we raised our three children there. It is a great neighborhood. I remember right after we moved in, my son Jordan was playing in the Madison Little League and we went to a game over at Madison #1 Middle School. We were sitting in the stands behind two ladies, who happened to be talking about where they were going to send their children to high school. Their general opinion was that anywhere but Camelback would be best, as Camelback had become an “inner city” school, if you know what I mean. The school was definitely losing most of the Madison School District clientele to Brophy, Xavier, Arcadia, and even Shadow Mountain. It became our mission to win the Madison people over, at least in the basketball program, and have the neighborhood kids come to Camelback. We ran summer camps, did coaching clinics at the Madison schools, and I joined the Board of Directors of the Madison Basketball League, which was the youth league in the area before the clubs took over. I found out where their board was meeting and just walked in and offered up Camelback to help them in any way we could. Next thing you know, I was a board member. The effort started to pay dividends and by the time I left in 1997, most of the players in our program were neighborhood Madison kids.


In 1993, I was chosen to coach the North squad in the annual North-South All-Star game. This was something that meant a great deal to me, because as a player at East High, I felt I had been overlooked in 1968 when the All-Star teams assembled at NAU. In those days, there were just two teams. In ’93, there was a 5A North-South, and a 4A thru 1A set of teams. I had the 5A North. We assembled in Thatcher, at Eastern Arizona College, and spent a week in all-star festivities, practices, and game. Everyday, we practiced at a different high school gym in the area, and were given tours of the copper mines in Morenci. The people in the area proudly hosted the event and it was very meaningful. I took my son, Jordan, and really enjoyed the whole experience. The South team was coached by Joe Partain, the legendary Chandler coach, and I got to know him pretty well. Great guy. My assistant was Tim Wacker from Ironwood HS, who was an old friend from the camp days. It’s a shame they don’t still do the all-star game the same way. We won the game 80-54, and it didn’t hurt that we had Gerald Brown from Carl Hayden, the 5A player of the year from a 29-1 team. The 1 was the game at Camelback with the big brawl, however, a fact which I never let him forget. We had two Camelback players, Steve Reed, who was all-state, and Gary Biscoe, who was all-Metro Region. It was such a great experience, that I never wanted to do it again, because it could only go downhill from there. The all-star week got ditched soon after as the copper mine sponsors went bust in a bad economy and no one ever picked it up. Like I said- a shame.


One day, in the summer of 1995, I was conducting a summer camp for grades 1-8, using both gyms, when the district athletic director walked in. He pulled me aside and asked me what rent I was paying for the gym. I told him that I was not paying rent and that we kept the gym clean ourselves. He walked out and said that he was going to have to look into that. One thing led to another and I was handed a bill for an amount that we could not possibly pay. I went to our principal, but he was just an interim guy and said he could not really help. Whether you know it or not, principal’s are pretty autonomous and can basically do what they want with their schools. If they have to make unpopular decisions, they might hide behind the old “it’s district policy” excuse, but that is usually just baloney to get you off their back. Our district AD had been there for several years and he knew full well the arrangement that had been made with the basketball program by the previous principal. He didn’t like it and was using the weakness of an interim’s position to take over the situation.


As mentioned, there was no way we could afford the cost they imposed on us, so I had the unfortunate task of getting all the kids together and telling them that we were going to have to shut down the summer programs. A parent called me that day and said would it be OK to contact the Arizona Republic, and I said to hold off until I could go see the district AD and tell him that this might make the news. We didn’t charge the kids very much to run the program and the gyms were paid for by taxpayers- it might reflect badly on the district to run programs out of these schools. I wanted to tell him that this might not go down well.


We met and I told him that a reporter would be snooping around. He was arrogant and told me to go for it- he could handle any heat that would be generated. He was wrong. The Republic was there with a cameraman when I assembled a group of kids to tell them the program would have to be shut down. The reporter interviewed some kids and some parents. The story broke on the front page of the Valley and State section of the paper. The feedback to the district was immediate and overwhelmingly critical. Soon after, there was a meeting at Camelback set up by the district AD that was to be attended by the interim principal, the school AD, the district AD, and myself. I felt as though I should not go into such a meeting without representation, so I contacted my good friend Gary Fadell, who was an AIA referee that scheduled our refs for the summer league. He was also a practicing attorney. One bit of advice for you young coaches- never go into a meeting where your job might be an issue without being represented, either by your union rep or an attorney. People don’t think of educational institutions as being very political, but they are, in fact, highly political. Everybody you are dealing with has at least a bachelor’s degree, many have a master’s degree, and most of the higher ups have PhD’s. The common joke in the business is you have a BS (bullshit) degree, an MS (more of the same), and a PhD (piled higher and deeper).


When Gary and I walked into the meeting, the district AD asked me who Gary was. I told him that he was my attorney. The meeting came to an abrupt ending, as the district AD said he was not going to go on with Gary in the room. So, we got up to go, and the AD said, “can I speak to you for a moment?” meaning without Gary. I asked Gary if I should do it, and he said yes, but if he mentioned anything about my job that I should immediately get up and walk out. So I sat back down, and Gary walked out. It didn’t take a minute before my job was an issue, so I got up without saying a word and walked out. This was like TV stuff- school officials acting like mafia characters. That briefly ended the debate about the gyms. The public outcry caused the district to back down. But they never let an employee get away with something like that- they are going to come after you, and they did.


Next…lawsuit arrives…

Four Star OL Jonah Miller announced his top 6 today

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Who is your favorite guy to ever play for the Phoenix Suns? Not just the guy you think is the best (though answers like Booker or Nash are definitely acceptable for a favorite, too) but your favorite blend of personality, skill and other things.

My choice is Boris Diaw. He had such a unique style of play, and reading “:07 seconds or less” by Jack McCallum and learning about all his funny habits and musings made me like him more.

Second is probably Barbosa, because he just seemed to have irrational confidence about his ability to score.

