The Cowboys….
When I returned from Philadelphia, I was less certain that I would be signing with Temple. I was so sure going in that I had not scheduled any other trips, but the visit had raised some doubts. That’s what the visits are for, right? But I was still sure enough to tell Coach Hefley that I enjoyed the trip and just needed some time to think it over. He took that to mean it was a done deal and promptly let the local newspaper, the Baytown Sun know and they ran a story on how I had committed to Temple.
You might be asking yourself, what happened to the University of Texas? A couple of things. Carroll Dawson, the assistant coach who gave me the June tryout in Phoenix, had departed. I saw their gym, Gregory Gym- it wasn’t very good, kind of like the old Sun Devil gym in Tempe that I was familiar with. Their team was a middle of the packer in the Southwest Conference, a conference that was noted for football above all else. I just kind of lost interest in them and that conference, in general. After I started playing well, most of my recruiting interest came from east of the Mississippi River anyway. Back in those days, there was no cable TV, so if I went east, I would pretty much disappear from view in Arizona. The best of those opportunities was clearly Temple, so it looked like that is where I would go.
I am a firm believer in fate, destiny, or the universe being in control of things, and this is where things took a turn. Deep down, I wanted to play in the west, but no schools outside of Texas in the west had shown any interest. A professor at Lee College was a graduate of the University of Wyoming, and unbeknownst to me, had called the assistant coach there, Bill Purden, who he knew, and told him that he should take a look at me. Bill asked who was recruiting me and the professor said he saw an article in the paper saying I had committed to Temple, but he knew from Coach Hefley that no papers had been signed. So right in the midst of being 50/50 on the whole thing, I got a phone call from Coach Purden. He wanted to know if I wanted to take a trip up to Laramie, Wyoming. I accepted.
Wyoming was in the old Western Athletic Conference, with Arizona State, Arizona, BYU, Utah, Colorado State, New Mexico, and UTEP. I knew about the conference, because growing up, I was a big fan of Frank Kush and ASU football. It just so happened that my senior year in high school, I went to the ASU-Wyoming football game at Sun Devil stadium. It still ranks as one of the best sporting events I’ve ever seen. Wyoming, from the WAC, was outstanding and undefeated, but so was ASU. The Sun Devil’s Max Anderson had a 98 yard touchdown run late in the game to give ASU a 13-12 lead, but Wyoming’s Jerry DePoyster hit a long field goal at the end to seal a 15-13 Wyoming win. Wyoming would end the regular season 10-0, be ranked #2 in the nation, and go on to play LSU in the Sugar Bowl- thus, becoming the first and only WAC team to accomplish that feat. They lost to LSU. ASU would end up 8-2 and have only one conference loss (to the number #2 ranked team in the country) and not get a bowl bid. This was before the era of the Bill Rincon’s Fix-Your-Flat Bowl, or the Ritz Cracker Peanut-Bites Bowl which we are in now. In fact, after that great season, there was talk around town that ASU and the WAC needed their own bowl, which ultimately led to the creation of the Fiesta Bowl. And the rest, they say, is history.
I didn’t know anything about Wyoming basketball before heading up there. Turns out, they had finished on top of the conference two of the three previous seasons. The problem in the west region of basketball at the time was UCLA. NCAA tournament games were not shown on TV until the Final Four, and no one in the west was making that event because of the Bruins. I knew the WAC conference, however, and knew that playing for Wyoming would mean playing at home in the Valley, and in Tucson, which wasn’t that far down the road. Turns out that Wyoming had a rich basketball history, winning the 1943 NCAA Title behind their star Kenny Sailors, who is credited with bringing the jump shot to college basketball. That story is featured in a movie about Kenny that was produced by Steph Curry called oddly enough “Jump Shot”. They beat Georgetown in the final, and had two Phoenix guys on the roster- Jack Downey and Charles Castle. What happened to those guys and where did they go to high school?
There were all kinds of red flags on this trip, but the mind is a funny thing. They flew me up there first class from Houston to Denver, which was an NCAA violation at the time. I took a puddle jumper from Denver to the Laramie Airport, which is something I recommend that you try, but only once. Laramie is at 7200 feet and it is very windy most of the time. They worked me out in front of the coaches, which was an NCAA violation at the time. When we showered up after the workout, one of the players said I shouldn’t go there- said the coaches were not good guys. They took me to dinner and then left the restaurant, giving me a lot of cash to pay the bill, telling me to “keep the change”. There was a lot of it. The weather was not too bad- not what I expected. They said it was an “Indian Summer”, and that it was always like that in the Spring. It was never that way again. The head coach, William “Wild Bill” Strannigan was kind of a gruff character, but I hit it off pretty well with Coach Purden. Despite all the basketball history and character offered by Temple, the tug of being able to stay in the west and, especially play at home was just too powerful. I committed to Wyoming. Sadly, right after that, Coach Purden took the head job at Valpairiso University in Indiana and left. That would turn out to be a most unfortunate occurrence for me. Fate, destiny, and the universe move in mysterious ways.
