The Life-Story of Manny Suarez
(part true, part fiction)
Manuel Ignacio Suarez-Gaston Carreno Segerra de la casa de Suarez
"Pollo flaco, Mark Antony, slim, wild pony, #13, sewerez, frankenstein, mad dog, Dr. S, sylvester, 44, Teach, Coach, and Dad"
(Front cover - a basketball game shirt # 44 hanging in a locker.
Back cover - same basketball shirt hanging in a closet on a wire hanger.)
(need maps of Cuba, D.C., States, and Family Tree)
Dedicated to my mom, Eloise Gaston Suarez, who always encouraged me to write even with my misspelled words and poor grammar.
To my sons, Brandon and Austin. I love you more than you will ever know, and I expect you to do better than I did.
To my friends who were also English teachers and proofed all my many memo's at work.
And to my wife, Kathy, who always believed in me.
Chapter 1: Cuba
Chapter 2: Coming to America
Chapter 3: The American Dream
Chapter 4: St. Anselm's Abbey
Chapter 5: Jacksonville University: The First Two Years
Chapter 6: JU: The Last Two Years
Chapter 7: Tampa, Florida
Chapter 8: Berkeley: The Early Years
Chapter 9: Berkeley: The Middle Years
Chapter 10: The Last Season
Chapter 11: The Last Game
Chapter 1: Cuba
[The gym is packed.
We are down by one.
There are two seconds left on the clock.
We call our last time out.]
The boat is packed. Castro has taken over Cuba. There is one sister we must leave behind. We arrive in Miami.
After the Bay of Pigs, my father, Manuel Antonio Suarez-Carreno, decided to get his family out of the country; no small task since he had 14 children. His motto was "God, family, country."
I was five years old and it was a Saturday. My sister, Maria, and I had decided to walk to Villanova University across the street from our house to use one of those new fancy coke machines that had just arrived from the United States. A coke was only 5 cents. On the way home, we encounted some militia men with beards and guns. We ran home crying only to find my father and older sisters flushing anti-Castro propaganda down the toilet and burning more stuff in the fire pit in our back yard. Castro had led the revolution against Batista's military dictatorship but once in power Castro turned to Russia for money and arms and in returned declared himself a communist.
That afternoon they came to our house and took my father away to prison. For what crime? For political reasons. A dictator's way to take over a country is to start by putting all its leaders in jail. They also took three of my older sisters.
My mother, Eloise Suarez-Gaston, was pregnant with her 15th child. She had a miscarriage and was very weak. They let my father take a twelve hour leave to visit her in the hospital. While out, he eluded his guards and escaped to America in a meat boat. When the border patrol searched the boat, he hid in a freezer. Dead or alive, he thought he would never see his family again.
Once in the United States, my father began to plan our departure from Cuba. By bribing the Cuban officials and leaving two sugar mills, a farm, and beautiful house in Havana, and through the intercession of the wife of the Brazilian Ambassador to Cuba, they allowed my mother, the six youngest children ages 4-12 and some older sisters to board a ferry to Miami. Twice we were told to go down to the docks. Thousands of people were all trying to get on the boat. Both times we walked back home disappointed. The third time we got on. Freedom!!
We arrived in this country with nothing except the clothes on our backs. Through the generosity of many Cuban friends who had fled the country before Castro's take-over, we were housed in many different homes.
I'll never forget being invited to eat dinner and my older brother saying no thanks because he was too proud to accept a handout. I remember starving. My mom called me "pollo flaco" (skinny chicken). That is why to this day, I can not throw away good food, and I get nervous when there is no food in the refrigerator.
Chapter 2: Coming to America
My father was able to find work in Washington D.C. working for Catholic University as an engineering professor. He earned his B.S. at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. We moved into a two bedroom apartment just outside the D.C. city line. At this time there were only eight children living at home. The two oldest children were at a convent and seminary. Three were staying with family friends in other parts of the country and one was still in Cuba, not allowed to leave because of her political views. We had five boys in one room and three girls in the other. My parents slept in the living room using a fold out bed. We had one bathroom. Many times I had to piss in the kitchen sink because one of the sisters was using the bathroom and I could not hold it any longer. The management only allowed two children per apartment so we had to share the pass for the swimming pool. Two would enter and then pass the card through the fence to the next pair.
This is where I had my first accident. I borrowed a bike from a friend. I did not know how to ride yet, so I started at the top of the hill on a street. Sure enough, I landed in a ambulance being rushed to the hospital. I still have a scar on my face from that and the doctor had to skin-graft some skin onto my knee. This was to be the first of many trips to the hospital. My nick name was changing from "pollo flaco" to "wild pony".
The first day of school, St. John's, my dad dropped me off on the way to work. I did not know any English so I sat on the school steps and watched. The very first thing the nuns did was to tell me to spit out my gum. I knew I wasn't going to like school. I memorized the route from school to home. And I ran away from school many times that first year. The nuns would send the patrol boys after me but I out ran them home. By the time they showed up at the door, my mom would say, leave him alone; he doesn't have to go to school if he doesn't want to. Even though I was only five, I had to attend 1st grade because the school did not have a kindergarten, plus I knew no English.
At Easter the older students hid eggs and baby chickens around the campus. The first graders were allowed to hunt for them. I found over 20 eggs and 3 chicks. The nuns told me I had to share with the cry babies that found none. I did not like this concept and ran home. By now my older brothers had joined me at St. John's. So now rather then the patrol boys, they would send my brothers after me. I beat them home too. My brothers got smart after a while and pretended to follow me home but they would just tell the nuns that my mother told them I could stay home.
At the end of the school year, I was so excited because at graduation I got a "2" thinking I was going onto 2nd grade. But all it meant was level 2 of 1st grade. There were three levels of each grade.
Things got better when my father bought our first house in Hysteville, Md. It had five bedroom and a real neighborhood. After two years in first grade, I started 2nd grade at Lady of Sorrows. A much nicer school and my little brother Fred joined me.
One day we were suppose to memorize the Our Father and I told the teacher I knew it but I did not. We were told to go outside in the hallway and one by one to recite it for the class. I prayed so hard that something would happen. The girl in front of me puked and I was saved. That was my first lesson in the power of prayer.
I got into my first real fight. I had the boy in a headlock. The teacher pulled me off and when I looked at the boy his face was completely blue. I prayed very hard and promised never to fight again. I have always been able to talk myself out of fights since then, except for a few exceptions.
[ I had coached this team well. We knew how to play hard. Any player that ever threw a punch knew that he would not play for me. I looked into their eyes and they were all waiting for the last great play. They knew I had one and that it would work. I looked around and caught the other team huddled around their coach. I caught the eye of the score keeper. I knew that he would give me a few extra seconds during this time out. I could trust him to know the rules and not to start the clock until the ball touched my player's hand. I saw the Headmaster and Athletic Director standing behind the bench smiling. They also knew I had a play. They had watched me grow and mature over the years. The losing years as well as the winning years. Sometimes I loved and enjoyed the losing teams more than the winning teams. Those players needed me more.]
In 5th grade, I fought my best friend Richard Strong by a creek over a neighborhood girl named Beverly Holmes . She was the first one to tell me girls had three holes and I argued with her that I had eight older sisters and they only had two holes. Today, I have forty-eight nephews and nieces to prove me wrong. She wanted to marry me but I told her I couldn't because I was Catholic and she was only a Christian. Well I threw him into the water three times and he would not quit. Beverly walked away with Richard consoling him and I stood there triumphantly but with no girl. Again I learned fighting was not the right way. Win or lose.
In 9th grade, I again fought my best friend Sam Blick. Actually we were boxing with gloves. Every year we had an arm wrestling contest in front of all our friends and I would beat him. So we were boxing for fun and he caught me with a rabbit punch on the back of the neck. I don't remember much after that except my other friends told me that Sam hit me two or three extra times as I was falling to the ground. Twenty years later Sam and I are still good friends and he invites me to see Orlando Magic basketball games and I invite him to see the Tampa Bay Bucs football games.
Chapter 3: The American Dream
While in the 2nd grade, my older brother won a Pepsi-Cola contest. He guessed correctly the number of beans in a jar at a Co-Op Super Market. We won 15 minutes of free shopping. The 10 brothers and sisters (4 were not in the D.C. area at the time) and my parents grabbed $11,000 worth of groceries in 15 minutes. In 1995 money that is close to $60,000. We gave the groceries back to the store and took the check. My dad bought a new house in the Virginia suburbs called McLean. We were now into the full American dream.
Our house was always open. There would be several neighborhood kids walking through. My dad came home from work one night and saw three kids watching T.V. in our living-room. He declared, "Are you my children? I don't remember you. What are your names?" They said that their parents did not allow them to watch T.V. at their house. Only guests were allowed in their living-rooms. Like always he let them stay.
The milkman would come twice a week and walk right into our home. He would make room in the refrigerator and load it up with milk. My little brother Fred and I would sneak into his truck and take a box of donuts while he was in our house delivering. The dry cleaner man would walk into our house and take the clothes out of our living room closet and deposit the clean clothes with the receipt of course. Our front and back doors were always open. I have the best memories living in McLean, Virginia. The neighborhood kids would play kick-the-can and multiply tag.
We had a Suarez tradition of the neighborhood paper route for the Washington Post. It started with Xavier and quickly got passed down to Charlie, Mel, me and lastly Fred. Our neighborhood had plenty of federal government workers including the Pentagon and these men wanted their paper no later that 5:30 a.m.. Tough time for teenage kids who normally went to bed at 11 or 12 a.m..
One time Mel was out of town and forgot to ask someone to deliver the papers, He called me and did not know the houses so he said just drop one off at every other house and you will be about 50% correct.
[ Having played basketball all my life and gone to camps all up and down the east coast, I know that 50 % of close games won on the last shot result from a rebounded missed shot. I quickly flashbacked to N.C. State winning the NCAA national championship title on a rebounded last shot in the early 1980's and coach Jim Valvano running up and down the court looking for a player to hug.
I had drilled that concept into my players since preseason. The key was to get the inside position which the opponents would let you have since they did not want you to post them up inside. The second thing to remember was to shoot the ball with 3 or 2 seconds left on the clock so that the rebound and put back would count.]
Many times we would oversleep and wake up late and get everyone's help in delivering the papers quickly. Once in a while the papers got wet. By this time the customers knew our family and our phone number. My mother was drying the papers everywhere possible. She told one of the customers, "the paper in the oven is almost done. We'll get it to you very soon."
One Christmas it snowed so hard that the paper truck could not get through. So we had to deliver three days worth at the same time. My short sister and godmother, Margarita, walked into a snow drift and disappeared. All we could hear were cries for help and finally saw a waving hand.
[ When I first came to Berkeley, I was concerned by the physical fitness of our players. they looked like they had watched too much T.V. and read books all summer. The second head coach at Berkeley since I arrived and my close friend, Steve Kitchens, and I decided that as soon as school started these poor boys were going to have to hit the weights and track. The only way to win in December was to get ready in September. Of course our second goal for the following year was summer camps. I could see that this pre-season conditioning had helped our team because the starters looked fresh and ready to win.
Rebounding was always my special talent. When I was playing in college, we had two seven-footers on the team but I always got more rebounds then they. When I played in the D.C. playgrounds, the players would say, "hey, you jump like one of the brothers!" To this day I am convinced that my jumping abilities came from three years of carrying the Washington Post. On Sundays one paper weight about five pounds. I would carry about 20 at a time. Any child that does that in their growing years will jump out of the gym. I had taught that to my players and made them do daily toe raises before practice.]
I had two very close friends: Richard Strong who is now a forest ranger in Utah and Vinny D'Agostino who still lives in D.C.. We would play a board game RISK non-stop for 48 hours. We were always organizing games like capture the flag and flag football. Richard was into chemistry. He was stirring sugar and warming it up until it becomes an explosive. Sure enough we heard a big bang. Richard came in with his glasses all crooked and shirt with burn holes. That was a sight. He also made lead pipe bombs that were very dangerous.
One night my friends dared me to throw a 10 cent water balloon at a car. There was the normal 15 to 20 kids standing around. I threw a beautiful shot and hit the car right on the front windshield. The car swerved and barely missed a telephone pole. Everyone took off running.
The man got out and started chasing the tall skinny boy, me. I had so much adrenaline that I jumped and cleared the neighborhood fence in one jump. I heard a man give out a high screech and I turned around and saw that he did not clear the fence. He had, in fact, only gotten one leg over the fence and landed on what we call his "gogones." Of course by the time I got home the man was in my living room with my dad waiting for me. I always got caught, everyone knew the tall skinny Cuban.
Another time we were all mad at this man who had twisted my brother's hand behind his back because we had cut through his yard on the way to the ball fields. Everyone knew we were going to get him back. The normal gang of 15 or 20 kids were watching my brother Mel light a M-80 (1/4 stick of dynamite). Mel could not do it by himself so I went up to help. I held the M-80 while he lit it. It started and I asked, "So what I do with it?" He said, "throw it!" I threw it onto the front porch. Everyone ran for their life. A small group stuck together. Nothing. A dud. All of a sudden, BANG! Louder than you could image. We were all amazed. The man came out his house and had a shotgun. He got in his car and came after us. We ran like hell across a field scared to death and we could see his headlights go up in the air as his car jumped the curb. We knew we were in trouble. Everyone split up in different directions. My younger brother Fred got tired and hid behind a wall by the school. Mel and I took off and got away. We waited an hour before going home. Sure enough when we got there, there was the man with Fred and our dad. We were caught again.
Apparently the man had caught Fred and put him in the car and told him we were all going to jail. Fred sang like a canary. We had to buy the man a new front door and paint his entrance way. But it was worth it. I always thank God that no one was standing behind that door because they would have gotten seriously hurt from the flying splinters.
I had many jobs while growing up. Cutting lawns in the neighborhood, washing cars, working for rich families who lived near Robert Kennedy, and working at gas stations. I was working at one in McLean and the favorite trick was to give truck drivers wrong directions. We would get them on the off ramp to Dullas Airport. Once on this ramp it was 10-15 miles there and another 10-15 miles back. One day a truck driver came back and had a crow bar in his hand. The worker who gave him the wrong directions hid in the bathroom. We buzzed for the police. The driver saw the man run into the bathroom and followed him. He started banging the door down with the crow bar. Thank God the police got there in time. When we finally opened the door this poor man was drenched in sweat and had gone to the bathroom in his pants. We all learned a valuable lesson that day.
