On to college….
By the time my senior season ended, I was thinking seriously about playing basketball at the next level. I had been given all three of the individual awards at our banquet from Coach Youree- Team Captain, Most Valuable Player, and Best Defensive Player. That was the only time in the history of East High basketball that would happen and it has always been so special to me that I still have all three of those trophies in my office at Mesa Community College. East, of course, would go on to have some phenomenal teams and players in their history, so I have always been proud of that achievement in Coach Youree’s eyes. There were really a lot of things I enjoyed about basketball by then- the skills that must be acquired, the flow of the game which was definitely not boring, the closeness of the fans to the action, and yes, the constant chatter that went on out there among the players. There was a closeness to it that made it seem more intense, more urgent than other sports. You had to play offense and defense and any lack of ability at either end was quickly exposed. Many years later, one of my assistant coaches, Rex Morrison gave the best description of offense and defense. He said if there existed an Insanity Meter that went 1-10, offense would be about a 3 or 4, because you could relax a little bit, take a deep breath, move the ball around, and think. Defense, however, was about a 9 or 10 because it was like someone trying to break into your house and you had to be very reactionary and courageous.
I was a skinny 6’6” white kid in 1968, coming from a brand new high school with a new coach who had not put any players into college to that point. Phoenix was not a recruiting hotbed for basketball in those days, and I had put up nice numbers in a tough local league, but they certainly weren’t eye popping. As I have since spent 15 years coaching college basketball in my career, I would term such a prospect as myself as what we call a “tweener”. Not big enough to be a big time rebounder at the D1 level nor the kind of scorer that they would seek. I dreamed of playing D1, but that was mainly due to the fact that college games were rarely shown on TV, and were always D1 schools being shown. I was recruited by some smaller colleges, most notably Pepperdine University, which in those days was a small NAIA school in the Los Angeles area. Their head coach, Gary Colson came to visit me at East, but I really had no interest in them. If I would have known more about their location in Malibu at the time, perhaps I would have shown more interest.
The area had a junior college powerhouse, Phoenix College, which at the time, was a top five school among the JUCO’s. This was the era when junior colleges didn’t have divisions- all 400+ were in the same division- junior college; so being top five was really something. Their coach, Leon Blevins, was an old friend of Coach Youree and he came by for a visit. I could tell he wasn’t that interested and was more or less doing coach a favor. Phoenix’s roster was heavily out-of-state kids and they were ready to go D1 type players, but probably didn’t have the grades. One of them was Dennis “Mo” Layton, who would go on to USC and then play for the Phoenix Suns. I can’t remember if Mesa or Glendale even had programs back then, but none of the other Arizona junior colleges talked to me.
As the Spring moved towards graduation, it was pretty obvious that no NCAA D1’s were going to come knocking, so I took the initiative of choosing one and writing to the coach. It was the University of Texas, in Austin. Why them? Well, my Dad was a Texan, growing up in the small town of Krum, which was about 40 miles north of Dallas. That was one reason. Another was that the University of Texas football team was always on TV when I was a teenager and they were really good. That had nothing to do with basketball, of course, and I really knew nothing about their program in that sport. They also had a great law school and, at that time, I still wanted to go into law. And finally, they were the Longhorns, which was the same mascot as East High. None of these were good reasons to want to go there for basketball, but it was a different time- no computers, no cell phones, and none of the quicker ways to find things out that we know so well today. I didn’t know if UT played in a conference or what it might be. Turns out it was the Big 8 (today’s Big 12) and they were terrible. Surprisingly, I received an answer from an assistant coach named Carroll Dawson. He said they were basically full on scholarships, but he was traveling to California in early June and could stop by and work me out. When you’re bad like they were, you could break NCAA rules and work some kid out off campus, but he didn’t mention that. When he arrived, it was June all right, which means in Phoenix, it would be very hot. He asked to meet me at that old concrete court with the chain nets, because he was just driving through and didn’t want to hunt down a gym. He decided that around noon would fit his schedule, so there I was, working out for the University of Texas in Phoenix in June at noon on an outdoor court. He stood in the shade and for about an hour, he put me through every skill determining exercise he could think of. Did I mention there was no drinking fountain close by? There wasn’t. I even did full court defensive slides, for God’s sake. When we finished, he said he was impressed and would get back to me. Then he said bye, or baah as they say in Texas and was off to California.