Building it back up…


I ended up staying at Camelback for seven more years. After the first overtime year, we had the great opportunity to take over the best high school summer league in the valley at that time, which had been held at Brophy Prep for many years. Out of the blue, Steve Silvernail, the Brophy coach, called me and asked me if I wanted the league. I immediately said yes. Money was always an issue for our Camelback kids, so here was a chance to host a league for them. Plus, we might be able to make some extra money for our entire program and our coaches by running the league. Anyone in our profession will tell you how important fundraising for program needs and coaches is. For the next seven years, it ran like clockwork, and was instrumental in building our basketball program. But it was work. We ran two gyms, four nights a week all through June and July. This was just before club ball came in and took the month of July, which it has held ever since. The coaches ran the gyms, my wife ran the snack bar, and we paid players to run the clocks. In order to avoid the district charging us rent, we also did all the janitorial duties. Every morning, we would go in and mop the floors and clean the bathrooms, then, in June, we would run our basketball camp during the day, and in the evenings the league would go, so we were putting in sixteen hour days. Every Thursday night after the league, our coaches and anyone they would want to invite would assemble at a place called Peyton’s, on 36th Street and Indian School. We would occupy the whole patio usually and have wings and beers until very late at night. Our favorite waitress knew us well, and it got to the point where we never even had to order- she would just bring it all out. And, of course, we would talk hoops. I miss that.


In my years at Camelback, the Metro was still dominant. One year, for example, we started out the year ranked 5th in the state, and all four teams above us in the rankings were Metro teams. We looked forward to playing out of region to catch a break. There was still no power point system, or I think all of us would have been in every year. You had to come out of the region tournament in the top three to get into state, so each year some very good teams were not making it. Somewhere in there once, we were 19-3 going into the regional tournament and got to the semi-finals, and were playing Central, who we had beaten twice during the year. We had won the Phoenix Union Holiday Tournament by beating a very good and eventual state champion Carl Hayden team. Central had gotten hot down the stretch, and had a very good inside player named Robert Figueroa. We had kept him in check during the season, but he was a different guy in the regionals and they beat us by 3. South and Carl Hayden had played a thrilling game in the other semi-final and South had come out on top, so we were stuck with playing Carl Hayden. We were 19-4, and playing one of the best teams in the state, just to get in. We lost and were done- after playing in the state’s toughest region and going 19-5. Crazy.


Here is how intense it could get. We were playing at Carl Hayden one night, with first place in the conference on the line. It was a typical battle between us- very physical. We ended up losing 56-53, and I remember walking by Carl Hayden’s coach, Argie Rhymes, afterwards in the hallway as he was being interviewed by the Republic. He didn’t see me, but I could hear him tell the reporter how much respect he had for how hard we had played under the circumstances. I thought, what circumstances? As we got out to the parking lot, our scorer, John Farmer, walked up to me and said he had never seen that before. I asked him what he was talking about. He said that we hadn’t shot a single free throw in the game, and that he couldn’t believe how I never complained about it to the refs. That was the first I knew of that- we had been concentrating so hard on each play that it never occurred to any of us that we were getting screwed.


Another year, Hayden was ranked number 1 and came over to Camelback to play us. We were ranked seventh, and the gym was packed on both sides. We always used both sides of the bleachers in those days, and it pains me to go into gyms where they don’t use both sides today. Once or twice at MCC, they have tried to do that to us, because JUCO games don’t draw that well in a large metro area, but I refused. Use both sides- show some respect for the game. Anyway, that night against Hayden, they were 20-0 and we were 17-3, so it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. The game went into OT and with 14 seconds left, we were up 5. Hayden took a shot and missed and our player, Steve Reed, got the rebound. The Hayden players rushed him to foul, as you would expect in that situation. The foul, however, was especially hard and the next thing you know, all hell broke loose. Their bench, our bench, their coaches, our coaches, their fans, and our fans took to the floor. It made Gary Lee’s thing at Chavez look like a hug fest. Lee getting fired for that is utterly ridiculous, but par for the course in what that district has become. I’ll have more on that later. Our game was called immediately and we were declared the winner. The brawl was amazing and I remember being out there trying to find players and grab them to get them to the locker room. We heard later that street gangs representing both sides of the city where the schools were, had been throwing up sets during the game and taunting each other- something the game film would later prove. I suppose we should have been happy that no one got shot, but there were a lot of banged up faces and hands. Once again, Argie was magnanimous to us saying in the paper that we had outplayed them and that we had obviously won the game and deserved it, even though it never quite finished. One thing for sure to say about Argie is that he was always a gentleman- a ferocious competitor, for sure, and another guy like Bill Farrell who rightly has a gym named after him. And, by the way, after the brawl, no players were ever suspended, and no coaches reprimanded. Fire Argie? You have got to be kidding.


And, of course, there was South Mountain with Clement Chapman, North with Hector Bejarano, Alhambra with Bob Rossi, Trevor Browne with Mike Ellsworth, Central with Bob Strong, and Maryvale with Dan Nichols. Every night you had to prepare your absolute best effort, because that league would grind you up. I remember one time where Mike Ellsworth had complained in the news media about the spread offense that we and North employed frequently. I had a chance to talk to Mike afterwards and told him how hard it was to prepare for his team’s diamond press- you could hardly simulate in practice how much pressure they put on you. I told him that it was like that for all the teams in the Metro- they all did things that you had to work on, or they would beat you. It is our job as coaches to prepare our teams- and not to judge what others did. Bob Knight told me once that there are all kinds of ways to get it done, because I had been kind of head strong about our defensive philosophy and thought everyone should do it that way. That was one of the best coaching tips I ever got and I tried to pass it along to Mike. Mike Ellsworth, by the way, was a hell of a coach, and our state misses him. His teams loved him and played incredibly hard for him. Great league then- the Metro.


Next…the lawsuit…

Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/news/rosenberg-q-a-past-and-present-with-dre-marin

@Brett Quintyne is going to take a look at some alternate realities in sports- and I think it'd make for a great roundtable opportunity. I know @EspoAZ has a ton of these ideas as well.

I think it would be best to pose the question on the board, allow us to respond, and then include the responses in the article. I'll also solicit reader answers, and paste those at the end of each subsequent article with a link back to the previous piece.

Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/n...-girls-wrestling-results-in-team-sport-status

All ASU Sun Devils Discussion, News and Updates can be posted here

The Spartans…


After PC, I had a chance to become the head coach at Paradise Valley, since I was still teaching there, and was offered the job by the Principal, Gary Damore. He was a great guy, and I would probably have enjoyed working with him. But there was one problem- the athletic director at Camelback High School, Barbara Walcott, wanted to hire Coach Youree and get him back in high school. After MCC, he had served two years as Brad Holland’s assistant at the University of San Diego, where he worked with Randy Bennett and Lorenzo Romar- a great staff you must say. I went over to watch them play Kansas in the San Diego Sports Arena, and it was great. Kansas was awesome- ranked number 1 with Roy Williams as the head coach. Their starters included Paul Pierce, Jacque Vaughn, Scott Pollard, and Raef Lafrentz- all future NBA players. It was amazing to watch how fast Vaughn got the ball down the floor made or missed, and how hard the two big men worked to get position on every possession. USD was severely out-talented, but made a game of it because they were switching from man-to-man to match-up zone constantly. It was great to see Coach Youree working the sideline, in charge of the defense. They ended up losing by around ten points, and the next year would play Kansas in Lawrence and lose in overtime. After the game, all the coaches met at a Mexican food place in Old-Town San Diego, and traded stories until well after the place closed to the public.