I got my friend Vinny D'Agostino a job at this same gas station. One day Vinny came to work on his dirt bike. He was popping wheelies and showing off. We were all sitting in the waiting room that had glass walls so you could see the cars drive up, Vinny came right at us and popped a wheely. Unfortunately the bike slipped on an oil spot and came crashing into that waiting room. We all dove for the door. There was glass flying and the motorcycle rotating out of control on the floor knocking over chairs and a coffee table. After Vinny got stitched up, we spent the entire night watching over the station until the glass wall could be replaced.
(I will need to come back here to put in more stories. Bill Hamm's gas station.)
One time a customer asked me where my head was. I pointed to my head and said, "right here, sir." He said, "no, your head!" I said, "I think it's right here." He said, "no, your shit hole." (Head was a military term for bathroom.)
I once pumped 20 gallons of gas into a man's car that had only a 15 gallon capacity. The man accused me of stealing 5 gallons and trying to charge him. The manager could not figure it out. He asked the customer to open the trunk of his car. Sure enough five gallons spilled into the trunk. This was a very important lesson. No matter how things look, there might be a good explanation.
[ I always found out in coaching that the players always had a good idea when they did something stupid on the court. Like calling a time out at the end of first half to set a last second shot. They had seen that on T.V. where the NBA have many time outs to burn. Not so in high school. You save the time outs for the very end of the game. They showed they had learn this lesson because we had saved that last time out to set up this last play.]
I worked at a 24 hour station and one night a man in a nice tux came walking up and asked for gas. I told him that our five gallon container had not been returned. He pulled a plastic gallon jug out of the trash and said fill this up. I said the law does not allow us to pour gas into a plastic container. He pulled out a little gun. I said I have to go ask the manager (no one was there except me). I went into the office, locked the door, pressed the police button, and I got under the desk and prayed it was bullet proof. I do not remember hearing the sirens but the next thing I know the cops are at my door and asking me to come out. They asked why I had pressed the button and I told them about the man in a tux with a gun. They found him and brought him back and wanted me to press charges. I would not because I knew he was just desperate after walking several miles. The police did charge him with concealed weapon.
There are a lot of great memories about the McLean house. We use to play "wolf". My brother Charlie would blindfold himself and we had to tie our shoes together and hop around. All the lights would be turned off and the wolf would try to capture you. If you got caught, you would have to go to jail, the bathroom. We would have great jail breaks and trample Charlie as we hopped down the hallway. One time Mel was on top of these shelves and the entire structure collapsed. No one stopped playing, we all just hopped around the mess.
My dad liked to work on cars. One year Mel took a car apart and left for college before putting it back together. The downstairs playroom had a million parts all spread out. I spent the fall trying to help my dad put the car back together. Another time a transformer exploded on the electric telephone poles. Our neighbor came running over because he thought the car had blown up on dad. My dad would smoke a cigar while working on the cars. One time the engine caught on fire. He was trying to put it out with a blanket and that caught on fire. I ran in the house an grabbed a box of detergent and pour it all over the place. I thought I had saved the day only to get yelled at for putting soap all over the engine.
We had motorcycles. Fred and I once took Xavier's bike without his permission. We were riding it all over the fields. The next thing I knew we were airborn. Fred went flying and landed on his butt. I stayed with the bike and racked my balls. I learned another important lesson about checking out the terrain before riding all over it.
[ I have watched many films of basketball games. I'm always especially intrigued about last seconds games won on the last shot. I always knew that some day this homework would pay off in a real situation.]
One time I was riding another bike and I got pulled over. The officer was really nice until he realized that I had broken many laws including: too young to have a driver's license, we had painted 1968 over the 1966 year on the license plate, I was speeding, the inspection sticker of course was expired, I had no helmet on, and the list goes on. I've always said that I was lucky we were in the suburbs because the police officers would always just take us home rather than book us.
Chapter 4: St. Anselm's Abbey School
Our family was split into two generations. The top consisted of 7 girls and 1 boy. The boy, George, being the second oldest over-all. The second generation was made up of 5 boys and 1 girl. Xavier was the oldest and Maria was the only girl. When the militia men took over our house in Cuba, they put my Dad and older sisters in jail. They let Xavier with the bottom six stay at home. Xavier became our leader. (Today he is Mayor of Miami.) When we came to this country, we had no money and the monks at St. Anselm's Abbey allowed Xavier and Charlie to attend for free.
Basketball was in Xavier's blood. My father had played ball at Belen High School in Havana and he and his brother Patrick were the stars on the team. They even traveled to the U.S. to play tournaments in Florida. Well Xavier and Charlie played all the time. I started playing at the playgrounds when I was in the 5th grade. My sister Maria also played a lot. She was the best player on her 7 & 8th grade team at St. Lukes. Back then girls' basketball had six players (2 defenders, 2 forwards, and 2 rovers). The two rovers were the only players who could go full court. Girls were only allowed to dribble the ball three times and then had to pass. This was the first time I got mad because I felt the girls should play the same rules as the boys. It took the country another ten years to come to the same conclusion. At this time my sister beat me all the time playing one-on-one. But she taught me too well.
I didn't see many of my older brother's games because St. Anselm's was 30 miles away from home and they played mostly at night. But the game I'll never forget was the finals of the St. Anselm's tournament against Georgetown Prep. Xavier controlled the game with his dribble and hustle and Charlie scored with his beautiful jump shot. I remember the score was tied with seconds to go. Xavier stole the ball and went the length of the court to win the game on a layup. The crowd went wild and stormed the players. I knew then that I would love this game.
I was later told by several people that this was a big upset because Georgetown Prep was a big school with many great athletes including Coach Dwyer's son Bobby who would later play ball for Wake Forest University. St. Anselm's was a very small school with only 20 boys graduating each year. I was told that the coach was the best in the D.C. area. His name was coach Robert Dwyer. He had coached at Bishop Carroll and had a 55 game winning streak and a national ranking with players like John Thompson (6'11") and Tom Hoover (6'9"). But coach had suffered a heart attack and the doctors said he could not handle big time stress anymore. The Headmaster, Father Hughes at St. Anselm's convinced him that St. Anselm's was definitely small time ball.
After Charlie graduated, I was accepted into the 7th grade at St. Anselm's. My brother Mel was also accepted into the 11th grade. You might say we took over Xavier's and Charlie's free rides.
Xavier had gone onto Villanova University in Pennsylvania where he tried out for the team three years. But the Villanova team went to the NCAA finals with players named Howard Porter and Chris Ford (Chris is now the coach of the Boston Celtics). Villanova also had all-americans Mike Siane in football and Marty Laquori in track.
Charlie went to UVA (Virginia) and made the freshman team. The dean of architecture school told him he had to decide between his career or basketball. Charlie chose his career.
Mel started on the varsity. I started on the 8th grade team. This was the time I started playing real ball. My older brothers would take me along to different playgrounds all over DC. Some of our favorites were Chevy Chase and Candy Cane park.
In the 8th grade, I played on the 8th grade team and the freshman team. Sometimes I had two games on Saturdays and then we would head to the playgrounds for some nighttime ball. I grew two inches each year 5'8", 5'10" and then six feet. My pants were always too short. I even played in a couple of J.V. games. I have my first newspaper clipping where I scored 18 pts. for the J.V. when I was in 8th grade. I used to love those special occasions when Coach Dwyer would invite me to practice with the varsity. These were the only times I got to play with one of my older brothers, Mel. Usually it was during the Christmas vacation and they were short of players.
I remember it would snow and Mel would call up the school and say we could not go to school because the roads were too icy. But we would be there for practice. The monks would walk into the gym and see us and just shake their heads. We would explain that by noon the ice had melted.
I used to love playing during lunch time. Our gym was a little walk away from the school. We would eat while walking and play everyday. Then run back to class all sweaty.
At St.Anselm's they paddled the boys who didn't follow the rules, usually four wacks. In the 8th grade I broke the school record with 100 wacks. My friends all bought me ice cream for that accomplishment. Most of them came from Fr. Michael, the assistant principal, who we called "Mickey Mouse". My freshman year when I got in trouble I looked DOWN at Fr. Michael and said, "We're not going to paddle any more are we?" Our class started out with 40 kids but we only graduated 22. My freshman year many of my friends did not return. Some for behavioral problems, others went to high schools in their neighborhoods, and some could not afford the tuition. This was my first taste of the weeding out process in America. Now I know that I only survived because of my older brothers reputation and Coach Dwyer's influence. The monks just prayed I would grow up soon.
[ I thought I had a good system of discipline for the team. Whenever a player misbehaved I would assign laps unless the player could hit two free throws. All of a sudden some of the more active kids on the team would be practicing their free throws so as not to have to run laps. This helped because it was usually these same aggressive players that I had to play at the end of the games to steal the ball and put on a full court press. In turn they would get fouled and like all my players know close games are won and lost on the free throw line. In this game we had just made a couple of one-and-ones to keep the score so close.]
Since we lived in McLean, Virginia and St.Anselm's was in N.E., D.C., I had about a 45 to 60 minute drive each way to school and home. My first two years (7th & 8th) my brother Mel was a junior and then a senior. We would weave our way to school stopping at different houses picking up students usually filling up the car to its capacity of six passengers. It was an American Motors Rambler. It had a General Motors engine and a Chrysler transmission. Where it got it's other parts no one knew. By this time the autometer was reaching 150,000 miles, it was a challenge for the auto parts guy to try to get us the right parts when they needed replacing.
Our daily adventures included seeing how little gas the tank could have and us still make it to school. Mel was not very good at this and we would run out at least once a week. Mel would put in about $2.00 at a time. Back then that would buy six gallons. But the Rambler only got about 10 mpg and the round-trip to school was about 60 miles. So when we ran out gas on the Beltway (interstate highway circling D.C.) being the youngest, I would have to climb over the highway fence and start asking people in the nearby houses for gas. Since it was still early in the morning, I would encounter all sorts of different ladies in different stages of undress. Now these ladies living near the highway and being home by themselves had been warned by their husbands to never talk to strangers especially if they claim to be out of gas. GREAT. Even though I was only 13 or 14 at 5'10" I guess I was scary enough. These ladies would scream and say they were calling the cops. After a while I got good at starting my conversation by saying, "Please don't scream and please don't call the cops, I just want a little gas so that I can get my sick mother to the doctor's office." I also learned to put on my school coat and straighten my school tie. Sometimes Mel would be arguing with the various car poolers about politics or sports and we would run through a red light. I always had a map handy for all the times we got lost.
[ I had a great play for the end of the game. I knew it and the players knew it. I thought back on my experiences as a child because they had taught me the valuable lesson on being prepared and problem solving.
I had talked to the refs and they had called a good game. In fact they had given our team a couple of calls because they knew I loved defense and taught my players to take charges. Many refs would just blow the whistle and make the call against the defense player only because they saw bodies falling and didn't understand the beauty of a charge.
The refs also knew I loved boxing out and had allow us to get away with excess boxing out. Some refs who didn't understand this would think the defensive player was using their butt to push off the offensive player. They had actually called a couple of over the back calls on the other team, when it could have gone either way. This would help my final play and maybe win the game for us.
The refs also knew that we were the underdogs in the game, and that we had played hard against a more talented team to keep it this close. I had worked before the game, during the game, and at half-time on the refs so that THEY would be prepared for these last seconds.]
Mel got into an accident (the ones that were reported) each of his first three years of driving. One of them was on a triple date where he ran out of gas (what else?). He left the station wagon in the middle of the road and another car came over the hill and sent it flying. Thank God no one was in the car at the time.
Towards the end of its life, the Rambler was popping head gaskets as fast as we could replace them. Once I had just pushed the car to get it going again, Mel did not want to stop to let me in so he kept on going down the highway. I did not want to be left behind so I ran and jumped on the back of the car and held on for my life. Mel was going about 35 mph to the nearest gas station with me on the back banging the back window begging to be let me in the car.
Another day on the way to school, we were stopped at a red light in front of one of these huge public schools. And the students were not allowed in, so there would be a huge crowd waiting at the locked front doors. It had snowed that night and the guys in the car pool were grabbing snow off the roof of our car and throwing it at people along our route. When we got to the stop light in front of this school, one of the dumber kids in the car threw a snow ball at the crowd. All of a sudden, we saw about 100 angry students running at us pounding the car with "ice balls." Mel floored the car as we took another red light.
One summer, Coach Dwyer had Mel and I deliver insurance forms to public schools all over Washington DC. This is the place where McDonalds have bullet proof glass and revolving doors to deliver the food to its customers. Sometimes we would park the station wagon half way between two schools. Mel would walk to one school and I to the other. Sure enough I had some black kids come after me. I threw the boxes into the air and ran as fast I could. I hid down some stairs next to some stores. The boys came around the corner and were looking for me. I was all crunched down trebling and full of sweat. I wanted to breath but I couldn't (they might hear me). I never forget as one of the boys looked down the stairs and we made eye-to-eye contact. He saw me but told the other boys lets go check over there. He saved my life. That is when I realized that many bad boys had good hearts but were afraid to show it.
As you can see Mel was very special to me. He was able to walk on his hands and ride bicycles backwards. It was sad to see him go off to college.
Now that Mel was gone, it was up to Mary to drive the carpool. In 9th & 10th grade, she would drop me off at Peter Hamm's house. Peter was a junior and then a senior and he had his own carpool. Things were not as exciting with this carpool. The car discussions on the way to school were much more serious in nature and I can't remember ever running out of gas. Maybe it was because Peter's brother owned a gas station and we never had to pay for gas.
My junior year, I hitchhiked to school. My Dad would drop me off on the way to work at the River Road and Beltway exit. I actually enjoyed this and got to meet a lot of interesting people. With my school uniform, I would get picked up frequently. The only thing I hated was the cold winters weather, Winters would get very cold in D.C. while hitchhiking.
My senior year, I got a motorcycle and that was something my Dad was proud of me because I was the only son who ever asked permission to buy a motorcycle. Yes, I laid it down several times. But I only got a few scratches and bruises. I drove it to Villanova in Penn to visit Mel and I drove it to Five Starts basketball camp also in Penn. One time I stopped at a coffeeshop on I-95 and it was so cold I had two pairs of long underwear and two pairs of blue jeans. I had drank all this coffee so I had to go really bad. I was trying to get through all the zippers. The man next to me at the urinals said, "Did you lose something?"
I took my prize possession to college. Unfortunately I parked it on the beach in Jacksonville, Florida. I returned later that night and the waves were up against the bike. As I jumped down from the boardwalk and tried to walk my bike back to the exit ramp, the waves kept crashing down on me. Boy what a rookie I was! The bike did start eventually but it was never the same. The saltwater slowly killed it. I eventually traded it to another college student for his portable T.V..
(put in stories about my trips with the sisters around the country.)