Next…NCAA Division1…
When I returned from Philadelphia, I was less certain that I would be signing with Temple. I was so sure going in that I had not scheduled any other trips, but the visit had raised some doubts. That’s what the visits are for, right? But I was still sure enough to tell Coach Hefley that I enjoyed the trip and just needed some time to think it over. He took that to mean it was a done deal and promptly let the local newspaper, the Baytown Sun know and they ran a story on how I had committed to Temple.
You might be asking yourself, what happened to the University of Texas? A couple of things. Carroll Dawson, the assistant coach who gave me the June tryout in Phoenix, had departed. I saw their gym, Gregory Gym- it wasn’t very good, kind of like the old Sun Devil gym in Tempe that I was familiar with. Their team was a middle of the packer in the Southwest Conference, a conference that was noted for football above all else. I just kind of lost interest in them and that conference, in general. After I started playing well, most of my recruiting interest came from east of the Mississippi River anyway. Back in those days, there was no cable TV, so if I went east, I would pretty much disappear from view in Arizona. The best of those opportunities was clearly Temple, so it looked like that is where I would go.
I am a firm believer in fate, destiny, or the universe being in control of things, and this is where things took a turn. Deep down, I wanted to play in the west, but no schools outside of Texas in the west had shown any interest. A professor at Lee College was a graduate of the University of Wyoming, and unbeknownst to me, had called the assistant coach there, Bill Purden, who he knew, and told him that he should take a look at me. Bill asked who was recruiting me and the professor said he saw an article in the paper saying I had committed to Temple, but he knew from Coach Hefley that no papers had been signed. So right in the midst of being 50/50 on the whole thing, I got a phone call from Coach Purden. He wanted to know if I wanted to take a trip up to Laramie, Wyoming. I accepted.
Wyoming was in the old Western Athletic Conference, with Arizona State, Arizona, BYU, Utah, Colorado State, New Mexico, and UTEP. I knew about the conference, because growing up, I was a big fan of Frank Kush and ASU football. It just so happened that my senior year in high school, I went to the ASU-Wyoming football game at Sun Devil stadium. It still ranks as one of the best sporting events I’ve ever seen. Wyoming, from the WAC, was outstanding and undefeated, but so was ASU. The Sun Devil’s Max Anderson had a 98 yard touchdown run late in the game to give ASU a 13-12 lead, but Wyoming’s Jerry DePoyster hit a long field goal at the end to seal a 15-13 Wyoming win. Wyoming would end the regular season 10-0, be ranked #2 in the nation, and go on to play LSU in the Sugar Bowl- thus, becoming the first and only WAC team to accomplish that feat. They lost to LSU. ASU would end up 8-2 and have only one conference loss (to the number #2 ranked team in the country) and not get a bowl bid. This was before the era of the Bill Rincon’s Fix-Your-Flat Bowl, or the Ritz Cracker Peanut-Bites Bowl which we are in now. In fact, after that great season, there was talk around town that ASU and the WAC needed their own bowl, which ultimately led to the creation of the Fiesta Bowl. And the rest, they say, is history.
I didn’t know anything about Wyoming basketball before heading up there. Turns out, they had finished on top of the conference two of the three previous seasons. The problem in the west region of basketball at the time was UCLA. NCAA tournament games were not shown on TV until the Final Four, and no one in the west was making that event because of the Bruins. I knew the WAC conference, however, and knew that playing for Wyoming would mean playing at home in the Valley, and in Tucson, which wasn’t that far down the road. Turns out that Wyoming had a rich basketball history, winning the 1943 NCAA Title behind their star Kenny Sailors, who is credited with bringing the jump shot to college basketball. That story is featured in a movie about Kenny that was produced by Steph Curry called oddly enough “Jump Shot”. They beat Georgetown in the final, and had two Phoenix guys on the roster- Jack Downey and Charles Castle. What happened to those guys and where did they go to high school?
There were all kinds of red flags on this trip, but the mind is a funny thing. They flew me up there first class from Houston to Denver, which was an NCAA violation at the time. I took a puddle jumper from Denver to the Laramie Airport, which is something I recommend that you try, but only once. Laramie is at 7200 feet and it is very windy most of the time. They worked me out in front of the coaches, which was an NCAA violation at the time. When we showered up after the workout, one of the players said I shouldn’t go there- said the coaches were not good guys. They took me to dinner and then left the restaurant, giving me a lot of cash to pay the bill, telling me to “keep the change”. There was a lot of it. The weather was not too bad- not what I expected. They said it was an “Indian Summer”, and that it was always like that in the Spring. It was never that way again. The head coach, William “Wild Bill” Strannigan was kind of a gruff character, but I hit it off pretty well with Coach Purden. Despite all the basketball history and character offered by Temple, the tug of being able to stay in the west and, especially play at home was just too powerful. I committed to Wyoming. Sadly, right after that, Coach Purden took the head job at Valpairiso University in Indiana and left. That would turn out to be a most unfortunate occurrence for me. Fate, destiny, and the universe move in mysterious ways.
Next…NCAA Division1…