Coach Youree promised Brad Holland he would do two years, and that’s what he did. After that, when Camelback came calling, he said he would do it if they hired me as his assistant and gave me a job on campus. Then he called me. My answer was yes and right after that was the conversation I had with Gary Damore about the PV job. I told him how much I thought of him, but that I was going to go to Camelback and work once again for Coach Y. He was a bit incredulous, asking me if I would really give up the opportunity to be a head coach to be somebody else’s assistant. I said in this case- absolutely. Coach Youree was one of a kind and you could never learn too much being around him. I left for Camelback, got a job in the social studies department, and thought I would be his assistant for many years ahead. That’s not what the Universe had in mind, however.


Our first (and only) season together at Camelback was great. We went 19-7 and, once again, Coach Youree took a team and qualified under the old system for the state tournament. We were in the Metro, which in those days was still the premiere basketball conference in the state, but Coach Y made it 14 consecutive years of qualifying. We lost to Brophy in state, after beating Chaparral in the opening round. The Brophy game was very reminiscent of our last loss at East back in ’82. We were up 5 with under a minute and had a very bad turnover (all turnovers are bad, but some are worse than others), and missed the front end of two one-and-one’s. They banked in a shot from the top of the key at the buzzer to beat us by 1. I always get a chuckle when people say that running a spread offense is easy. It is most definitely not, and you had better be able to step up to line and make free throws when you spread it.


After that, Coach Youree told me that he was not going to return to Camelback, or any other high school. He was subsequently hired by Pete Babcock to be a scout for the Atlanta Hawks. So, I was hired to take over at Camelback, where I stayed for the next seven years. My first year, we had no returning starters from our state qualifying team, and no starter bigger than 6’2”. We set a state record for overtime games that may never be broken- 12 out of our 28 total games went into extra time. South Mountain went 32-0 out of the Metro and Carl Hayden was very tough, as well. We played South three times, and twice lost in OT. The first OT loss came in the Phoenix Union Holiday Tournament, where one of the most bizarre plays you will ever see occurred. Late in the game, we got fouled in the act of shooting. South was terrific and had a large following of fans who were making a lot of noise as our player, Quincy Crawford, stepped to line- shooting two. He missed the first, and a South player rebounded the ball and passed it out to a guard like you would on a fast break. The player then went the length of the court and laid the ball in while our players just stood there and watched. We were shooting two, and that was just the first shot. The scorekeeper put up two points for South, which, of course, I jumped up and immediately protested. One of the refs came running over to me and said to calm down, he would talk with the other official. I mean, talk about what? No basket, right? Maybe even an unsportsmanlike technical against South for doing that. The crowd was going nuts and eventually the same ref walked over to me and told me that they were going to award the basket to South, but then let us shoot the second free throw. I came unglued, as you might imagine, and the only reason I didn’t persist to the point of being ejected was that we were still in the game and had a chance to win. As it turned out, the basket was critical, as the game went into overtime and we lost by three.


Our second overtime loss to South came during the conference race. We were playing them at Camelback in front of a packed house. Our guys played absolutely the perfect game and led by three with 4 seconds left, when South took a desperation shot that was an airball. All of our players blocked out and watched as the ball went- without changing trajectory- out of bounds. The ref closest to the shooter, but farthest from where the ball actually went out, awarded the ball to South, saying that one of our players, while blocking out, had tipped the ball as it went out of bounds. We protested, but could not spend too much time on that, as there were now only 2 seconds left and South would have to make a three to tie. We covered the three point line great on the inbounds play, and their only option before a 5 second count was to heave the ball out towards half court. The play happened right in front of me, and I can still see it to this day. Our player, Ed Heard, a football defensive back with great athletic ability, had a bead on the ball, and was going to go up and steal it or knock it away. Just as he started to jump, he tripped on his own feet and fell. The South player, Terrence Harraway, caught the ball, came down, went right back up into a shot two steps in from half court. It banked in, and the south fans and players went nuts- and stormed the court- which could have been a technical foul from a courageous crew. There was no T and we ended up losing by 1 point in OT. I have been in some sad locker rooms, but never one sadder than this- players were laying on the floor crying like babies. There was really nothing to say- they had played brilliantly and deserved the win. The referee, Fritz Goreham, who made the call awarding South the ball with 2 seconds left, told me repeatedly for many years after that he had blown the call. When I got home that night, I found that our home had been broken into. What a day.


Next…Building it back up…

Trojans and beyond…


After Yavapai, I got back into boys basketball at Paradise Valley High School, working with Bill Farrell. Putting us together at that point in our careers was one of the best things that could have happened to either of us. We were total basketball junkies, and honest to God, I don’t know how our wives didn’t throw in the towel that year of 85-86 when we worked together. I got a teaching certificate for physical education, because I had worked at Judson for the required two years to qualify. PE jobs are like gold in the high schools- I mean they have to be pried away from the cold dead fingers of a coach to have one open up, but Paradise Valley did have an opening in Social Studies teaching “B” classes. Thanks to my misguided advisor at Wyoming, I had accumulated enough hours in political science and pre-law to qualify to also teach social studies. This was during the time when tracking was big and you had three groups of kids classified in many schools- AP students, who were headed to college; regular students, who were headed into the blue collar workforce; and the mighty “B” students, who were headed to parties, jail, or worse. Kids walking around with a student number that had the letter B in it knew where they were headed and had kind of an attitude about it. Well, actually, they had a big attitude about it. A few years later, B programs were scrapped and nothing more was ever mentioned about it. So, I had to learn how to be an entertainer more than a teacher.