My freshman year at St. Anselm's, I started on the varsity. I had grown 4 inches in the past year and was now 6'2". Coach Dwyer had sent me to Coach Bill Foster's (Duke U.) basketball camp in the Pocono Mountains in Penn. We would get skill instruction all day from the college coaches and play games all night. I was a waiter in order to earn my way through the camp. That first year was hard. I was a skinny little kid and I got pushed around by the high school kids. I even got 10 stitches above my eye from an elbow. But I remember Hall of Famer Adolf Rupp coaching my team because our coach was sick. Rupp was suppose to play every kid on the team during the game. Going into the 4th quarter, he addressed the bench, "Do you want to win the game or do you want to play?". We all yelled, "Win the game!" He said, "Ok then, let's put our five best players out there. I was one of those he chose (very much to the surprise of the older players). Someone had finally seen me box out, set picks, and rebound. I knew I would love this game.
[ I had 24 players come out for the team this year. I knew that I could not have successful practices with so many faces staring at me all the time for attention. Our school has a no-cut policy which I believe was not a good policy for varsity teams. By the time you are a junior or senior in high school if you want to play on a varsity team, you better be one of the top twelve players. If you are not, you need to look into another sport or another hobby.
I hate this part of coaching the most. But I was being paid to do the best I could with this team and some of these seniors needed to wake up before going off to college. So I would let them all practice during the first week. Two or three would drop out because of the running at the end of every practice. A few would realize that they were not going to see much playing time during the game. That would leave me with about 18 players. Most teams carry only 12 players. I would try to carry 15. So I would gather the bottom 8 players and explain to them that basketball required only 5 players. I usually played seven to eight players on a regular rotation. The next five players would play only if we were ahead by 20 points or down by 20 points. I would explain to them that they could still learn a lot in practice and that it was a good experience to be part of a team. But I wanted a commitment that they would stick out for the entire season and come to all the games. Eventually one or two would approach me and explain that they had to concentrate on their studies. I always encouraged them to try another sport. In soccer there are 11 players on the field and you need 22 for practice.
There were 15 players on the bench tonight. The five best were in the game and the other 10 were huddled around giving words of encouragement and happy to be part of a great group.]
At the beginning of my freshman year, Coach Dwyer started me in the first game. I was so excited but after the game the senior who had started the year before cornered me in the locker room and told me he was going to beat me up. He said the only reason I started was because I was the coach's pet, and the coach felt sorry for our family. That was one of the first times I felt I was different from the rest of the boys at St. Anselms. All the other players just stood there and said nothing. This is also when I learned I was going to have to do it on my own.
We had a pretty good year. Won more games then we lost. I mainly helped on defense and rebounding. Pete Hamm (future husband of Maria, my sister) and Jeff Crowne did most of the scoring.
The story goes that the tournament committee wanted to give me the Best Defensive player award for the tournament. But Coach Dwyer told them he did not want a freshman getting one of the major awards. I knew then that I did indeed deserve to be starting and later I would understand how Coach was looking out for my best interest.
[ Players never understood why I didn't tell them how great they play. I learned this early from the best. I would tell my players, "It is up to your parents to tell you how great you are. I am here to coach and teach you how to improve. If you want compliments, go to your teammates or the J.V. coach or the opposing players. They will all tell you how great you played. But who is going to show you where you can improve. Who is going to mold you into a team player so that the team can win." I've never seen one player beat a team of five (not even Michael Jordon the greatest player of all time). All the great coaches like John Wooden (UCLA), Dean Smith (North Carolina), and Coach K. (Duke) immediately told their superstars when they sat down all their mistakes. I don't believe practice makes perfect, but it does make better.
This team had learned that lesson well and we had made very few mistakes tonight.]
My sophomore year was the beginning of my hell on earth. I was now 6'2" and had put on about 20 lbs. All the playing during the summer camps and at playgrounds had toughened me up. Peter and Jeff were returning for their senior year and we were talking undefeated. Unfortunately in a preseason game I twisted my right knee. In those days you put ice on it, took some aspirin, rested a few days, and played again. A week later I tore it up again and worse. Coach Dwyer tried hard to tape it and I went to Catholic U. training room for rehab. A month later I tried to play and down I went again. This time I went to see a doctor. He said it was in real bad shape. He took pints of blood and fluids out of the knee. He said I tore up the cartilage and my ligaments. Everything else was stretched out. He said it needed to be operated on. I asked him to wait until after the season to operate.
So I got a chance to play in our annual St. Anselm's Tournament. I came off the bench the first night, but I started the next two nights. We won the whole thing. Jeff Crowne won MVP, Peter Hamm won Best Offensive Player, and I won Best Defensive Player. I had averaged 15 rebounds and 5 block shots a game. This would be one of the proudest moments of my life. The next day's Washington Post read, "Beware of Greeks bearing gift and St. Anselm's giving out invitations to its tournament."
That spring Dr. Levine cut open my knee. Two railroad tracks down the sides. Took the knee cap out and scraped all the residue off the backside. Cut out the cartilage and tried to repair the ligament. In 1972 this was a nasty operation. The doctor said I would not be able to play ball again. It took me 2 weeks before I could even walk. By then the rest of the muscles had gotten soft. I went to rehab three times a week. It hurt like hell. Everyone told me I was too soft.
My junior year we were without Jeff and Peter who had graduated. It was now time for others to pick up the scoring slack. Terry McCartin was the senior and a pure shooter. He would lead the way. David Pickering and Charlie Peters, our point guard, also did their share. We had a couple of guys Steve Kearney and Sam Blick that split time in the 5th spot. We won a lot of games this year but you could always sense that we were really getting ready for next year. My knee held up which was a big surprise. I had grown to 6'3" and put on some weight especially since I could not run as much while I re-habed the knee. We made it to the St. Anselm's finals against Georgetown Prep. Coach Dwyer had invited his ex-player friend who was doing college games to ref. I think his name was Jimmy Hal. Well the ref called walking on Terry 3 or 4 times during the game just as Terry released the ball on his shot. Taking Terry's scoring out of the game killed us. We were tied with 20 seconds on the clock and coach had told us to run the pass and pick away until either someone had a layup or time was running out. Anyway I thought time was running out and I took a jump shot from the top of the key and missed. Georgetown got the rebound with 3 seconds to go. They called a timeout and scored on the buzzer.
Many years later while sharing memories with the coach, he still brought up the missed shot and how important it was to have waited several more seconds. Of course, now I know how much better it would have been for me to be under the basket to collect the rebound.
That summer would be one of the most important summers of my career. I had to get into college shape. I was in a D.C. all-star league where I played against some of the best players in the U.S.. My older brother Xavier said he realized then that I had a chance to play big time college ball.
I also visited Georgetown U. where John Thompson was building a program. Every once in a while I played against the Washingotn Redskins football team including: Larry Brown, Roy Jefferson and Charlie Taylor. They played very rough and I learned to play rough. I also played at the U. of Maryland and some of their players, including John Lucus now NBA coach.
Then Dwyer sent me to Five Star Camp outside of New York. There would be 250 college coaches there. I drove my motorcycle a day early ands selected the biggest bed in my cabin. Each time I returned to the cabin, my stuff would be taken off and replaced with someone else's stuff. I would have to take their stuff off and put mine back on. All of a sudden a big man came through the door. It was Moses Malone. He said the other beds were too small for him. I said tough I was there first. I helped him set up a little table at the end of his bed so his legs would not hang over the edge. Our cabin housed the waiters. The best players in the camp who were attending for free but waited on tables to pay their way. Moses had a point guard from his high school St. Petersberg, Virginia. His name was Noah (no kidding). Noah and I became good friends. He was married, had two kids, and worked at a luggage factory.
What a camp ! This was much different then Bill Foster's Pocono Mts. camp. Here we played games all day and hundreds of coaches watched us. Unfortunately my knee could not take the pounding of the asphalt courts. By the second day I was through. Ice wouldn't help. I did get a chance to see the top 100 players from the northeast play. Many I would see later in college box scores.
This summer I also went to the Pocono Camp. The competition wasn't as great except for the counselors' games at night. Jim Valvano showed up with a stuffed rat on a skate board. He gave me a "gym rat" t-shirt because he caught a bunch of us playing ball at midnight when we were supposed to be sleeping.
[ One of the reason that Berkeley could never compete with Jesuit or Tampa Catholic is because they were all gym rats. You could walk into the gym anytime, anyday and there would be a game going on. Most of the players played in one or two leagues during the summer. Even after graduating they had an alumni league. Games between Jesuit and TC were so intense that the game had to be moved to HCC the local community college.
I tried to instill the gym rat mentality in our players and the top six had played at Berkeley in the summer league for the past four years. Even though we had still lost to Jesuit and TC during the season, we had at least played them tough and it had helped for tonight's game. We were not yet gym rats but at least we knew where the gym was. I must admit I felt a certain pride when some of our boys had gotten into trouble with the Dean when they were caught shooting free throws during their study hall the day of an important game. Of course I told them never to do that again.]
Senior year I was on cloud nine. I was now the team captain. Basketball finally got serious. I felt we could and should win every game on our schedule. Our first disappointment came early when we lost to St. Stephen's in their Christmas tournament. I spent most of the game on the bench in foul trouble. I also got a technical for telling the ref that he was trying to win the game for the home team. Dwyer was not pleased with me and did not start me for the 2nd half.
[ The proudest accomplishment for this team was that we had not been hit with a technical foul all year. Several refs had conveyed to me that the association was very impressed and that many were requesting to call Berkeley games. This had worked to our advantage all year because whenever I would question a call they would respect it and keep an eye open to make up for it.
I especially taught my players to help opposing players off the floor when they fell. I actually saw some fouls that should have been a charge called a defensive foul because we had help the opposing player on the foul before.]
The next big test came against Towson Catholic of Baltimore. They were an all black team with a couple of 6' 7" players. By now I was getting letters from many colleges. This was before the NCAA in the 1980's started putting in all the rules on recruiting. For this game no less than 4 or 5 college coaches were going to be there. Duke had called and talked to Dwyer.
I had the game of my life. By half time, I had 15 pts. and 12 rebounds, and we were ahead by 8 or 10 pts. The other team looked in shock. The next day's Washington Post read, "Towson Catholic was zoned, zapped, and Manually Suarezed." My brother Xavier called from Boston to tell me that I was on the front page of the sports section of the Washington Post. He could not believe it. I remember getting letters from Holly Cross, Harvard, Assumption and Bentley (all Boston area schools) right after that game.
We won the game and after the game the Duke assistant coach told Dwyer that I wasn't aggressive enough. Coach could not believe what he heard. He told the recruiter, "Manny had a great game over 20 pts. and almost as many rebounds." The guy from Duke said, "Oh, I must have of been watching the wrong guy." Indeed he was watching (#55) 6' 8" junior Steve Castellon who was quiet and timid. Steve would later set all the scoring records for St. Anselm's his senior year and play basketball for U. of Virginia.
Meanwhile the coach from Jacksonville University was in town for a game. He had some time to kill and reading the Washington Post saw that there was a big game at St. Anthony's. This was the high school that John Thompson coached at and regularly ranked in the top ten in the nation. Well St. Anthony's is a couple of blocks away from St. Anselm's, the JU coach ended up at the wrong gym. He had heard that St. Anthony's was a small Catholic school and he saw some friends from other colleges in our gym, so he felt he was in the right place. He only strayed for the first half and reported back to his school that he had seen a nice ball player named Manny Suarez.
I started visiting schools. I had already told Georgetown that I wanted to leave D.C. area. I had visited Villanova several times but my two brothers and father had gone there and I also wanted to study accounting not engineering which is what I thought Villanova was all about. I wanted to be different, so I drove up to Bucknell in Penn with Sam Blick. Jim Valvano was coach and he treated us very nice. I got shoes and a complete warm-up outfit. He put us up at his own house and we ate like kings. The place was beautiful with snow on the grounds.
I came back telling Coach Dwyer that that was where I wanted to go. It was the perfect school and the coach really wanted me. I would have my own apartment and I could use the coach's car any time I wanted to go back home for a visit. Coach Dwyer said do not sign yet, visit a few more schools.
Next I visited St. Bonniventure in upstate New York. NBA Hall of Famer Bob Lanier had just graduated from there. Unfortunately I got snowed in for 3 days. The closest airport was at Buffalo, N.Y.. I knew I would not be coming to St. Bonnie. When I got back to St. Anselm's, I had a Calculus test waiting for me. It had a bunch of problems with "e" in them and I didn't even know what "e" was. I got a "2" out of 100 pts. Father Maurice (Bromo) was not too pleased. I had missed too many days of school. He let me take the test again which I passed.
I visited Assumption and Bentley in Boston. Every time I would come home saying I am ready to sign. Bentley was beautiful and had me interviewed after their game on T.V.. It was a strong business school and I would have a good chance to start as a freshman.
Then I got a letter from J.U.. I visited and fell in love with Florida. It was warm in March while there was snow in the north. People were already swimming in outside pools. They put me up at a beautiful hotel on the beach. I got first class treatment. I was even offered a date. I turned that down and went bowling instead (10 straight games). They gave me clothes, shoes and money for meals and entertainment but everything was already paid for. The players were all living in apartments and driving nice cars. I was in paradise. J.U. had just gotten to the NCAA finals with NBA Hall of Famer Artis Gilmore, and traveled first class all over the country. There was no J.U. football and no professional team in Jacksonville, so every where we went all you heard about was J.U.'s basketball. The school was small (2,000 students) and classrooms opened up to the outside with beautiful grass and trees.
The first time J.U. called to sign me, I was visiting my brother at Villanova, so they thought I was still looking for a school. The second time they called was during spring break, I was playing ball at Georgetown, and I hadn't had a chance to talk to Coach Dwyer who was out of town. My brother Xavier wanted me to consider Harvard. And I talked to their coach but they wanted me to study hard, work part time, and play ball. I would also have to get student loans. Not very appealing after my visits to other schools. My Dad helped during this time. He said it was my decision. I could be the Head of a mouse (Division II or III school) or the Tail of a lion (JU). I did sign with JU in my living room with my Dad watching. Later on I found out that that morning the coach was in New York offering this last scholarship to another player but the player turned JU down. Again fate determined my future.
[ What would I tell my senior players? Two of them had received some letters and had attended All-Star Camp just like me. They had to decide either to go to a Division III school and play ball (traveling by bus) or go to Division I (Ivy League) and get a high power education but never play for the team. I always told them the truth and that it was their decision. Playing college ball was the ultimate but they would never play pro ball. Education would be there for a lifetime (and there was always intramuals).