I didn’t hear anything from Coach Dawson for a few weeks and was really getting concerned that I would have nowhere to go play the next season. Then, out of the blue, I got a letter from UT. Remember, this is how people communicated in those days. A letter could take up to a week to come all the way from Texas and another week for your response to get back. Long distance phone calls were expensive and were usually only reserved for the guys a coach was really after. In his letter, Coach Dawson said how much he liked me as a player, but that they had no scholarships available. He went on to say that, if I was interested, they could place me in a junior college down there and I could go there for a year or two, get bigger and stronger, and then perhaps become a Longhorn. And I wouldn’t have to pay for anything, as any junior college I went to down there would give me a scholarship. That sounded very interesting so I replied that I was definitely interested. In the next letter from Coach Dawson, he had enclosed a piece of paper with the outline of the state of Texas on it. Inside that drawing, it was completely blank- no roads, cities, towns, rivers, lakes, or anything except five dots. He said those were the locations of five junior colleges that I could choose from. One of the dots was way down in the southeast part of the blank map, so I was assuming that it must be close to the Gulf of Mexico. Since I grew up in the desert, that dot seemed to be the most intriguing dot. So without too much more thought, I circled that dot and sent it back to Coach Dawson. A week or so later, I got a phone call from John MacCormick, who was the head coach at Lee College in Baytown, Texas. He said his college was the dot that I circled and welcome aboard! Caution: don’t ever get recruited this way. If I hadn’t lived through it myself, I wouldn’t believe this was even possible.
Next time- the Rebels...
By the time my senior season ended, I was thinking seriously about playing basketball at the next level. I had been given all three of the individual awards at our banquet from Coach Youree- Team Captain, Most Valuable Player, and Best Defensive Player. That was the only time in the history of East High basketball that would happen and it has always been so special to me that I still have all three of those trophies in my office at Mesa Community College. East, of course, would go on to have some phenomenal teams and players in their history, so I have always been proud of that achievement in Coach Youree’s eyes. There were really a lot of things I enjoyed about basketball by then- the skills that must be acquired, the flow of the game which was definitely not boring, the closeness of the fans to the action, and yes, the constant chatter that went on out there among the players. There was a closeness to it that made it seem more intense, more urgent than other sports. You had to play offense and defense and any lack of ability at either end was quickly exposed. Many years later, one of my assistant coaches, Rex Morrison gave the best description of offense and defense. He said if there existed an Insanity Meter that went 1-10, offense would be about a 3 or 4, because you could relax a little bit, take a deep breath, move the ball around, and think. Defense, however, was about a 9 or 10 because it was like someone trying to break into your house and you had to be very reactionary and courageous.
I was a skinny 6’6” white kid in 1968, coming from a brand new high school with a new coach who had not put any players into college to that point. Phoenix was not a recruiting hotbed for basketball in those days, and I had put up nice numbers in a tough local league, but they certainly weren’t eye popping. As I have since spent 15 years coaching college basketball in my career, I would term such a prospect as myself as what we call a “tweener”. Not big enough to be a big time rebounder at the D1 level nor the kind of scorer that they would seek. I dreamed of playing D1, but that was mainly due to the fact that college games were rarely shown on TV, and were always D1 schools being shown. I was recruited by some smaller colleges, most notably Pepperdine University, which in those days was a small NAIA school in the Los Angeles area. Their head coach, Gary Colson came to visit me at East, but I really had no interest in them. If I would have known more about their location in Malibu at the time, perhaps I would have shown more interest.