Bill’s classroom was right next door to mine, so every spare moment during the day- everyday- we were talking basketball. My reputation was about defense, even though I had been around some great offensive minds in Coach Youree and Dave Brown, and had soaked up quite a bit of knowledge. Bill Farrell was kind of like Dave- always coming up with new ways to do something and a very innovative thinker. He understood tempo and how to win with less talent than your opponent. He had a good spread offense, “41”, which was very effective in opening up the floor. I would recommend that all high school coaches have a spread offense, unless you know your team is always going to be the most talented. I worked with two of the best who ever did it, Coach Youree and Bill and became a big believer. It is still usable with a 30 second shot clock, and we have gone to it at MCC on many occasions. Bill and I only spent one year working together- thankfully for our wives- because at the end of the 86 season, Bill got into a dispute with the Principal of PV, Hal Buckley, and promptly retired. He was so intense that I think he retired on three or four different occasions in his career, which was all at Paradise Valley. But that 85-86 season was one of the most memorable in my career. We won the Central Region and got to the state semi-finals- the first time ever for a PV team- and lost to the eventual champion Carl Hayden 52-51.


Even though Bill and I worked together just that one year, I kept my teaching job at PV for a while longer. Always teaching “B” classes, too. Bill would “un-retire” later, after I had left PV and would go on and win two state championships. The gym at Paradise Valley High School is named after him, which is appropriate. He was a hell of a coach. He lives in Payson now, and when I take our MCC team up to Camp Tontozona for our annual retreat, we have touched base. As soon as we get near each other, we just start talking hoops and telling stories like we had been working together the whole time- even though it has been 35 years since we did.


Brigitte and I, and now our children Jordan and Morgan, lived right across the street from Phoenix College in those days, which was a pretty good haul from Paradise Valley. My old friend from the Adams-Westphal Camp days, Rob Babcock, was the head men’s coach at PC by the 1986 season. Once he knew that Bill was “retiring”, he asked me if I wanted to join his staff, which seemed from a family sense to be a smarter thing to do than to continue coaching way out in Paradise Valley. Rob, like everyone else in those days, wanted to get that defensive system into his program. So, I obliged and came back to the ACCAC. It hadn’t changed all that much on the men’s side, as Coach Youree and Coach Bennett still had MCC on top. We had a so-so year, and Rob couldn’t believe how much practice time it took to install and perfect the defense, until gradually he cut the amount of time he wanted to spend on it. The effect was that it wasn’t as good, and that will always be the effect of not spending enough time on what’s important. Rob and I worked together only that year and he eventually followed his brother Pete into the NBA, where he had a very successful and long career as a player personnel director and eventually General Manager of the Toronto Raptors. Pete, the former head coach of Greenway High School, went on to become the President of the Atlanta Hawks. The third brother, Dave, is currently the Director of Player Personnel for the Milwaukee Bucks. Rob, sadly, passed away last year from pancreatic cancer.


One of my fondest memories from the year at PC was the time the Los Angeles Lakers needed a practice court, and with his NBA brother connection, Rob’s name came up and they came to Phoenix College. This was 1986, and if you recall, “showtime” was in its heyday in Los Angeles. I got to stay and watch practice and I will never forget the sight of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at 7’2”, Kurt Rambis at 6’9”, James Worthy at 6’9”, Byron Scott at 6’4”, and Magic Johnson, their point guard at 6’9”, taking the floor. It completely changed the way you look at basketball. The court looked small and they covered the entire length of it so rapidly- it was a different game from what we knew. And when you think that the ’86 Lakers would not even make the finals- they would lose 4-1 in the Western Conference finals to the Rockets, who would then lose to Larry Bird and the Celtics in the championship round, it was like they were from another planet. I walked by Kareem and, at 6’8”, I hadn’t felt that small since I was a little kid walking with my Dad.


Next…the Spartans…

Released his top 5 schools today...

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Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/news/trivium-softball-robbed-of-chance-at-title

Committed to Washington State today

Here's @codytcameron's commitment Analysis

Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/news/commitment-analysis-brock-dieu-commits-to-washington-state

A Roughrider…


After Dick Tamburo turned Coach Youree down for the ASU job, he told him that he would talk to the new coach, Bob Weinhauer, and tell him to hire coach as an assistant. In the subsequent meeting between the two, Weinhauer told Coach Youree that there was no way he would hire someone who everybody in the Valley wanted to be the head coach. And that was that for ASU. As a footnote, Ben Lindsey went 4-24 overall and 1-17 in the Pac-10 and was fired after one year. He was replaced by the guy who spent three hours listening to and taking notes from Coach Youree, Lute Olson from Iowa. To this day, Lindsey remains the only native born Arizonan to be hired as a head coach in basketball by any of the three state universities. Bob Weinhauer went 44-45 in three years at ASU before he was let go. He should have listened to his AD, right? Coach Youree went on to Mesa Community College, where he teamed up as a co-head coach with Tom Bennett for the next five years, where they went 126-37 during that span. Like Lute said to me one time, basketball is basketball no matter what the level, so I will always believe that ASU missed their golden opportunity.


I was going to join the MCC staff as a volunteer, as well, after East closed, and went over with Coach Youree to Spring workouts. Somewhere in there, Coach Y got a call from Dave Brown, the athletic director/head men’s and women’s basketball coach at Yavapai College in Prescott. He was looking for someone to help him coach the two basketball teams and asked if coach knew of anyone that he would recommend. He said he knew of one guy that Dave should hire immediately- me. So, Dave called and we met at a restaurant in Mesa for an interview. He was looking in particular for some defensive help and asked me immediately what I knew about that. By then, I was on fire with defense, having just spent a whole season with a basketball genius. I cleared part of the table off and used salt and pepper shakers, water glasses, jam packets, and whatever was necessary to lay out floor position and how to build it from the ground up. I must have been pretty lathered up, because after only about five minutes, Dave stopped me and said, “OK, OK, I get it. You know defense.” He said he would let me know, but as soon as I got back home, he called and offered me the job. It was a full time job just coaching basketball, which seemed unbelievable.


We had nowhere to live in Prescott, but this is where doing all those camps up there paid off. While doing the Phoenix Suns Camp, I had gotten to know Dick Van Arsdale, and he knew of someone up there where he had a summer home who was looking to rent their place out. It was in Groom Creek, which is eight or so miles up the old Senator Highway out of Prescott in a heavily wooded area- quite beautiful. So we moved in up there and started a trend that has lasted to this very day- and that is each job that I have gotten, I have thought “well, this is it, we’re going to be here until we retire”. Five jobs later, we are still thinking that!


Dave Brown was a great guy to work for, and we were together for one season, 1982-83. He loved offense and was always deep in thought about it. Dave was one of those guys that would write down a new play on anything handy, a napkin, toilet paper, or a gum wrapper. He turned the defense completely over to me and allowed me the necessary time to teach it- because it does take time and lots of it. When I got up there, I found out that the school was embroiled in a battle of whether or not they were going to keep the men’s basketball program any longer. Each junior college is at the mercy of it’s county governing body, and the Yavapai board of regents had been taken over by a very fiscally and socially conservative group. Dave had recruited a number of African-American players over the years and, in those days, that had rubbed this mostly white and conservative area the wrong way. The prevailing opinion was that the men’s program was doomed, whereas the women’s basketball team, volleyball, and baseball- which consisted mostly of white kids- were safe. The board was using the cost of the men’s program as its reason for cutting it, however.