One alumni Yram Groff had gone to Amherst and became their second leading scorer of all time. He would never had traded his four years of Division III ball for anything. And now he is a doctor. Another alumni Rick Dreyer played freshman ball for Dartmouth but did not go any further although he was the captain of their golf team and won the northeast regional of the NCAA. He too is now a doctor. Our third best player at Berkeley since I started coaching there, Kris Kaliebe played freshman football for Columbia but never basketball. He is now a doctor. Another top scorer Russ Lowrey went to SMU in Texas and is a doctor now too.
As I looked behind the bench, I could see a couple of recruiters. They weren't coaches but they had no children playing in this game. Their notebooks, serious look and gray hair gave them away every time. I only wish I could talk to them to let them know about the great character of our players. I'd hope they had witnessed some of it during the game.]
A week after signing with JU, Coach Bill Foster called from Duke. He had just signed on as their coach and had remembered me from his Pocono Mts. Camp. I had to tell him I had already signed with JU. He wished me best of luck and to give him a call if I ever needed to talk. In the next several years, Bill Foster would take Duke to the NCAA final four. I followed that team very closely and several of the players went on to play in the NBA. I never regretted not going to Duke. I would have probably rode the bench.
That spring rather than play baseball for St. Anselm's, I spent all my time playing ball. JU sent me a newspaper clipping from the Jacksonville Times announcing my signing. They described me as 6'8" (I was 6'6") and 220 lbs. (I was 200 lbs.). They also said I averaged 20 pts. and 20 rebounds a game and played for a powerhouse program in DC. (I never knew anyone kept rebound statistics at St. Anselm's.) This was my first taste of college hype.
JU had made it to the final four on the NIT (This was when the NIT was still comparable to the NCAA). The New York TV market paid schools more than the NCAA. With UCLA winning the NCAA 10 times, the eastern schools considered the NCAA a west coast tournament. New York and Madison Square Gardens was the place to go. The lights, the city, the excitement, New York is where they played real basketball. JU player Henry Williams was the tournament's MVP the year before I arrived.
I got invited to several all-star games. One was at the brand new Capitol Center (now called the USA Air Arena). It was the Washington All-Stars vs. the USA All-Stars. When they introduced the USA team for the last player, they turned off all the lights and started a smoke machine. And they read Mose's Ten Commandments, "1. Thou shall not come into my zone, 2. Thou shall not rebound in my zone, etc." The coach looked at me and said, "You got him." It was 6'11" Moses Malone. I had bunked with him at the Five Star camp in NJ, so I was not scared. He had signed with nearby U. of Maryland coached by Left Driesel. But he would skip college and play for the NBA instead. After 22 years, he is still playing in the NBA. Needless to say, I could not stop Moses from scoring but on this all-star team Moses did not get the ball too often, unless he shoved me out of the way for a rebound when I was boxing him out.
After signing with JU, I must have been impossible to live with. Some of the monks did not want to let me graduate. I didn't care because all I needed was to pass a state test to get a high school diploma and still go to college. Thank goodness the Headmaster Father John (an ex-English Navy boxer) convinced the other fathers that I had put in a good 5 3/4 years and that the last 2 months should not jeopardize my life. I promised Fr. John that I would try to behave. Out of a class of 22 seniors, I graduated 22nd. Terry McCartin and Charlie Peters are now lawyers, Sam Blick is a doctor, and Steve Catellan is an engineer.
Chapter 5: Jacksonville University: the First Two Years
JU wrote me and said they wanted me to spend the summer in Jacksonville getting ready for the new season. All four freshman would be there. I was able to get the month of June off and reported after the 4th of July. Dad rented a U-haul mainly to take my motorcycle in the back. I didn't have much to take. When we got to JU, all my stuff smelled of gasoline (I should have drained the gas before the trip). In the summer heat, we were glad the whole U-haul did not blow up. After Dad drove away, I felt very alone. Like a rookie, I did not have soap or towels. I spent my first and last bit of money on toiletries. That night a girl came by my room and invited me to a party. I was too scared, I said no thanks.
The next day I met with the coach and he asked me how were things going. I said I was hungry. He took care of me after that. He also sent me to the shipyards for a summer job. When I got there the man said I was hired as a welder and wanted to know how many years of experience did I have. I said none. He sent me back to JU. The coach got mad at me because I wasn't really suppose to weld just earn welder's wages. Next I got sent to a Winn Dixie warehouse. There I was told to find George Scholt (JU ballplayer who is now the head coach at JU). The next two months were truly a learning experience for me. First I found out I was getting paid as much as some guys who had been working there for 20 years. The south had no unions and therefore no overtime pay. The other JU players working there did not work very much. They mostly watched TV or walked around like they were doing something. I worked and earned the respect of the workers there. Sometimes they even slept in the car or the manager's office. One senior player Henry Williams got his paycheck and he was in Phili the entire summer. I learned quickly not to ask questions. Every night we played ball and on the weekends there were boosters who took us out. We went to World Football games or sailing. I mostly bowled a lot, for free of course.
The coach told me I needed to write a check for the dorm room and food since I wasn't officially enrolled in any classes. But right after I wrote the check, he gave me cash to fly home for a week before school started.
Freshman Year
When school started all the freshman were running around crazy trying to register. I just went to the basketball office and they walked me into the registration room and took care of it. I got to meet the rest of the team. There were 3 other freshman and two junior college transfer. There were two Puerto Ricans on the team, Charlie Bermudez and Bobby Alvarez. My roommate was Marty Gross, a white point guard from South Dakota. He was very neat and organized. I was not. We had pre-season conditioning. One day we all road bikes to the beach. Most of the team made it to the McDonalds down the street. We lost the rest of the team halfway to the beach at TGIF (Fridays). The four freshman (Ronnie Williams, Ricky Head, Anthony "Cricket" Williams, and myself) and the senior captain Henry Williams made it all the way.
The school snack bar was suppose to give us an allowance for late night snacks but the coach had forgotten to give them the list. So a couple of guys said they were going shopping for food. I chipped in $5 to the cause. I was surprised when they returned with 3 or 4 grocery bags full with food and they returned $4 back to me. They had only paid for the bread. Damn Shame!
The ex-coach, Joe Williams, had been let go because the NCAA was investigating JU. Two years before I arrived, Coach Williams had recruited the best four freshman in the northeast. They were all living off campus. They all had their own cars. Some were married and had children. The NCAA agreed not to punish JU if Coach Williams left and all the players moved back on campus. JU hired Coach Gottlieb to clean up the program. I could tell the six new recruits were all clean players.
But a couple of the starters started taking money from professional agents and some NBA scouts told them they could play European ball and then get drafted by the NBA. So Henry Williams and another player cashed their agents checks at the school's bank. They were gone! Henry was eventually drafted by Utah and Shawn by Phili. But neither of them made it. That opened up two starting positions on the team.
Then two weeks before our opener another starter Marvin Lloyd broke his wrist. All of a sudden I found myself starting. I could not believe it. It was a miracle. We started Carlos 6'7" and myself 6'6" inside. Bobby Alvarez also started and we were called the "EZ" brothers. The rednecks in town were not too pleased. They did not like the blacks either but at least they were American.
Well I took my first college shot from the corner. At the coliseum it is hard to see the rim. All you see is a sea of faces. Sure enough it was an air ball. Marvin Lloyd came back and I did not start anymore but I got good playing time subbing for Carlos and Marvin.
I received another learning lesson when we travelled through the airport on route to our Christmas tournaments, the players would walk into the gift shops and come out with jewlery and sun glasses. Of course none of it paid for. They would explain to me that that was the only way they could get Christmas presents for their Moms and families.
I've always been a big proponent that college players should be given loans just like any college student. If the banks are stupid enough to loan it to them, then that's their problem. Of course the NCAA would have to put a cap on it like $2,000 a year. A $8,000 loan is nothing for a college graduate. I say it is unfair to throw a poor boy into a private university and expect him to take girls out or entertain himself.
Another time one of the players was arrested in his dorm room. They found three TV's, four stereo systems and a drawer full of watches and jewelry. He just told me before he flew home that he was always brought up that if someone has something you want, you take it.
That spring I dated a girl who liked to swim. I had already decided to take some spring classes so that I could graduate in four years. Since we practiced and traveled all the time, we could not take a full load. Well I swam miles that spring. It was the best thing for my knees. I finally ended up swimming an entire mile ( 50 ft. a lap times 105 laps). It took forever.
That summer I went back to DC and worked at a gas station (graveyard shift). This was great because I could play ball all day at different gyms and playgrounds. I came back my sophomore year in the best shape of my life. I was no longer a fluke recruit riding the bench. I was the 6th or 7th man as a freshman and now fighting for a starting position.
Sophomore Year
Again luck came my way. Bobby Alverez's knee got worse and he did not return. Carlos Bermudez graduated, as did Ricky Coleman and Jimmy Clark. Coach Gottlieb brought in some new recruits but they were not too solid. Not making a post season tournament and all the players having to live on campus rather than apartments did not help recruiting.
[ One thing I always remember when talking to young players who were thinking about Berkeley is that we could not promise post season state championships, but something more important, the best education in Tampa and maybe Florida.
As I looked down the bench, I could see that our seniors were going to Dartmouth, Princeton, Washington U. in St. Louis and Notre Dame. Every year when the players returned to play ball, they would remind me of how successful Berkeley was in preparing these students for success not only in college but more importantly in life.
It was great teaching bright players. You only had to go over plays once or twice. They understood why we ran plays when we did. They knew this was only a game and play because it was fun. We liked to win but were not destroyed if we lost. We did not try to win at all cost and school work always had first priority.
It was easy to convince parents that Berkeley was the right school for their children. And the parents or players who did not see the value of a great education, we did not want on our team. These players would only worry about their own statistics and looking good for the college coaches. These players would not do their homework and not do well in their courses causing the team unnecessary distractions.
Yes, this was a bright group of young men and this last play would definitely work. They knew the play and why it would work. All I had to do was to refresh their memories.]
We started pre-season conditioning the second week back. Kent Glover and Marvin Lloyd took over the team. I made sure that I was always in the front two or three of every activity we did. We ran stairs, we ran golf courses, we ran everywhere and played ball all the other times. I ran in the school's Turkey Trutt the morning before our two-a-day practices. I came in sixth place. One day in practice, coach stopped the practice and asked the assistant coach who had the most rebounds. He said Manny has 24 rebounds and the next person has 6. I knew then that this was my year. Yes, I started. I ended up with the second most minutes played behind Kent Glover. I was second in rebounds behind Marvin Lloyd. And I was first in taking charges. We got paid $2 for each charge we took. I took so many that I had to have my tailbone operated on during the off season. I later found out that the other players were using the coach's credit card to shop. The most I got was my freshman year when the assistant coach asked my roommate if I had more than one outfit to wear to functions. My roommate said no. The coach who was 6'5" let me choose some outfits from his closet.
We ended the year 18-11 and waiting for an NIT bid that we never got. Coach Gotlieb was let go. JU was used to post season tournaments.
Against U. of Wisconsin when I was taken out of the game, the radio announcer said I just got a standing ovation. What really happened was that Marty Gross, a point guard, got so excited about going into the game that when he pulled down his warm-ups, he pulled down his shorts and mooned the entire crowd. He made Sports Illustrated for the moon-shine award.
At this time an NBA team in Buffalo was thinking of relocation to Hollywood, Florida (just north of Miami). They sent me a letter saying they were interested in me because they wanted a Cuban on the team. They had seen me play in Buffalo against Niagara U. and liked my hustle. As it turned out they moved to Atlanta and no I never heard from them again.
This was the first year of the Sun Belt Conference. We played against UNC at Charlotte. I covered Cedric Cornbread Maxwell, who would later play for the Boston Celtics. I held him to 2 for 10 shooting in the 1st half. He was very mad. My strategy was to pick him up at half court and not let him catch the ball. He hated this and told me so with an elbow at the foul line during a free throw. I told him he was an All-American and would be drafted, so getting into a fight with me would not help his career. I don't think he ever had anyone explain all this to him in a logical manner during the game.
[ I have always taught my players that there is no need to throw punches. You could always logically talk your way out of any situation. No matter how mad the other coach would get during the game I would calmly explain to them the situation and try to resolve their anger. I always started out by saying, "You are probably right and you are obviously a good coach, but..."
I was especially proud of this group because they had been awarded the best sportsmanship team by the referee association. I had hoped they had learned this valuable lesson for life.]
In the second half, they setup plays where I would get picked two or three times to get Cornbread open. Once he got the ball, I could not stop him. He was the Sun Belt player of the year.
I used this same technique on the nation's leading scorer, McCurry, from Richmond U. and kept him down to under 10 touches for 8 pts. in the 1st half. He got into a shoving match with me in the 2nd half and the ref threw both of us out. Their coach said you can't do that he is our whole team. So the ref let him back into the game but not me. Damn shame! I didn't care because by that time we were ahead by 20 and I was exhausted.
I also used it against 7 foot Fesser Leonard of Furman. He ran over me at half court. The first time the ref didn't see it, no call. The second time the ref saw it and smiled at me. So I gave Fesser a good elbow in the back. He looked DOWN at me and I said I'm sorry (ready to run for my life). That game we had on a full court press and I was at the point. We stole the ball and went into overtime but I could not play in the overtime because I was completely exhausted. The trainer said I looked as white as a ghost and made me breath into a bag. The last game of the season I scored 18 pts..
Fate struck again. JU hired an assistant coach from Stetson, Coach Don Beasley. He had tried to get me to transfer to Stetson when we played them in Deland, Florida my sophomore year. He told me I would be a starter at Stetson and that if I was ever unhappy at JU to give him a call. When he arrived at JU, he told me he was going to make me into an All-American defensive player or at least All-America Scholastic Athlete (I had a 4.0 my freshman year and a 3.5 my sophomore year majoring in Accounting).
Chapter 6: JU: the Last Two Years
Junior Year
My junior year I returned knowing I was a starter and I was co-captain with Kent Glover. We were featured in Sports Illustrator for having the biggest starting five:
Kent Glover 6'2"
Manny Suarez 6'6"
James Ray 6'11"
Felton Young 7'0"
John Richardson 7'0"
I played the second guard and usually covered the other teams best player.
We started the year at Auburn. They had two All-Americans in Eddie Johnson (NBA player for 20 years, still playing in 1996) and Mike Mitchell (NBA player for 3 years). I actually have the film of this game. I covered Mike Mitchell. We spent weeks preparing for this game. I knew all of Mitchell's moves and kept him from catching the ball in the post. Three times I got back on defense to take charges on Auburn players. The last one was on Eddie Johnson. He plowed right over me putting his knee on my chest. I even hit the backboard stand. It was his 5th foul and he calmly walked over to his bench and got himself a drink and high fives from all his team-mates. We were down by 20 pts. and Eddie Johnson had about 30 pts. Our two seven footers were a bust. They did nothing. I got more rebounds then both of them. The freshman James Ray, who would later be player of the year in the Sun Belt Conference and play for the Denver Nuggets, was the only one having a good game.