The area had a junior college powerhouse, Phoenix College, which at the time, was a top five school among the JUCO’s. This was the era when junior colleges didn’t have divisions- all 400+ were in the same division- junior college; so being top five was really something. Their coach, Leon Blevins, was an old friend of Coach Youree and he came by for a visit. I could tell he wasn’t that interested and was more or less doing coach a favor. Phoenix’s roster was heavily out-of-state kids and they were ready to go D1 type players, but probably didn’t have the grades. One of them was Dennis “Mo” Layton, who would go on to USC and then play for the Phoenix Suns. I can’t remember if Mesa or Glendale even had programs back then, but none of the other Arizona junior colleges talked to me.
As the Spring moved towards graduation, it was pretty obvious that no NCAA D1’s were going to come knocking, so I took the initiative of choosing one and writing to the coach. It was the University of Texas, in Austin. Why them? Well, my Dad was a Texan, growing up in the small town of Krum, which was about 40 miles north of Dallas. That was one reason. Another was that the University of Texas football team was always on TV when I was a teenager and they were really good. That had nothing to do with basketball, of course, and I really knew nothing about their program in that sport. They also had a great law school and, at that time, I still wanted to go into law. And finally, they were the Longhorns, which was the same mascot as East High. None of these were good reasons to want to go there for basketball, but it was a different time- no computers, no cell phones, and none of the quicker ways to find things out that we know so well today. I didn’t know if UT played in a conference or what it might be. Turns out it was the Big 8 (today’s Big 12) and they were terrible. Surprisingly, I received an answer from an assistant coach named Carroll Dawson. He said they were basically full on scholarships, but he was traveling to California in early June and could stop by and work me out. When you’re bad like they were, you could break NCAA rules and work some kid out off campus, but he didn’t mention that. When he arrived, it was June all right, which means in Phoenix, it would be very hot. He asked to meet me at that old concrete court with the chain nets, because he was just driving through and didn’t want to hunt down a gym. He decided that around noon would fit his schedule, so there I was, working out for the University of Texas in Phoenix in June at noon on an outdoor court. He stood in the shade and for about an hour, he put me through every skill determining exercise he could think of. Did I mention there was no drinking fountain close by? There wasn’t. I even did full court defensive slides, for God’s sake. When we finished, he said he was impressed and would get back to me. Then he said bye, or baah as they say in Texas and was off to California.
I didn’t hear anything from Coach Dawson for a few weeks and was really getting concerned that I would have nowhere to go play the next season. Then, out of the blue, I got a letter from UT. Remember, this is how people communicated in those days. A letter could take up to a week to come all the way from Texas and another week for your response to get back. Long distance phone calls were expensive and were usually only reserved for the guys a coach was really after. In his letter, Coach Dawson said how much he liked me as a player, but that they had no scholarships available. He went on to say that, if I was interested, they could place me in a junior college down there and I could go there for a year or two, get bigger and stronger, and then perhaps become a Longhorn. And I wouldn’t have to pay for anything, as any junior college I went to down there would give me a scholarship. That sounded very interesting so I replied that I was definitely interested. In the next letter from Coach Dawson, he had enclosed a piece of paper with the outline of the state of Texas on it. Inside that drawing, it was completely blank- no roads, cities, towns, rivers, lakes, or anything except five dots. He said those were the locations of five junior colleges that I could choose from. One of the dots was way down in the southeast part of the blank map, so I was assuming that it must be close to the Gulf of Mexico. Since I grew up in the desert, that dot seemed to be the most intriguing dot. So without too much more thought, I circled that dot and sent it back to Coach Dawson. A week or so later, I got a phone call from John MacCormick, who was the head coach at Lee College in Baytown, Texas. He said his college was the dot that I circled and welcome aboard! Caution: don’t ever get recruited this way. If I hadn’t lived through it myself, I wouldn’t believe this was even possible.
Next time- the Rebels...