I stayed out of the politics as much as possible and just concentrated on the basketball. Practices were great, but doing two teams a day made for hard work. When you are passionate about something, though, you don’t think about the length of every day, you just grind it out. Games were particularly demanding, because both teams had the chance to be very good. The men’s side was pretty even across the board, with the exception of Mesa, which, with the addition of Coach Youree, was top five in the nation on team defense. This was still in the era when junior college’s only had one division and if you wanted to play basketball, you were all in the same pickle.


I actually prefer that to what we have now with the three divisions and here’s why. Junior colleges are like no other when it comes to expectations of the participants. In high school, that will be the end of the line for 90% of the players- they are not good enough to play at the next level, and most know it going into their senior year. So having classifications and multiple champions is an OK thing. Not having a shot clock is an OK thing, too, because preparing someone for college basketball is not relevant for most of the participants. My 18 years of college coaching have shown me that high school players have absolutely no problem adjusting to a shot clock when they get to college. I have never had to sit a guy down one time to explain to him how a shot clock works. Four year college guys know that 99.99% of them will never play in the NBA and only about 5% will ever make any money at all playing basketball after college, so it’s off to the rec leagues for most who want to continue. So having different levels of classifications for four-year schools is an OK thing, since this is the end of the line for 95% of the players. What makes junior colleges different is that 100% of the participants want to and believe that they are going to move on to the next level. That is what junior colleges are for essentially with that level of expectation. Having a division I, II, and III makes no sense when everybody is trying to do the same thing- move up. Having a national championship is OK, and the juco’s have a great venue for that in Hutchinson, Kansas, but it doesn’t override the fact of why the programs exist. Feel free to throw in your comments on this, as this is my opinion based on 17 years of juco coaching.


Our men’s team in 82-83 finished 16-8- good but not good enough to overcome MCC. They were the conference champions and represented the ACCAC in Hutchinson. We did finish second in the conference in team defense behind Mesa, however, and had a ton of close games. Then the program was cancelled by the Board of Regents. The women’s team was the story…


Next…becoming a women’s coach…

All University of Arizona Athletics news, updates and discussion can be posted here.

Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/news/rosenberg-q-a-past-and-present-with-jake-murphy

Alec Simpson wrote about Trey Reynolds for out Utah Utes site: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/news/three-star-linebacker-reynolds-intrigued-by-utes

Thanks to @codytcameron, @Gridiron Arizona and @AlecSimpson52

Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/n...egon-getting-in-2021-mesquite-qb-ty-thompson-

Cody Cameron breaks down Zion Burns' commitment to University of Nevada

Link: https://arizonavarsity.rivals.com/n...poston-butte-ath-zion-burns-commits-to-nevada

Becoming a women’s coach…


I never really considered the possibility of becoming a women’s coach when I took the job at Yavapai in 1982. I was going to do both men and women with Dave Brown and it was just basketball to me. Dave had recruited a solid bunch of female players and it became pretty obvious to me right away that they could handle the defense. We would practice the women first everyday and then the men would come on with literally no break- so it was six hours a day with no chance to go eat or take a seat or anything. But I was a young guy full of the things that Coach Youree had given me and I was ready for it. It never seemed to be a problem at the time. I became extremely close with both teams, as close as I have ever been I believe. Both teams were giving tremendous effort and I have remained close friends with many of them to this day.


The 82-83 Lady Roughriders went 25-5 and won the Region 1 championship, beating Central in the final. Maybe that doesn’t mean a lot to the readers today, but Central was coached by Lin Laursen, who won 30 ACCAC conference championships, including 21 in a row. She is in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and was as fierce as competitor as I have ever known. The year we beat her, she was named the NJCAA Coach of the Year, and according to a Sports Illustrated article about her, was in Las Vegas drowning her sorrows after our loss when she got the news. They had us by eight at the half, but we came in and said if we do not allow any transition baskets in the second half, we will win. We allowed zero and won 63-55.


We drew Roxbury, Massachusetts in the first round game of the national tournament- a team that was ranked #2 in the nation. I knew nothing about them and so called coaches up in their area to get as much information as I could. Film was impossible to get for women’s teams in those days, so I had to go on what coaches were saying. Everyone said “they run”. I said “what do they do when they don’t run?” Everyone said “they run”. They had a great All-American point guard who played just about all the time. She was a great penetrator, which went to the heart of what our defensive philosophy was all about- so were going to be tested. Because “they run”, they were also leading the nation in points scored per game, at around 88. There was a shot clock for women in those days- way before the men- and it was 30 seconds. I adapted to it well and didn’t need to have years of training to figure out that it actually favored good defense. What I mean is if you can get the other team down to the “red zone”, seven seconds or less, then someone is going to have to try and make a play- which usually involves driving. For us, driving meant help, which meant charges. Against Roxbury, we took twelve charges- six by our All-American guard, Julie Hanks. Their point guard only played 12 minutes, because she kept running people over and was in foul trouble. We got back like we did against Central and didn’t allow them to run. Final score- Yavapai 80 Roxbury 56. From watching the other games in the tournament, it looked to me like we had a real shot at winning it all.


Our quarterfinal game was against DeKalb, Georgia. They were also a pressing, running team, and for 35 minutes we were in complete control. We were playing magnificent defense and were up 52-39 with just over 5 minutes left. Then DeKalb started fouling. We missed eleven free throws in a row- it was unbelievable. Even our very best shooters missed. We didn’t score another point and lost 53-52 on a last second shot from the top of the key- the buzzer went off as the ball went through. It was stunning and I was as sad as I have ever been- sad because we lost and extra sad because that team was so much fun to coach. We would never be together again. The national tournament was in Senatobia, Mississippi, but we were staying in Memphis, which was about 50 miles away. We were stuck there for an extra few days, because our plane tickets took us through the day after the tournament. The ladies put a suicide watch on my room, because they thought I was going to end it all after that defeat.