We next traveled to California to play UCLA. This was the closest thing to heaven on earth for a college player. UCLA had won 10 NCAA championships. I had to cover Marques Johnson, national player of the year. We played in a zone defense. UCLA shot 60% from the field the first half. Marques Johnson and David Greenwood, also an NBA player, had a field day. We were down by 20 at half time.
[ I've always hated zone defense. It showed a weakness in a team. It signals to the other team that player for player you're a better team. Players get lazy and lose their concentration while playing zone. I always had my best offensive rebounding days against a zone. No one was responsible for boxing me out. When we played pick-up basketball on Saturdays, even in this non-structure setting, I do not allow teams to play zone defense.
However, I do teach the zone principle especially to help my players understand the zone-match-up defense (A kind of half man-to-man , half zone). There are rare cases when a team, because of foul trouble must resort to a zone to protect a player. But I have always felt that no one player is that important to sacrifice the other four players. I did have to use zone in the early years when we only had 2 or 3 players, but now we had 8 solid players who could all play excellent defense.
I always rewarded defense more that offense, and made a point of posting stats in support of our best defensive player. The captain of the team is usually the best defensive player.]
The second half, I covered Marques. He only scored 4 free throws on me. The ref told me that he could call a foul on me every time down the floor (The western leagues were always more softer than the eastern teams). I asked the ref how else do I stop the player of the year from scoring. He smiled and let me rough up Marques. The highlight of the game for me was when I drove around Marques and dunked the ball. This was the first year that dunks were allowed again. My brother , Xavier was watching the game on national TV (These were the years before cable and there were very few games televised. This was suppose to be the rematch of the 1970's finals when UCLA beat J.U. with 7'0" Artis Gilmore.) and jumped up so high that he hit his fist on the ceiling of his house. The next day's LA Times had a picture of me getting a rebound and a caption that said David Greenwood won't get this rebound away from a JU player. Marques was quoted as saying, "I don't know who was covering me tonight but he has done the best job ever."
One of my buddies back at JU had a $25 bet that we would not lose by more than 20. We were down by 25 with a few minutes to go, and he doubled or nothing that we would not lose by 30 pts. With 10 seconds to go and JU down by 28 pts., we missed a free throw and a UCLA player threw it from half court to win by 30 pts. Damn Shame !! My friend lost $50 and we were 0-2.
Aradillo, Texas and West Texas State was next. They only had a guard named Maurice Cheeks who ended up with 25 pts. and 20 assists. Another LOSS. Maurice has been playing in the NBA for 20 years and should make it into the NBA Hall of Fame.
Our final stop was U. of Colorado at Boulder. We were one tired team both physically and mentally. The high altitude didn't help either. Now we were 0-4. So much for the tallest team in the USA.
[ Many of my players could not understand why I didn't start our best five players. Of course their definition of "best" player versus mine was different. To them "best" is a scorer and a good one-on-one player. And society teaches them that, because we are always rewarding the top scorers. I've never seen a team with five top scorers win anything. The best example was the Phili team in the 70's when they had five of the top NBA scorers together. The saying use to be that the team needed 5 basketballs.
To me the "best" player is the one that can help us win. This changes from game to game, from quarter to quarter, and even from situation to situation. I think in the NBA the 6th man award is more important then the MVP. Very rarely do you read that the NCAA scoring champ is also on the team that won the NCAA tournament. The one exception to the rule is Michael Jordon. But even Michael has realized that many of the games the Bulls have lost are when Michael has scored over 40 pts.
A couple of years ago I had a player who lead the JV team in scoring for two years. But he did not start for me. He would repeatedly beat our starters playing one-on-one, and in one game scored 16 pts. in the last 6 minutes of the game. He was not a team player and didn't understand that sometimes not scoring was as good as scoring.
I now look at the five I had in the game and they were the five "best" players for this situation. They were all 80% or better from the free throw line. They were all hungry for the win. They had practice hard all year and had paid attention to my instructions. They had studied the game (Every game watched on TV or summer league is a learning experience. I would even look at JV players and note which players watched the varsity game and which screwed around with their gameboy or girl friends. ) and learned from other coaches at camps.
I had a play for these five, and I knew it would work.]
That night in Colorado my roommate and I went our and ended in Denver with a couple of dates we met at a discotheque. We woke up at 6 am and realized we were 90 miles away from Boulder and the team hotel. We were suppose to be in the lobby at 7 am to go to the airport. I think we drove 120 mph back to Boulder. When we got back to the hotel, the team was waiting for us. Of course we told the coach we went out to breakfast. The team trainer had packed our bags and put them in the lobby. When we got to the airport, the rent-a-car attendant asked us how much gas was in our car. The coaches said about 3/4 full. The attendant said one of the cars was empty. Damn Shame!
When we got to JU it was hard to get back to our studies. I was taking Intermediate Accounting (which is the most theoretical of all the accounting courses), and I had missed 2 weeks of classes. I was scared to go back to that class so I missed another week plus I had to catch up on all my other courses. I finally went to the class to drop it. The teacher had to sign a slip "withdraw passing" or "withdraw failing." I walked in and saw a man with a beard. I asked him where Dr. Balds was. He said, "I am Dr. Balds!" Damn Shame. He had grown a beard in 3 weeks. He signed it "withdraw passing" but then added, "I hope next time you go through college you get a real education." Yes that made me mad and more determined to pass his course next semester. His plan worked.
The next game was against Washington State. They had the leading scorer in the PAC 10 (UCLA's conference) and their coach , George Ravelling had tried to recruit me when he coached at a school back east. All week long we prepared. I studied the reports on their best player. Meanwhile the coach was getting drilled in the papers. A 0-4 start was not what had been predicted or expected.
Came game day and when I drove into the back parking lot of the coliseum, I asked the black security guard if he was expecting a big crowd? He said, "No, who wants to see four niggers and a spik play basketball." I said, " I am that spik." He was very sorry for saying that but I couldn't blame him because we were 0-4. That night I did not start. Another junior Randy Williams started in my place.
I sat there figuring it was ok. We were 0-4 and several other previous starters were also sitting with me. I knew once I got in the game I could show again why I should be starting. Not only did we lose in front of our home crowd, but I did not play at all. I was very disappointed.
Several days later, I went to the coach and asked him why I didn't start. He said we were 0-4 and he had to try something different. He actually said that he thought the chemistry between five black players might be better. (In 1970's this would still be ok to state.) I pressed further and asked why I did not get a chance to play. He said I wasn't rebounding enough. Then I began to lose it and declared, "I had 7 rebounds in the first game and I was second shortest starter. I was in the top two in rebounding for the first four games." Then he said my shot selection had been poor. I said, "What? I only took about five or six shots a game and most of them were lay-ups and the others I was wide open." I finally said, "Coach tell me the truth. What is going on?" He yelled back, "If it's between you or me losing their job, it's not going to be me!"
This was the coach who was going to make me a defensive All-American or at least academic All-American.
I left completely stunned. My whole basketball life came crushing down. I didn't know what to do so I went to the assistant coach. He sat me down and explained that while we were on the four game road trip the press had really laid it heavy on the coach. They were asking for his head. They wrote stories about how unprepared we were for Auburn. They wrote about how unorganized we were on the floor. That team members were fighting among themselves. Since I spent a lot of time with the media guys, the head coach figured I was giving them all the headlines. I tried to explain to the assistant coach how untrue that was. I idolized our coach and always praised him. The only reason I hung around the media guys was because they were white and I was the only one they would socialize with.
I never recovered from this situation. One day in practice we were running suicide sprints. The coaches were betting who would win. No one bet on me. Yes, I won to show them who had the biggest heart on the team. The assistant coach even showed me the scouting report me from the Auburn game (enclosed). It clearly told a different story then the head coach was telling.
The next couple of games I didn't get to play. I called my high school coach, Bob Dwyer. He suggested transferring. I thought about it but by now my heart was not into basketball.
After I returned from Christmas break things got worst. My hair got longer. I started drinking more:
Monday, it was Monday Night Football
Tuesday, it was Sink or Swim
Wednesday, it was hump day
Thursday, it was TGIF
Fridays & Sat., it was frat parties.
It was hard to go to class. At one point I had two C's and two F's in my courses.
My roommate moved out and started living with his girlfriend. I was all alone. I was going from girlfriend to girlfriend, not caring. One of my sisters even wrote me and asked where the family had failed me.
Then the season ended and I met a nice girl. She began to pull me out of the dungeon. I cut my hair and stopped drinking during the week. I was able to finish with two B's and two C's and I decided to quit the team but finish my last year at JU, get my accounting degree and go on with my life.
What a big burden off my shoulder to finally realize that basketball was over for me. I didn't need it anymore. Wow, what a relief.
My parents moved to Tampa and I went there for the summer. I worked at a gas station and played ball whenever I could mainly at USF.
Senior Year
I came back with a different attitude. My goal was to graduate. I needed to stay on the team because I needed the scholarship. Unfortunately Coach Beasley had one more year on his contract, and after the 0-5 start, he did go 8-8 against the weak Sun Belt conference teams, so they weren't going to fire him (not just yet).
The first turning point occur when the players were told to report for pre-season conditioning run by the captains. I did not show up! I was scared to death. We were only given yearly contracts and I could not afford JU (a private college). My back up plan was to transfer to USF where the coach had seen me play during the summer and could offer me free tuition and I could live at home. I would have to sit out a year but I could start working on my masters.
The coach called me into his office and asked me why I wasn't at pre-season conditioning. I swallowed hard and asked, "Do you want me to tell you the truth?" He said yes. Then I explained that I am not a very naturally gifted athlete. My game depends on me going all out. And frankly when he did not play me at all, he broke my heart and spirit. I told him that I needed the scholarship and that I would work very hard on Oct. 15th (official NCAA opening day for basketball practice) to make the team. He said that I could keep the scholarship and to take a couple of days to think about it. He really wanted me on the team. That was the last time we ever talked.
A couple of weeks later there was a story in the paper about me having knee problems and not being able to play my senior year. Perfect! I was now FREE.
At first I didn't know what to do with my new found freedom. I met John "Freddie" Wettach. He was an ex-basketball player from North Carolina and we shared many of the same interests. We are still frineds and we were both in each others wedding.
We got playing city league ball. Some accountants in town paid our way. From there I was invited to play on an AAU team. Some doctor in town drove eight of us around the state of Florida in his winterbaker. We had a point guard who had played for Central Florida who shot from 30 feet and averaged 36 pts. a game. We had a tall slim guy who had a beautiful shot, he averaged 32 pts. a game. And I was playing the beat ball of my life and averaging 26 pts. a game. We had a couple of big goons inside who didn't care if they didn't score (they just wanted to win real bad) and we had three guys on the bench who just loved to play basketball like the Boston Celtics. We usually scored in the 120 pt. range. Not much defense. No I did not take any charges in the league. But I loved the international rules. At this time in college and high school you could not step in during a free throw until the ball hit the rim. In international rules, you could step in as soon as the ball left the free throw shooters hand. Uncle Freddie (John Wettach) tells the story of how he saw the best move from me on a free throw. He says that he saw me jump up from the second position on the lane, get the rebound with one hand and jam it threw before anyone else even moved. It's always much better when you have a witness to retell the story.
Not only was there no defense, there was also no boxing out. I had a field day on the boards. Noone could understand how I was getting so many rebounds. We played tournaments in Tampa, Tallahassee, Orlando, Daytona Beach, and even Jacksonville. We even played a game in the coliseum before a JU game. It was hard to explain to the newspaper guys how I was out there dunking the ball when I could not play for JU because of a knee problem. We were ahead by 20 pts. so I left midway through the second half. The JU team had arrived and they were all rooting for me and giving me a hard time. I didn't want to jeopardize my scholarship nor embarrass the university. However this was one of the high points of my senior year and later back at school many of the new JU players told me that I should be helping the JU team. I didn't explain.
A valuable lesson in life, never burn bridges behind you. At that time I might have needed the help of JU to get a job or I might have needed the coach's recommendation for a future job.
[ There were many players who for one reason or another would not come out for the team their senior year. I always tried to listen to them but if we could not work something out, I always thanked them for being honest and invited them to play ball with us on Saturdays. I always told them that they would love intermual ball in college and that Berkeley would invite them to come back and play in the annual alumni game.
I too was recently invited back to JU to play in their alumni game. The court was huge and the younger alumni jumped right over me. But it was good to see some old familiar faces. Artis Gilmore (NBA Hall of Fame) and James Ray (NBA Denver player) both posed with my son Brandon for pictures.]
I continued playing AAU ball collecting trophies at various tournaments and playing City League ball. My best friend, John Freddie Wettach and I wanted to go to North Carolina to see the ACC tournament. We were in the City Tournament, and if we won, could not leave for North Carolina. We were down by one point with 20 seconds to go. Both Freddie and I said we will let the owner of the team shoot the last shot. We told him it's your team go for it. He was so happy that we allow him to take the last shot. Needless to say he missed. We lost. As I was saying goodbye to all the players, I would mention that I was going on a trip and needed some spending money. Several players gave me twenty dollar bills. I couldn't believe it ($20 in the 1970's is like $50 today). Like the actor from Cuba in the movie "Moscow on the Hudson" starting Robin Williams said, "What a wonderful country."
Unfortunately in the State AAU Tournament in Quincy, Florida, we had two games on Friday night and on the third game Saturday, I tore up my other knee (the left knee). Before that game the owner of the Quincy team had invited me to play with the Florida AAU Team that was traveling to New Orleans to play in the Nationals. The owner who had only one arm (lost in a farming accident) said that our leading scorer was too soft and our point guard too small. He wanted someone who would rebound and play without the ball. That was me. I could not believe it. My team lost that game and lost again on Sunday. I don't think we could have beaten the Quincy team. They had a couple of ex-NBA players but we should have been in the finals.
Since I was graduating soon with a degree in Accounting, I was not too concern about my knee being blown out. I knew my playing days were over and it was time to get on with my career.
JU did fire Beasley and hire Tates Locke. Coach Locke called me into his office and asked if I would help him rebuild the team. I had one year left of eligibility left and I could start on my MBA degree while playing for JU. I told him I was honored but that my knees could not take it anymore and that I had lost the heart to lead a big time university team.
I graduated on crutches, after another knee operation. I quickly found out about the really world. The University wouldn't pay for the operation. The AUU wouldn't pay for it. The team owner wouldn't pay for it. I didn't have the money. The doctor and the hospital came after me and I told them they better go after the insurance companies. Eventually the university student insurance and the AAU policies paid for it.
One final story on JU. The year after I left one of the players stabbed another player in the butt. As the player with the knife was leaving the apartment, the player with the wound shot the other player in the back. Neither got jail time.
Chapter 7: Tampa, Florida
I graduated and moved to Tampa to live with my parents. I started the interviewing process. I found out I should have done that BEFORE graduation. Most jobs were already filled in the spring, not summer. I was one out of twenty candidates with this big accounting firm in Tampa. After the initial interview process, I was one out of three. Needless to say they hired a woman from Gainsville. I found out the power of the Gator alumni system and I preach it every year to my students.
I could not find a job. I coached at University of South Florida basketball camps. Donated plasma for $30 and I would get an extra $5 for every person I brought in. We would play hoops at USF and then I would ask the guys if they wanted to make $30. My Dad hired me to keep the books for his new partnership with his ex-students from Cuba Charlie Smith and Carlos Smith now teaching at USF.
In retrospect, again fate took care of me:
1. Being born into a large family (remember I was number 13)
2. Having to leave Cuba (I had to struggle for a living rather then growing up with a silver spoon)
3. Running away from school not only improved my running but also made me the biggest kid in the class by repeating the first grade
4. My brother winning the Pepsi-Cola shopping spree moved us to McLean, Va. which kept me out of jail
5. Being accepted into St. Anselms where I could play on three different teams at once my 8th grade year (8th grade, freshman and JV teams) and where the best coach in DC was coaching
6. Having a paper route that strengthen my legs and body
7. Having JU coach visit the wrong High School
8. Having two starters kicked out of college for taking money from the pro's and another starter hurting his wrist before the first game, allowing me to start as a freshman. Wow!
And the two biggest fate were yet to come.
Chapter 8: Berkeley: the Early Years
Moving back to Tampa to live a couple of years with my parents was the best thing that ever happened to me. I got a chance to really get to know my father and mother. Our best moments were when we went boating. My Dad loved the sea.
Sept. rolled around and I was still without a job. The Car Wash wanted to know if I had experience before they would hire me. Kentucky Fried Chicken said I was overqualified. My break came in Oct. of 1978. A coach I had met at USF, Gordon Gibbons (now head coach at Florida Southern) called to ask if I would be interested in helping out with a JV basketball program at a small private school called Berkeley Prep. The headmaster, George Pennington said he could not pay me for coaching but wanted to know if I would teach one Math class. Dr. George Mead, head of the Math Dept. had a 7th grade class and needed more time to finish his PhD at USF. I visited this small school on Davis Island. It was an old run down hotel. I walked in through the locker room and witness football players (skinny and small) punching holes into the walls with their helmets. As I climbed the fire escape ladder at the back of the school/hotel, I heard screaming coming out of one of the rooms. I thought for sure this was a school for delinquents. I soon learned that the screaming was Senora Weaver teaching spanish. I found Dr. Mead's office that looked more like a walk-in closet. His A/C was broken and he was sweating over some papers he was grading. I quickly learned he was a fine man and had a kind heart. Mr. Pennington hired me with a handshake. I had never taken an education course in my life. The class George had given me to teach had an overall 65 class average with half of the class failing. Today most of these students are accountants, doctors and lawyers.
My first job as basketball coach was to go across the street to an abandon playground and sweep the glass off the court. I also put up new nets and tried to pull the weeds that were growing on the court. We had 12 to 14 players coming out for basketball, both varsity and JV. They were skinner than the football players and lilly white (and this was after the summer months). E.C. Smith the AD, Football Coach, and Spanish teacher kept saying don't worry 4 or 5 football players would play basketball. That first pre-season practice last less than an hour that was good because even in October the Florida sun is unbearable). By the time the boys got dress and to the park it was 4 pm and they had to leave at 5 pm to catch the bus. Our goal was to try to make 10 lay-ups in a row.
Fate again took over. At Christmas Berkeley moved to a brand new school at Town n' Country. It was 45 acres in a relatively new development of Tampa, Twelve Oaks, west of the airport. The new school completely changed Berkeley Prep. In addition, a math teacher Fred Hall quit during the Christmas vacation. He became a 7/11 store manager. George Mead offered me a full time job. Again Pennington did it on a handshake. I got $8,000 yearly salary (the accounting job would have paid $18,000/yr.) which included basketball and tennis coaching (actually all this required was chauffeuring the players to their matches. They all had private coaches). I was still living with my parents so this was ok.
The varsity coach was Mike Shirley. We played our home games at St. Mary Help's gym. We had a super freshman named Rick Dreyer. He would end his career at Berkeley being the all-time leading scorer in Hillsborough County. Besides Rick, we had Clark Wietez, Joe Bernardo, David Hoover and Leornard Lorenzo. E.C. was right the football players did help.
That year we went into the district tournament 9-12 seated 8th. Shirley had done a marvelous job with this young but talented team. We beat the number one seated the first day of districts. We could not believe it. The tournament was in Lakeland and all the way home Coach Shirley kept saying, tell me I'm not dreaming. We also won the second night, and ended up winning the district. It was truly unbelievable. Next we had to play Sarasota Booker for the regionals. Mr. Hammer rented the HCC gym expecting a big crowd. When the other team arrived with all black players, I knew we were in trouble. Our guys were peeing in their pants. Many had never played against a black player. Needless to say we lost. But what a season. The most important thing I learned from Shirley was to be optimistic and have a lot of patience with non-basketball players.
At the end of the year Shirley resigned and Berkeley began looking for a new b-ball coach. They asked me but I told them that I needed a couple of more years with the JV.
That summer I went down to Miami to do accounting work with my cousin Jaime at a small hospital just north of Miami. That summer I slept in Jaime's second room. I had twisted my knee in Berkeley's new gym during the spring. I had made arrangements to get an operation during the last weeks of August. Dr. Murphy had a new procedure where they would scope the knee. I would be up and walking in days instead of weeks.
But one weekend night, I received a phone call from Tampa from our good neighbor, Bill Burnes. He had some really bad news. My parents were in a bad car accident on Lois and Kennedy. I flew back to Tampa that night. Both of my parents were in ICU and the doctor told me that my Dad would not live. I called all the brothers and sisters and most came to visit over the next two weeks.
(I'll put in the longer version of this family crisis for the family version of this book)
Anyways I had to postpone my operation because I had to take care of my parents. What a turn of fate. My future wife was not working at the hospital at this time. When I did go in for my operation in the spring of 1980, Kathy took my blood. She was a beautiful tall blonde with blue eyes. She had a gorgeous tan and looked in shape. As she stood there cutting my arm for a blood clogging test, I asked her 20 questions. She was polite and we had a nice conversation.
The operation was a success and I walked that night. What a difference from my other two operations where they tore my knee apart. Dr. Murphy came in and had a picture taken for his paper on the operation. I left that same night. I never thought I would see that hot nurse, Kathy again.
By the time I was living with a good friend of mine, Steve Kitchens. He was tall, handsome, and a real nice guy. He could also shoot like no one I knew. How he didn't get a shot at the pro's, I'll never know. For the next three years we would have great match ups on the court.
This year we had a good team left over from last year's District Champs. Unfortunately Frostproof (where Alvin Harper NFL all-pro wide receiver and his older brothers all played ball) came into our district. We were able to beat the Temple Heights, Tampa Prep and Bayshore, but Frostproof was a different story.
The first thing Steve and I did was to realize that these boys needed some pre-season conditioning. The 2nd week of school Steve had them running and playing pick-up ball. We started the Saturday ball at Berkeley which included some alumni, coaches and friends. That year we made it to the District finals. But we were always thinking about next year.
Moving to the new school helped greatly. Since we now had a gym and fields many of the 8th grade athletes did not transfer to Plant or Jesuit for 9th grade. This helped the JV program greatly.
Meanwhile a coach named Fred Lowe began coaching the 7th & 8th grade team. Fred loved basketball and he loved children. Unfortunately he was insecure and needed to be loved by his players and their parents. He promised them things he could not delivered. His biggest mistake was handing out trophies at the sports banquet as champions of a league that did not exist. Worst yet he handed out 8 trophies when there were 12 players on the team. This is when I learned many lessons. We were there to coach the players not be their friend. There were definitely many more important things then winning, like integrity and character. And don't get caught up in the parent game.
[As I looked at my players, I could see that I had learned my lessons well. They respected me (some even feared me a little) but they were not my friends. In fact it usually took 3 or 4 years after graduation before they finally would start calling me Manny instead of Coach Suarez during Sat. ball.
The parents sat in he bleachers. they were not allowed behind the bench and they were not allowed to talk to their child during the game. They could work with the children as much as they wanted on the weekends but once in the gym, the players were my domain. The parents respected that and knew if they had a concern, they could talk to me on Monday in my office. Phone conversations never worked very well. People are too comfortable saying stuff on the phone they might regret later. We communicate with our body language and face to face is the best was to communicate. The system worked and I coached sons of generals, mayors, doctors, and the professional I respected the most, coaches.
In all the years of coaching I only had one parent feel I was not playing their child enough. This parent and I did not agree on what was best for the team. I think it is every parent's right and duty to stand up for their child, but they also have to respect the coach/teacher. Unfortunately this student later dropped out of college but with my help and support did finish his college degree at the local college.
As I looked into the stands, I could see the parents all exhausted from this emotional roller coaster game. One Dad who played college ball himself and now coached, gave me a thumbs up. They knew their sons had played hard. They were already preparing their speeches for their boys whether we won or lost. The speech for losing would be the more important one and had to be worded carefully.
I always told the parents that it was their jobs to love and support their child regardless of how they played. It was my job to criticize and make them better players and more importantly better people.
I always knew the Moms would be there for their child but some of the Dads scared even me. Of course I was lucky to be at Berkeley where education was more important then sports scholarships.
I wasn't worried about the last play because of the parents. I wanted this last play to work for my players. They had earned the victory. The other team was more gifted with height and speed but we had the bigger heart.]
Steve ran a great practice. He knew how to make the players work hard. The players really respected him and did whatever it took to please him. Having Clark and Rick out there also helped. We had some excellent wins this year. But you could tell we were just waiting for next year. Rick Dreyer was again our leading scorer and rebounder. At 6'2" and playing 1A ball, he could dominate. We made it to the district finals and the first of the Harper brothers.
That summer the team went to several camps. Clark Wietez was really maturing and more determine then ever to win the districts. Rick was working on his golf game but also improving his shooting. Some of the younger players were developing nicely. At the new school we had 20 kids try out for JV . We didn't have a freshman team so it was hard to cut anyone. We had a policy of not allowing juniors to play JV. By the time they were juniors, they should be playing on the varsity or find another sport. Coaching the JV was fun. I always tried to make the practice fun. It was hard to win too many games because all the good sophomores would play varsity. Many would move up during the Christmas break. But I loved the young talent and enthusiasm and I loved Saturday practices. To get the gym all for ourselves with no distractions was heaven. We always had the best practices on Saturdays.
Steve had a solid team. He knew it and scheduled some tougher teams this year. He knew that in order to beat Frostproof, we would have to play tougher games during the season. Beating Tampa Prep, Bayshore, Temple Heights and the Lakeland schools was not good enough. The only problem was that the starting five were so much better than the second string. Many times Steve or I had to step in and cover Rick to give him competition.
That year we lost again in the district finals. It hurt so much for Clark Weidtez. He had tasted it his sophomore year but not again. I consoled him with how much fun he would have in college playing intermual ball. He was going to Georgia Tech and it was time to get serious about engineering. To this day everytime Clark is in town, he stops by the gym to play Sat. ball.
Rick had a couple of super games. We played against Kisseemee Oseola (a 3-A power house). they had two college prospects. They scheduled us first in their Christmas Tournament, the Florida Shootout, thinking it was going to be an easy win. Rick burned them for 42 pts. in the best game I ever saw him play. We still lost by 20 pts. but I had new respect for Rick and so did the press.
I learned many years later that Jesuit (who had lost to Kisseemee Oseola in their regionals) tried to get Rick to switch over to Jesuit. Rick had done all the paper work and interviewed but found out Jesuit did not have any courses for him to take. Rick was ready to take AP Calculus, AP English, AP History and AP Physics at Berkeley.
Well we came in second in the district again. Rick's senior year was not the same without Clark at point. Even though we had a better all around team, we lost the leadership. The JV players I had coached made it possible for Steve to play 10 players most games. David Hochberg took some of the scoring pressure off of Rick. Russ Lowry was also helping on the boards. Rick went on to play freshman ball at Dartmouth but eventually gave it up to devote full time to being captain of the Dartmouth Golf Team. Steve Kitchens also moved on and out of teaching and relocated to Texas. I got married to that nurse I met in the hospital and stayed in Tampa during the summer teaching Berkeley summer school.
That spring a Berkeley 8th grader died of leukemia. We decided to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL football team in a charity basketball game. We rented the HCC gym and sold tickets for $5 to 5,000 people to establish the Leslie Wolbolt Scholarship Fund.
The Bucs played Doug Williams (Super Bowl MVP for the Redskins), LeRoy Selmon (Hall of Famer), Jimmie Giles, Mark Cotney and their best basketball player Cedric Brown. We started Steve Kitchens, Mark Kenney (6' 10" science teacher and girls basketball coach), myself, Malcolm Stewart (captain of Princeton track team) and Bill Fenlon (next Berkeley coach). We were scared at first but by half time we were ahead by 12 pts. and they were more tired then we were. Teh big football players could not get their hands above their heads. Steve shot beautiful shots and we killed them on the fastbreaks.
I dunked the ball and then went to the bench exhausted. As I walked behind the Buc's bench, several Buc players were chanting "Mad Dog, Mad Dog". It was a new high for me. We won by 20 pts. Every one was happy except the Bucs PR guy. They had just missed the Super Bowl by a field goal and now they were losing to a bunch of white preppy boys. I was most proud of the fact that we had shown the Berkeley boys that black athletes can be beaten if out smarted and out hustled.
Chapter 9 Berkeley: The Middle Years
The new coach Bill Fenlon was a trip. Even though we had lost Rick Dreyer the all-time leading scorer in Hillsborough County, he was fired up. We had 12 guys that could all start. Russ Lowry was now a man. Yram Groff was young but could score. Bill had a laid back attitude which contrasted Steve's serious attitude. The players felt loose. Everyone has always joking around. We ran and ran. Fast breaking at every opportunity. The more we ran, the more we scored. The more we scored, the more confidence we got.