Later that spring, Dave Brown took off to NAU to become the head women’s coach there. He left me behind to take over as the women’s coach at Yavapai- he made sure they hired me before he left, which was a nice gesture on his part. He took the cream of our freshmen with him, which is understandable because he had recruited them and they were big time D1 prospects. That meant that I had to scramble to recruit, but we did OK. The next year, we played Central in the championship game of the Pima College tournament and beat them- meaning we had beat them twice in a row, which I am pretty certain was never repeated by anyone. I remember looking down at Lin near the end of the game and she was looking back at me like “what the hell’s going on here?” She was as tough as there was and would eventually beat us in the Region 1 championship game up in St. George, Utah later that year. We ended up 22-7. The year after that, we were 20-8, but beaten in the region semi-finals by Cochise.


So, with a shot clock and all, I ended my Yavapai women’s career at 67-20. I knew at the end of the third year that I didn’t really want to be a women’s coach- no offense to the ladies. It was just not what I wanted to do, but thanks to the Universe, was sure glad I got the opportunity when I did to do it. We loved Prescott, particularly Groom Creek, and my wife had gotten a position at the Hassayampa Hotel there in town that was a great opportunity. But she has always been very supportive of my career and knew that it was time to move on. We made plans to move back to the Valley and see what we could find.


Again, the camps I had worked in Prescott led to another opportunity. I had met Bill Farrell at one of them, who was the coach at Paradise Valley High School. He and I talked late in the spring of ’85, and I told him that I didn’t want to be a women’s coach and that I was moving back to the Phoenix area. Eventually, he got me on at his high school as a teacher in the Social Studies department (dual major, right?), and I would help him with the basketball team. So, I had gone from a private high school, to a community college, and now to a public high school.


For those of you who have been reading these blogs, I am going through this history to let you know that I love basketball and have been around the block a few times when it comes to playing and coaching. Because I am doing this, I have kind of been taking stock of my own career in a way that I don’t normally do. For example, I was outside working on the lawn today and remembered that I had written in a previous blog that I had 18 years of college coaching experience. That’s a lot- and I never really thought of myself that way. I have had 25 years of high school coaching experience. That’s 43 years- an unbelievable number for me to ponder. I have served 6 as an assistant and 37 as a head coach. If you have any thing to add, any questions, and stories of your own- please do not hesitate.


Next…Trojans…

Every so often, something strange happens in a game you're at. What's the weirdest thing you've witnessed at a sporting event?

I'll go first: a streaker ran on the field at a high school football game. I don't remember much about it, other than just being concerned he was probably facing more than just whatever charges a streaker normally gets because he was on a school campus.

Growing…


The Judson School was located just north of Lincoln Boulevard on Mockingbird Lane in a very upscale area. First year of coaching high school basketball- no gym, no possibility of a summer program because it was a boarding school which was closed in the summer, and practically all of the athletes at the school played football. There were no charter schools back then, but there were many private schools who had formed their own association- separate from the AIA. They called it the Arizona Independent Athletic Association (AIAA) and, just to give you a reference, some of the schools in the league were Phoenix Country Day, Orme, Arizona Lutheran, Northwest Christian, and us. They were scattered all over the state actually and the travel schedule for basketball was pretty rough, and covered Yuma all the way to the White Mountains. I, of course, had no idea about any of that and just wanted to get a job and get started with a career in coaching.


I was at the mercy of whoever the school had as athletes, because I had no hand in the selection of students for the school. It was an expensive school and had a rich clientele. For example, there was a kid from Iran whose parents gave him a monthly allowance that was more than my yearly salary. Being a really good basketball player was not the main criteria for getting in to Judson- being wealthy was. So my teams were always a crap shoot and I had to find something simple, but effective for groups that I would really not have much time with. So I settled on the diamond press as a main weapon. The good thing about the diamond press is that it forces a certain tempo that is hard for the opponents to get out of. You are forcing the ball to be put in the hands of players who may not be so good at decision making, as well as enticing teams to constantly be attacking the basket without running much in the way of an offense. The bad thing about the diamond press is that if a team has simply more talent than you do, or is well coached, the above mentioned things are not that much of a problem. So then it becomes a high possession game that may not favor you. In my head, I had a picture of what I wanted to do if I could build a program, but Judson was not going to be that place. We were going to get in great condition and press. We didn’t have a gym, only two outdoor courts. Practices didn’t start until after school, so many times I would have to pull my car up to the edge of the car and turn my lights on so we could finish practice. If I had an assistant, the court was really well lit. If I didn’t, it wasn’t. Sometimes the AD would let us rent a gym, like the Scottsdale Boys Club for a practice and that was like going to Disneyland- a real gym!


Most coaches can tell you what it felt like to get on the bus for that very first road game of their career, and I can remember it now 40 years later. We were headed for Superior, Arizona to play our opener- my first high school game as a coach. If you are ever headed towards Globe and you get all the way through Superior, just before you start to climb the hill, look to your left and you will see the old Superior High School gym- a quonset hut. Every time these days that we drive up that way to play Eastern Arizona in Thatcher, I always look at the gym as we go by. I really shouldn’t, though, because Superior really handed it to us that night. The diamond wasn’t effective, and we looked like we were running in mud. Still, though, there was a thrill that was memorable- the day of the game, the players dressed in shirts and ties, the bus ride, the camaraderie- there was nothing like it. I hated losing, but knew I was doing the right thing.


Eventually, the pressing clicked, as our guys went from football shape to basketball shape. Our season was comprised of games against the various private schools around the state, small high school varsities like Superior, and big school junior varsities. Our AD made the schedule and his idea was to play as many games as possible to keep the boys busy and under constant supervision. Money and boredom are bad things for a boarding school, so Joe kept us busy. We made it to the semi-finals of the AIAA state tournament before losing to San Pasquale from Yuma. They had some really good guards and handled the press well. We had split with them during the year.


One of the advantages to not being able to have a summer program at Judson was that it gave me an opportunity to work in the summer. Since Judson didn’t pay very well, that was really important to me and my wife. It also opened the door to some of the best times I ever had in my growth as a basketball coach. There were some unbelievably good basketball camps in Arizona during that time- the Phoenix Suns Basketball Camp, the Arizona Sports Camp, and the Adams-Westphal Camp stood out. It was a basketball burnout for someone like me who was soaking every bit of knowledge he could from the many great coaches that I roomed with, worked with, and hung around with. The next three summers, I did eight to ten weeks of these camps each summer. It was like Perry’s Sports Camp in Oregon all over again, except now I was a coach. If only every coach could do this, instead of being bound by their own summer programs as we all are now. I talked basketball with some of Arizona’s greatest coaches and it was priceless. A typical camp day would go eighteen hours and I would be completely spent at the end of a week, then rest on the weekend, and go do it again.