Steve and I had developed 10 nice players. He had worked them hard durng the previous years. All those years of discipline was paying off. They all went to summer camps. This year we beat Frostproof in the district on a last second shot on the buzzer. It was unbelievable. Playing the districts at Bayshore rather than Frostproof really helped.
Next we beat Shorecrest whose best player was on drugs the night we played them. We had lost to them twice during the year. Now we were in the sectionals against Kings Academy in Ft. Lauderdale. The gym was a small gym and it was packed. Two bus loads of Berkeley students and parents drove down form Tampa for the game. It was standing room only. Kings Academy had averaged 80 pts. a game. We were ahead by 11 pts. at half time keeping them to only 22 pts. We could not believe it. All those years learning defense and rebounding really had paid off.
Coach Fenlon's strategy was to keep the score low and the pace slow hoping that their players would panic about their averages. They did ! They took a rush shot after rush shot. We boxed out very good. But King's Academy woke up for the second half. They came out in a full court press and forced the action. We lost. The next day while coach slept, I took the team and the cheerleaders to the Ft. Lauderdale beach. We had a blast.
[ I thought about that game in Ft. Lauderdale. I had used Coach Fenlon's tactic several times during the season. But it only works if your own players are discipline enough to be patient with the offense. The passing had to be extra careful. The defense knows you are slowing the pace and they are just waiting to steal the ball. The key is for your players to know when to score. Once the defense gets antsy and starts to gamble, a lay-up should open up. But it did remind me of an old saying that sometimes not scoring can be the best offense.
Another key to the delay game is that your own players can not be worried about their averages. The win or chance to win against a superior team has to be the goal of the team. Some of my players had to live with the fact that they were not going to ever average over 20 pts. on my team. The saying goes that Coach Smith at north Carolina was the only person on this earth who held Michael Jordon under 20 pts. And yet they won the NCAA tournament with that philosophy. Michael himself had repeatedly stated that him scoring 50 pts. is not going to win an NBA championship. It is truly a team sport.
There were times during this game where I had to force my players to slow the tempo down. I required them to pass the ball five times before a shot goes up. Try this with a bunch of ball players sometime, it is very hard.
At the end of the game rather than going into four corners (another Dean Smith of NC tactic). I prefer to run the offense but only looking for an open lay-up. This really frustrated the other team because they have to play good hard defense for a long time and we ended up with a lay-up most of the time.]
With Tampa Prep and Bayshore recruiting and us having to now play 2A schools, we began a string of losing seasons. At this time the best player to ever play at Berkeley emerged. He was Yram Groff. He grew big and strong and had a beautiful shot. He still holds the Berkeley record for hitting 10 straight 3 point shots in the shoot around. He graduated and played for Division III Amherst College in New Hamphsire. He ended up being the second leading scorer of all time for Amherst. Second to Jim Renquist who as it turns out played for Langley High School the public school that I should have attended. Jim (son of Supreme Court Justice Rinquist) told Yram that if I had played for Langley, we would have won the state tournament.
When Yram graduated from Amherst, he called me with a big question. He had been accepted into medical school but had also received an offer to play professional ball in Israel. His father (a doctor) wanted him to go into medical school rather than waste another year of his time playing silly games. I asked Yram if medical school would defer his acceptance fro one year. He said yes. Then my choice would be Israel, you can always go to medical school, but you can only play professional ball once in your life.
Yram went to Israel to play ball. While there he met his future wife. On his return to the USA, Yram gave me his jersey. It hangs proudly in a picture frame in my office with an article about Yram representing the USA in Israel. Another highlight of my career.
During the summer of 1981, I married my nurse, Kathy Wentz. It was a poor-man's wedding with no reception but no one seem to care. The family went to Clearwater Beach and had a blast. The summer school director gave me only one day off without pay for my honeymoon. We went to Clearwater Beach also.
In 1986, my first son was born, Brandon Hagen. We moved out of the apartment and into our first home on 9218 Shellgrove Court. Meanwhile I went to night school and earned my masters in education. In 1990, my second son was born, Austin Lee. A man could not ask for anything more. Life was complete. I took my sons to parks. We labeled them: see-saw park, tennis park, our park, castle park, Westchase park, our second park, etc. Every chance I got we would shoot hoops. At this time I was also appointed Director of Summer Programs. When I inherit, it it consisted of 80 students reviewing mainly math and spanish. The first summer we started a fine arts camp. It was for 5-12 yr. olds and it grew from two sessions of 20 campers to 6 weeks with 250 kids. The following summer, I started the sports camps. My idea was to offer weekly camps to children ages 10-14. High school players needed to go to the colleges to improve and kids under 10 still needed babysitting. There were plenty of Day Camps for them. We started with four weekly camps and about 80 players, today we have 45 camps and over 700 players. I wanted to give something back to the community. Most of the neighborhood kids can not afford Berkeley's tuition but they can afford our summer sports camps. The camps go from 9 am to 3 pm for the 10-14 yr. olds, 3-5 pm for kids 5-9, and 5-10 pm for the high school basketball league. Finally I began an academic program for elementary age students. All told the Summer Programs grew from 80 to 1300 campers in my 8 years as director. Not bad for an exiled from Cuba.
[ As I looked at my players, I could see that most had attended Berkeley's camps and ll had played in the night league. Clem Caprara who directed the basketball cmaps had done a super job of instructing the fundamentals of the game: dribbling, passing, defense, shooting and team sportsmanship. These players came to the varsity very well prepared ready to make the next leap onto varsity ball.
I remember our point guard the first day of camp in the 6th grade, his NBA jersey almost hit the ground around him. He held his lunch cooler in his hand. He even had a wrist sweat band that he still wears today.
My son, Brandon, won the 3 point shooting contest when he was 10 yrs. old. He hit eleven 3 pointers in 45 seconds. Some of the older campers were not too pleased to let that trophy get away. He had hit many important 3 pointers through his four years of playing varsity basketball. He had also surpass Rick Dreyer as the school's leading scorer of all time but we played more games than Rick did and therefore Rick's per game average was higher. Brandon had attended every summer basketball camp for ten years. He even helped coach the younger campers when he got older. At ten he was running the clock for the summer night league. He would take the last shot in my play, but he would have to sacrifice the 3 pointer for the team, and he would gladly do it. He was already set to go to college and had a full ride. We had taken care of that before his senior year so to take pressure off.
I remember our center when he was 10. He came into the gym with the biggest feet I had ever seen. He could barely walk and chew gum, forget dribbling a basketball. He could not make a lay-up to save his life. His Dad (a tall man himself) dropped him off. His son hated his height and had been teased all his life. One season he had to buy a pair of sneakers because he had already out grown the ones he had just got at the beginning of the season. he would make the last shot to win the game. He was the heaviest recruited player on this team. And many college coaches knew that this boy still had some growing to do. He is what is called a franchise player. The interesting thing was that he was only interested in learning and was leaning towards Princeton where they don't give scholarships. He could assure Princeton the Ivy League crown and a NCCA tournament birth.]
Chapter 10: The Last Season
The year started like the other twenty-five before. The boys were excited we had made it to the state tournament last year, but were overwhelmed with just being part of the "dance". This year would be different. We only lost one starter and several hard working seniors. This was the year we had been working for since my son, Brandon was 5 years old and participating in the Berkeley summer sports camps.
The gym seen different. Maybe it was the new coat of summer paint which made the gym seem holier. Even the lights on the score board seem brighter. The floor looked beautiful after the summer revarnishing (the volleyball players had worn away the sticky feeling of new varnish but had been careful enough not to dull the shine). The new lights made the place look like heaven. Oop's, I got carried away.
We had a good summer. We played tough in the public school summer league. We even beat Jesuit and Tampa Catholic, but I knew they would be tougher during the regular season. During the summer we tend to let the boys just play for fun and many times good players are missing because of family vacation or out of state camps. Of course we had won our own Berkeley league. Temple Heights, Bayshore and Tampa Prep were no longer presented a challenge for this team.
The second week of school, we started our pre-season conditioning. the captains, Brandon Suarez and Botond Kiss (my two best defensive players) took the team on long runs. Other days they would hit the weight room and several times they ran up and down the stands on the football field. The football coach would always complain that his team would watch the basketball players run the bleachers, but that he could never get his captains to do the same with his team. A gave him a video which showed all the great players from Larry Bird to Barry Sanders running the bleachers during the off season. You know this is the MTV generation and unless the kids see it, they won't believe it.
This was the most enjoyable part of the season for me. I got a chance to play with my players on Saturdays. The alumni would really help me on this respect, allowing the players to play together on one team against them. I would try to play with the alumni so as to give our big kid some challenge. Over the years my challenge got slower and slower. This year I invited some big kids from Plant and Jefferson (two big local public schools) to play with and against our kids. I always believe you can run a better mile if you run against faster runners. You get better at tennis by playing better tennis players. Same holds true for basketball.
We were invited to a pre-season tournament consisting of 4-A and 5-A public schools. The host team figure the "prep school" would be an easy first night win. Well they should have done their homework because we kicked their butts. Even though they looked like they had better athletes, they were not organized and many had football legs and extra weight. Their fans were completely stunned. They were ready to celebrate an easy victory over the 3-A preppies from Berkeley Prep.
The second night was a different story. this coach had seen what we had done the night before and he had prepared his players well. His strategy was not to get into a playground game but a deliberate pounding it inside. He knew his size would take care of the rest. It was a hard fought battle and in all honesty we were just lucky to make more buckets down the stretch . The game could have gone either way. When their coach told me I had done a nice job, I took it as the highest compliment because this was truly a good coach (I would see this coach again before the season was over).
Now we were 2-0 and had earned some "hardware". We had 4 players averaging in double figures and more importantly we had won both games on the boards against bigger and stronger players. But there were still plenty of room for improvement. the films would bring everyone back to earth including me. There were a couple of plays that I know now won't work against a superior team. I took out a player after he hit 3 buckets in a row. My mistake. The list for the players was much longer. I spent all day Sunday analyzing the films. Each player would receive a report on Monday and each player was required to watch the championship game sometime before Tuesday's practice. the game is only 32 minutes long and I would make 10 copies. This was also a good way of keeping the players out of trouble during their free time. Most would watch it together during their lunch break. Eat and sleep basketball.
Normally I would schedule a couple of weak teams early in the season to get our feet wet, but this wasn't a normal year. This year I called some of the big guns who were not in our district. They all figure it would be an easy "W" for them. The smarter coaches told me no. They had very little to gain and everything to lose. Many of the colleges stayed away from playing Princeton. They knew that Princeton could beat any team on a given night and could demoralize your players for weeks if you lost. Our center was leaning heavily towards Princeton and I had gotten to know their coach pretty well.
So our next opponent was Jesuit. They were gym rats. Their coach was arrogant and saw an easy win even though we had refused to play them in previous years. They were one of those Catholic schools that did not practice good sportsmanship and liked to run up the score. (I've never liked their organization and only played them when it served our purpose.) We had beaten them in the summer league but their coach had rationalized it to his parents (they were the ones that really ran that program) that he had played all his players and I had kept my starters in all the way. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course Jesuit would only play us in their gym which was a rat hole. I love it !
I reminded the refs before the game that they had to move the Jesuit/Tampa Catholic game to a neutral site because of the fights on the court and in the stands. I knew that that would help keep the game clean. Referees hated poor sportsmanship more than the coaches. It turned our to be a hard fought game and it came down to us handling their full court press and being more patient with our offense. They did not know how to foul at the end. Every time they would clobber our guys and we would get two shots and the ball back. We did lose the battle of the boards and they actually called more fouls on my team. I was happy because that meant we weren't intimidated by them anymore. It was the first time in Berkeley's history that we beat Jesuit in basketball. Their players tried to start a fight at the end of the game but my players kept their cool and walked away. I told the players that we were all staying together and walking to the bus together. Our dean and athletic director were waiting by the bus. I knew I would meet them later for a few cool ones. No way I was going to sleep tonight. I was too pumped up. Time to watch the films and write up some reports. We should have not lost the boards.
I had asked for and received an invitation to the Great American Shoot-Out in Orlando. There were teams from all over the country. We were the only 3-A school in the tournament. The host team again felt we would be an easy win for them. I always loved it when they explained how all the teams were put into a hat and randomly selected. Ya, Right. Many parents felt I was being too stubborn and it would be better not to demoralize the team by facing nationally ranked teams. I would explain that their players were just like ours, they put on their pants one leg at a time. In the back of my mind, I was worried about the same thing. Players are like boxers or horses, once they lose and lose big, their spirit is broken. But a good loss would put some spark back into out practice. My gamely reports would carry a little more weight. The seniors would realize how much more work they had to do to reach college caliber and the younger players could appreciate that you only get better by going to summer camps and playing against the best players in the country.
The host team got a rude awaking. We beat them by 20 pts. It could have been worse but I didn't want to alert the other teams in the tournament. Plus it allowed me another opportunity to teach my players about good sportsmanship. You could tell the host team players were not taking us seriously. During warm-ups they were talking with their girlfriends in the stands. I was hoping they had been partying the night before. They were stale. We exploded out of the blocks. Our guys were loose and the passing on the fastbreak could not have been chrisper. Because we got a comfortable lead, the other team started to panic and rush their shots. I got a chance to play all my players and rest my starters. That made them even more hungry for the next game.
We stayed around and watched the next game. Our players were is awe. There were dunks all over the place. Bodies were flying and the refs were not calling anything. Big Mistake ! Our players finally woke up out of our fantasy world. The next day we got blown out. Out rebounded, out hustled, out played. I could not call time outs quick enough. Now we looked like the white preppy school that we really were. My only hope was that the bit in out stomach would last through out the rest of the season. I told the starters on the bench to look at the opponent's team bench. To watch those basketball players laughing at us and laughing at our third string that were playing their hearts out even though we were down by 30 pts.
I didn't have the guts to tell the players to look at their parents. But I did look at them. I hoped they had remember my many speeches to them about how it was their job to pull up their child's head. It was my job to make them better players.
Another thought the ran through my mind was , when did we lose sportsmanship in high school sports. Here they were full court pressing our third string players with a 30 point lead. Why ? What were they trying to prove ? Why couldn't their coach control his bench better. I felt sorry for their players because they had lost out on the importance of sports, to teach players about life.
I was even more embarrassed to think about the fact it was a Catholic school who we were playing. In fact most Catholic schools we played displayed the worst sportsmanship. Had we lost the true meaning of Christianity. I had question several Catholic school's athletic directors and they all said that it was up to their coach and their coach was practicing the full court press. So sad, so sad indeed.
I taught my starters to never laugh on the bench when ahead by 30 pts. That the 10 players on the floor deserved and earned our respect to cheer for them and encourage them.
I gave the guys a few says off from practice. I told them to enjoy the holidays and their families. To play some playground ball and get the joy back into their game. We had our annual Alumni versus Varsity game the day after Christmas. The captains would be their coach and all I ask was that they all share the playing time. 20 to 25 alumni would always show up and we would play 6 12-minute running time quarters. The score was in the 120-140 range. A good time for all. I love the exchange of stories and would stay up most of the night talking with my earlier players about the early years.
I started the second season (after Christmas) on Dec. 30. I wanted to remind our players that basketball was our sport. It also gave me a last chance to talk about New Years and drinking and driving. All my players knew they could call me any time of the night and I would pick them up and drive them home. I would not lecture them that night, but they would have to serve a one game suspension and talk to the school counselor. But if I found out they were drinking and driving, they were off the team.
Dec. 30th practice were always the best except the first day of practice. The boys were refreshed and full of stories of Christmas gifts and vacations. The coaches had time to study the films an it was time to put in new wriggles in our old plays. The only thing that would make it better is if it had snowed outside.
At the end of practice, we watched the blow out game and I passed out the reports on the tournament. IT got really silent again. I would then give them a couple of days off and back to practice Jan 2. We had one week to practice for our regular schedule: 2 games each with Bay Conference teams, Bayshore, Tampa Prep, Temple Heights, Seminole Presbyterian, Keswick, Shorecrest, and Indian Rocks Christian. 2 games each with our district foes: Tampa Catholic, St. Pete Catholic, and Clearwater Central Catholic. I had wanted to schedule Plant high school but they wanted nothing to do with Berkeley.
So the year went pretty smoothly. Tuesday, Friday and Saturday games. Joe Fenlon had done a nice job recruiting at Tampa Prep. He had gotten himself another couple of big boys to transfer to Prep. They gave a nice game but this was Berkeley's year and every one knew it. I held back the temptation to run up the score and pay back the Catholic schools, but I'd hope that they could learn from our example and my players could learn that two wrongs do not make a right.
Tampa Catholic was our biggest challenge. They had won a couple of State Championships and they had been to the dance. They had powerful team, made up of mostly football players. I showed my team the game the faculty had played against the Bucs in the early 1980's. We beat the mighty Tampa Bay Bucs and Super Bowl MVP Doug Williams. The players did not mind because at least they didn't have to watch themselves make mistakes on the screen.
To offset TC's strength inside, I decided we were going to run every chance we got. I told the team we play TC three times this year. The first time we would run , the second time we would slow it up, and the third time I would decide later.
Well we ran and ran. It was a roller coaster. Sometimes we were up by 10 points and other times we were down by 5 points. The poor parents were losing it in the stands. They were elated one minute and screaming for a time out the next. I was relax. I kept telling the players to run and run , and enjoy themselves. I really didn't care if we won or lost. This was a game purely for fun. I kept subbing in new players to keep them fresh. The referees were really huffing and puffing.
TC's football player were not in shape. They were sucking wind. There second team was actually better than ours. They had had the opportunity to play entire games in the early season before the football players came out. Since TC had gone to the state in football, they had only started practicing basketball during the Christmas break.
We were up by 12 points at half (52-40). The locker room was full of excitement. The adreline was flowing. The players were pumped up and I didn't even go into the locker room. I told my assistant to tell the players that they did not need me tonight. There is nothing to coach, just run and run some more. Try to break the 100 point mark, win or lose (unless we were ahead by 20 points of course).
My administrators were worried since this was the first time I had not entered into the locker room at half time. They ran up to me and asked if all was ok. I said I couldn't be any happier. I left the gym and went outside and got a hot dog and a coke from the concession stands. Everyone patted me on the back saying, "great game coach!". The game where I coached the LEAST.
The rest of the game went pretty much like the first half. T.C. tried to slow it down and our guys were taking off and the lead increased . I was careful now to put in the third string in too early. I left my starting point guard in order to break their press. They did cut the lead down to 12 pts. at the end.
The students in the stands stormed the court. There is a saying, "act like you've been there before." Well we had not been there before and this was a good and sweet win. I knew next time it wouldn't be this easy.
No one gave us much trouble. There was one game where Brandon, my son and leading scorer had to sit out because of a sprained ankle. His point loss was not as hurtful as his leadership on the court. He always kept his calm and was excellent breaking the press with his smart passing. But we survived the game without him. I must admit it wasn't as easy without him in there but it was great having him next to me on the bench during the game looking like my assistant. During the time-out, he complimented his teammates and gave them some helpful hints.
As we headed for the district tournament, we were 25-1 (if you count the pre-season games). We were seeded number one and played the 8th seed. Tampa Catholic was number two and in the other bracket. We would face them in the finals. Because Berkeley was usually not seeded higher than 4 or 5, we had not asked to host the districts. This year after going tot he State the previous year, the teams in the district decided to let us host it. Tampa Catholic and Tampa Prep did not want to cross the Bay to play in Clearwater again.
The first night we drew St. Pete Catholic. I knew they wouldn't be much of a match, but at this level of basketball any team can lose on a given night, if things go wrong. Even the Chicago Bulls can lose to the Timberwolves.
But we blew St. Pete out of the water. My players were hungry. I had hoped they would save some of this hunger for the championship game. We were up by 20 after the 1st quarter. I pulled off the press and fell back into a soft man-to-man. I cleared the bench and their coach thanked me at half-time. It was just one of those things. His players were already thinking about baseball and several had already been practicing for weeks.
I learned from the Christmas tournament, and this time I did not let my players stay around to watch our next opponent, Tampa Prep. I instructed them to go home and watch the NBA game on TV. Absolutely NO partying tonight.
We went hard on Wednesday's practice and went over some of Tampa Prep's latest plays. My top assistant, Chip Geraghty had done a wonderful job scouting Tampa Prep. Sure enough Coach Fenlon had put in some new wrinkles since our last meeting. Chip and I discussed what we thought Tampa Prep was going to do against us and agreed that Joe would try to slow it sown. He knew his players could not run with us. He had a 6' 10" transfer who was tough to keep away form the boards. He would try to use his soft press to slow us down coming up the floor. He would play zone defense and hope we would be missing from the outside.
This was one of those practices where I played the tall guy from Tampa Prep. The key was to frustrate him. One would put one player in front and one player behind him. We went to the triangle and two. One player would play man on their point guard to keep him occupied, the other would be on their big man. Always boxing him out. Big guys hate to be boxed out and usually would push to get open. Tampa Prep's other three starters would be told to get the ball inside to their big guy. I hated my players this practice. They kept hitting me at my knees which were in bad shape. I could not get any rebounds and everytime I got the ball I was surrounded.
Thursday we has a shoot around. Played shooting games, and went over situational plays (up one, down one, up two with the ball, down two without the ball, etc.). This was time consuming but very much necessary.
Friday we had an afternoon shoot around to get loose and burn off some nervous energy plus it kept the players out of trouble. I told the players I wanted a quiet dinner. I wanted everyone thinking about the game. This game was actually more important then the district finals because of the new state format of both top teams of the districts advance to the next level (sub-regionals). If we lost this one, the season was over.
The game went very much like I expected. Prep tried to slow the ball up. our triangle and two worked perfectly. They only got up one shot at a time and it came from their #3 and #4 players. Their big guy was frustrated and picked up some quick cheap fouls trying to get open and over the back calls on the rebounds. It sent him to the bench early in the second quarter.
I know Joe would adjust at half-time, so the second half we came out in a full court man-to-man press. I had rotated several players on their point guard the first half, so he was very frustrated, plus he had no points except a couple of free throws. He started to shoot it up the second half and thank goodness he missed. The game was over. All the work and preparation had paid off.
Tampa Catholic breezed through their bracket of the tournament and were getting ready to get even with us. their football players were now in basketball shape and their coach had told them that there would be several college coaches there for the championship game. I told my players that the big schools would be at the state tournament.
Saturday morning we had our usual shoot around to get all the aches and pains out of our bodies. I told the players to go shopping or catch a movie and relax. I spent the afternoon watching several films on Tampa Catholic thinking about every possible situation.
Chapter 11: The Last Game
The stands were full. Everyone knew that this was the game of the year. If we met T.C. again this year, it would be in the State Finals in Lakeland. Yes, there were several college scouts here. Neither coach was worried, this game had little meaning but the players were fired up. They had known each other for several years, in the playgrounds, summer camps, summer leagues, and we had beaten them twice during the regular season. The first time we ran them out of the gym. The second time it was a hard fought battle.
I knew their coach had drilled them for this game, so my plan was to let OUR #3, 4 and 5 players do most of the scoring (this would also confuse the other state teams that would probably see only the district final box score in their local paper). I told Brandon that his job was to get his teammates open and hand out 10 assists if possible. The big guy was to take it to the hoop but then dish it out to our guys on the 3-point line.
It worked. They came out in a triangle and two (it looked very familiar) maybe TC's coach felt it would work against Tampa Prep or Berkeley no matter who won the previous night. They left our #3 and 4 players wide open for those threes. They went in. We were ahead by 14 at half. The gym was buzzing with excitement. The crowd sensed another run at the state championship. The players ran into the locker room chanting, "All the way to State, All the way to State !!" I knew the second half would be different. I explained to my players that their coach was yelling at them right now. He was probably calling them a bunch of girls and sissies. That they would come our the second half ready to tear our heads off. Everyone got really quiet. They realized we had a war ahead.
I explained that if we just did what we have learned all year: play good defense and hit the boards the war was ours.
TC came our with a vengeance. They crashed the boards and got some easy second shots. The 14 point lead quickly evaporated. From there the lead changes hands several times. The students in the stands were going crazy. I was glad the Deans from both schools were here that night to keep the crowd under control. I was kind of proud that we had raised our program to the level where their fans felt the game important enough to get excited about it. It still wasn't at the same level as the Jesuit-TC rivals that had taken decades to mature.
TC was ahead by 4 points going into the 4th quarter. That meant they had out scored us by 18 points in the quarter. My mind was racing trying to dissect what we were doing wrong. It was the boards. I had to decide if this game was worth winning. Then I realized if I had doubts, then my players had doubts. Yes, the game was worth winning. Every game is worth winning, especially against TC who we could meet in the state finals. We had arrived. we were at the level where we should win each game. The Chicago Bulls showed the NBA world this when they won over 70 games in one season. They were many games when they were down going into the 4th quarter. They had pride and the rest of the league feared them.
Therefore I asked the players if they wanted to win this game. They said yes. I then said lets win this one for our fans. I was lucky because at that very moment the senior boys (painted with Berkeley blue faces) were leading a cheer "give me a 'B" for B-U-C-S. That fired up the team. They were ready to listen. I explained that TC was hungrier for the rebounds then we. I then decided to put Brandon under the boards because TC had some heavy guys (football players) pushing us around. I had yelled at the refs a couple of times during the 3rd quarter and they were ready to call some fouls. We came out of the huddle fired up. A quick look at TC, I noticed they were tired and emotionally spent. Putting Brandon underneath really helped. They called a couple of quick fouls on TC and we were in the bonus really early. We took control of the game and kept a lead for most of the 4th quarter.
Up two with two minutes to go and the ball, I called our second to last time-out. The battle of the boards had really tired us out. We had also out hustled TC on several plays for lose balls. I let the players get a drink and catch their breath. Then I told the guys the game was ours. All we had to do is not throw the ball away, hit the free throws and of course hit the boards. I put my "best" five players on the floor. Two were non-starters. Four were seniors and had been here before. They had worked with me for two or three hard but fun years. We would now go into our deliberate offense and sure enough they had to foul us.
We did hit the one-on-ones but TC answered each of them with a three. With 20 seconds to go and TC down by two points, TC called a time-out. I told our guys that the only way We could lose was if they hit a three on the buzzer or we fouled them during a lay-up. I would prefer to go into overtime so no fouls or lay-ups. At this point if TC had know that, they probably would have driven to the basket. Instead they ran a play to get their guard open for a three. It hit nothing but the net with 5 seconds left on the clock.
The stands erupted with TC students storming the court. Many had not even heard the whistle to stop the clock. The TC players were all celebrating and hugging each other. They thought the game was over. But they made a crutial mistake, they shot too early. But when you are down by two, a three point goal is never too early.
The scorer keeper knew I would use my last time-out and stopped the clock as soon as the ball went through the hoop (that is why it is called a home court advantage). TC complaint but the refs explained that our captain was calling a time-out as the ball went through the net.
The hardest part of the play was getting the ball in bounds. How would TC guard the inbound pass? My assistants and I guessed that their coach was really worried about his players committing a foul (the refs had called quite a few fouls in the last two minutes), so there wouldn't be as much pressure as there should have been.
Our point guard would take two dribbles to give Brandon to get open off two picks and then pass the ball to Brandon in the wing. Brandon would shoot the ball with two seconds on the clock.
The key would be that Brandon was to MISS the basket by a foot or so. The big man would take the ball in mid-air and shoot it. We had practice this play many times and yet had never used it, so the opposing team were not aware of it. All the defensive players were so worried about Brandon scoring that they forgot about the rebound or short shot.
The ball went in at the buzzer. The stands erupted again except this time it was the Berkeley student body. TC stood there stunned. I hugged my players and told Brandon that that was the best shot he had ever taken. I made sure the press wrote that it was a planned play and counted the shot as an assist. Of course the big star was our center who held their big scoring player under ten boards and only 16 points. I was so proud of our seniors on those last two minutes. It had been hard for the two who did not start during the season but got plenty of playing time. I shook TC coach's hand and we exchanged words about seeing each other again in Lakeland for the State Tournament. The Headmaster told me it was the best game he had ever seen and that we would have a big celebration on Monday in school. I asked him to save the celebration until we won the state championship. My wife, Kathy, came running up eyes full of tears of joy for her son and husband. I looked around the gym and saw all the parents hugging their children and I knew we had had a successful season. I looked for Brandon and we hugged each other and cried that all our hard work had paid off. I would remember this moment for the rest of my life. Two seconds to go, down by one, nothing but net.
Prolog
That win took us over the top. The team now knew it could play with the bet. We made it back to Lakeland but TC lost in the other semi-finals against an inferior team. I think they were looking ahead to the state finals against us plus they were just excited to make to the dance after losing the districts to us.
We son the state tournament with very little coaching form my side. The team was playing so well. After the championship, I announced to the team I had resigned as coach but the Headmaster had allowed me to wait until the end of the season to announce it.
It was time for me to learn how to coach soccer. My second son, Austin was becoming an All-American soccer player. Her had traveled all over the southeast playing club soccer and I had learned a lot about this game (it was very much like basketball). He could kick goals with either foot. I've always loved soccer.
THE END