One of my close friendships in coaching grew out of the Adams-Westphal Camp. Rob Babcock, whose brother Pete was the camp director, was coaching and teaching at the American School in Mexico City at the time, and he could relate to my situation at Judson, as his was very similar. He invited me to bring my Judson team down to Mexico City for a holiday tournament the next season. That would be an unreasonable request for many high schools, but since most of our kids were rich, we pulled it off. There would be us, the American School, and two local Mexico City teams playing in the tournament. We were housed in homes of his players’ families, and Brigitte and I were in one of the most palatial homes I have ever seen. Sadly, right down the street and out of the neighborhood gates, was a hillside where thousands of people lived in absolute squalor and poverty. Just before our first game, the students from the Mexican school that we were playing unfurled a huge banner that said “Remember the Alamo!” I went to the scorers table and told them that I would take my team off the court unless that sign was removed. We all knew who had won the battle of the Alamo. We ended up winning the tournament and that team in1980 would go on and win the AIAA state title. We still pressed, because with so little time to work with players you have to be kind of one-dimensional. We were down 15 going into the fourth quarter of the championship game and came back and won 76-75 against that same San Pasquale team that had beaten us the year before. I still have a picture of us rushing the court hanging in my house. Just before they tore down the Judson School to build new homes, one of my ex-players rescued the trophy and it sits today in my office at MCC.


Next…need more dimensions…

A Longhorn once again…


As previously mentioned, Coach Youree had built a remarkable program at East High when I stepped aboard in the fall of 1981 to be his assistant. He had never had an actual varsity assistant during all those years, simply because there was no pay attached to such a position. The guys who sat on the bench with him over the years were always his freshman and jayvee coaches, most notably Hector Bejarano. So there was no precedent for me as far as responsibilities. Through the fall off-season, I showed up for the 3on3 sessions, and could even still play in them from time to time. By this time, Coach Youree was no longer playing, and he and Coach Bejarano would sit near the championship court games and basically watch those, while pretty much ignoring loser courts. The lesson there for the players was basically nobody cares for losers and if you wanted the coaches to see you, your team needed to get to championship court. 3on3 was so established by then, that the players knew the best way to get on Coach Youree’s good side was to get to and stay on championship court. That made the loser court games extra tough, unlike many places where if the coaches are not paying attention, it brings out the worst qualities in some players. That is how we have run our 3on3 sessions to this very day.


When the season came around, it was amazing for me in every way- I have never had an experience quite like it. I saw Coach Youree in a completely different way as I did when I played for him. The first thing I noticed was that he smoked cigarettes- not many, but sometimes he would be back in the coaches locker room and he would have his hand curled in a little ball with a cigarette tucked in there. Before you get too critical of that, it was not the first time I had seen that from a great coach. Almost all the WAC coaches smoked, many profusely, including Don Haskins. The first basketball clinic that I ever attended occurred when I was coaching at Judson. I flew over to San Diego to a clinic at Mission Bay, and was late getting to the first session, which featured the Duke coach, Bill Foster. I came into the ballroom where the session was being held and it was completely packed, so the only place I could find to sit was a long table in the back which had a large industrial coffee maker on it with hundreds of cups stacked up. I moved everything over and sat down on the table. A few moments later, another gentleman sat down next to me. I looked and it is was Dean Smith, the already legendary coach of North Carolina. I really wanted to say something, but couldn’t figure out how to begin until I noticed that Coach Smith had a cigarette stuck inside his curled hand. So I said “I didn’t know you smoked”, as if I had known him my whole life or something. He turned to me and said “yeah, it’s really a bad habit”. After that we spoke about coaching quietly in the back for about twenty minutes, and I thought of that moment when I saw Coach Youree doing the same thing years later. As a side note, in my career in coaching, I have had the great pleasure of speaking to Dean Smith, Bob Knight, Lute Olson, and John Wooden and all four expressed a deep fondness and respect for high school coaches. Three of the four actually said they preferred high school coaching, but the money was an issue. I’ll let you speculate on that one.


Coach Youree never told me exactly what I would be doing in practices going in, but each day he would go over the schedule with me and tell me what he wanted me to do and where I would do it. So immediately from day 1, I was actively involved and encouraged to help him coach. I never just stood around or didn’t feel involved, and he always encouraged me to make corrections as necessary. Practices were our time to teach- our classroom, if you will- and games were the practical labs. Coach Youree was a perfectionist- do it until it is done right and even further- do it until you can’t do it wrong. The good thing for me to see was that the culture was so strong from top to bottom- freshmen up- that the varsity kids were like a machine. There was no copy machine in the PE area- in fact, there was only one copy machine for the whole school in those days- so I would copy the practice plan everyday by hand and then when I went home at night, would make notes about each drill. I couldn’t get over how perfectly every detail fit the overall picture. This was everything I had ever imagined about coaching and I was soaking it up. And I am talking about every aspect of the game, from basic footwork and handwork, up through offensive and defensive strategies. The defense was particularly precise- almost like teaching people sophisticated dance moves. It was all the things that were floating in my head, all put into reality in front of me. Coach Youree was so well known by then across the nation, as he had coached the USA Junior team in 1978 to a gold medal in Brazil- a team that featured James Worthy, Sam Perkins, and “Fat” Lever to name a few- that on many occasions during the 1981-82 season, college coaches would come to practice not for recruiting, but to watch the coaching and take notes. I have never seen anything like that before or since. One time, Lute Olson, who had just taken Iowa to the Final Four, came by with his assistant coach Scott Thompson. They stayed after practice and we adjourned to the coaches locker room. Lute pulled out a small notepad and said to Coach Youree “let’s talk defense”. We stayed for the next three hours as Coach Youree answered questions and drew things up on the whiteboard in the office. I sat over in the corner on a file cabinet and every now and then shot Scott Thompson a look- he would just shake his head in wonderment as Coach Olson was writing stuff down.


The year before, East had gone 28-0, and was eventually named the team of the century. The year I came in, there were no returning starters and only one player, LeRoy Dean, who had been a major contributor. We still went 23-3, which speaks volumes for the culture that had been built. All three of the losses were by one point. The first game of the year was at South Mountain, who was ranked number 1 pre-season. It would be obvious why East would not be ranked number 1, with no returning starters, but as a compliment to the greatness of the program, we were still ranked number 2. To the East High kids, however, being ranked number 2 was a slight, not a compliment. South was loaded and very confident- the locker rooms for the two teams were right next to each other and they were yelling things at our players- basically about how it was a new day, and you don’t come to the mountain, etc. Our guys remained quiet. When we got out on the floor, with the gym packed, I saw for the first time just how big and athletic South was, and during warmups, they were trying to stare our guys down. I, being a rookie to this level, said something to Coach Youree on the order of how are we going to handle this team, my God they’re huge. Coach just looked at me and said, ”we’ll be alright”. He still reminds me of that moment to this day. We took the lead early, got it out to 10 at some points, went in and out of the vaunted spread offense as necessary, and won 46-43. We ended up being #1 all year, and playing South three times, and beating them all three. Yeah, coach, “we’ll be alright”.


Next…East closes…

East closes…


All year long in the 1981-82 season that I was involved in, there had been a shadow hanging over everything. The Phoenix Union High School District had decided to reorganize and sell off some properties that were problematical, with Phoenix Union and East High being put on the chopping block. Phoenix Union sat right downtown in an area that had become increasingly valuable as real estate and contained fewer and fewer residents. It had been a terrific looking campus for many years, with a huge in-the-round gymnasium and magnificent football stadium- Montgomery Stadium. It was so big that the Rolling Stones played their first Phoenix concert there. But with a declining enrollment and a city on the rise, it began to look like the district had lost interest in it’s future and it was gradually falling into state of disrepair. Argie Rhymes was the basketball coach in 81-82, as he had replaced the legendary Gerald “Wimpy” Jones. East High, on the other hand, was still almost brand new by school standards- only 17 years old and in great shape. It also, however, had an enrollment problem- it sat at the corner of 48th Street and Van Buren, which was becoming more of an industrial area than a residential area. From a real estate point of view, it was not in the same ball park as Phoenix Union, but the enrollment was definitely falling. There was also an underlying racial issue at play- Phoenix Union was mostly African-American and Latino, whereas East was mostly white. That issue is never far from the surface in America and it was certainly discussed in this context. I remember a lot of the East High people feeling like they were being sacrificed on the alter of politics. They felt the closing of Phoenix union to be justified, and that East’s enrollment would benefit from the closing of the downtown school. It was in the newspapers and it became an ugly issue. Several times during 81-82, it looked like the district might save East, but in the end they didn’t. Both East and Phoenix Union had powerful sports programs and legacies, but those things are shoved aside when it comes to money and politics.


That situation had an affect on Coach Youree during the season. He had given East High and the district all he had, but it didn’t seem to matter. That situation is what made the final season all the more memorable. Each game seemed to draw us closer to the end of something that no one wanted to see gone. As I mentioned, we lost three games- all by one point. One loss was to Argie and Phoenix Union in that old palace, but then we routed them in the finals of the Phoenix Union Holiday Tournament. We lost at home to Casa Grande, by a shot that was debatedly at or after the buzzer. After that one, Coach Youree told me to go get one of the referees from their dressing room, because he wanted to talk about the ending. Obviously, that is not something that is readily done- going to fetch a ref after a game, that is- so I said “are you sure you want me to go get him?” In no uncertain terms, he told me to go get the guy- I will not use his name here. So, off I went and knocked on the referee’s dressing room door. The one guy Coach Youree wanted was sitting down and I told him that Coach wanted to see him. He said “no way am I going out there!” Awkward. We played Casa Grande later in the year at their place and smashed them pretty good.


We went into the Metro Region tournament as the top seed and won the first two games to set up a final with South Mountain, who we already defeated twice during the season. By getting to the finals, Coach Youree had made it 13 consecutive years to the state tournament in the state’s toughest conference, hands down. No power points in those days- you had to win your way in against teams who could win the whole thing. The championship game was at Brophy and the place was packed on both levels, both sides. There was just barely enough room for us to sit on the bench, which was part of the bleachers. We were down 51-50 with three seconds left, when LeRoy Dean drove the right side of the lane. Everyone knew he had to shoot it- everyone but LeRoy that is. It seemed like South’s entire front line rotated over to block his attempt, so being one of the smartest players I’ve ever been around, LeRoy passed the ball off the backboard to Uvonte Reed who was coming in unguarded from the other side. Uvonte caught the ball in the air and laid it over the rim as time expired. East 52 South 51. As the gym exploded, I looked at the ref, Jerry Steitler- a very courageous man- and he signaled that the basket counted. Coach Youree grabbed me and told me to double check with the scorer- and as I got to the table, I was immediately pinned in by the South coaches, players, and God knows who else. Another very brave man, “Dub” Davis, the scorer, said the basket was good. As I got down to the locker room, and went by the referee’s room, I saw that Don Petroff, the South coach had gotten in there and was letting Jerry Steitler have it. Jerry was just sitting there, with his feet up on a chair saying, “Don, it was good. I saw it all the way”.


Our third loss would be in the state quarterfinals against St. Mary’s. We led by 5 with 43 seconds left, but would lose by 1. A lot of people naively think running a four corner offense is easy, but it is most definitely not when people come after you with traps and fouls. You have to be able to handle the ball when trapped and make good decisions. You also have to make free throws. We did neither in the last 43 seconds. Even at that, we led by one with 5 seconds left, when there was a classic block-charge scenario on the baseline. The baseline ref called a charge, but was overruled by the senior official who huddled with him after the call. The call was changed to a block and the St. Mary’s player, to his credit, made both free throws. We missed a final attempt and East High’s illustrious basketball program came to an end.


Right after the season, both Arizona and Arizona State had openings for a head coach. Word had it that Ben Lindsey, the successful coach at Grand Canyon College, was going to get the Arizona job- which he did. The ASU job seemed like the perfect fit for Coach Youree. He was a great player there where he had played for the retiring Ned Wulk, was nationally known, and was a popular choice from people all over the valley. Radio talk shows and op-ed’s in the Republic said it was a no-brainer. Ned Wulk came out and said that Coach Youree should be the choice. After Ben Lindsey got the Arizona job, he called Coach Youree and begged him to take an assistant’s position with him. I was in the office when the call came in. Coach said he was in the ASU process and could not do it. It was really a heady few weeks in the midst of a very sad situation with the impending closure of East High. It came down to Coach Youree and Bob Weinhauer, the coach from Pennsylvania University, who had just taken them to the Final Four. In the end, Dick Tamburo told Coach Youree that he just couldn’t pull the trigger on a high school coach. His quote was “how would I look if you didn’t win?” to which Coach Youree responded “how will you look if I do win?” I have no doubt that Coach Youree would have taken ASU places it has still never been. And I would have been right there with him.


Next…A Roughrider…