orumom Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Jerry Hale passed away Dec 18 after a long battle with Alzheimer's. He played for Coach Iba and won 61 games during his three years as head coach at ORU. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theeagleman5 Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 TheEagleman is very sad to hear this news....I got to know Coach Hale during my last two years at ORU and he was a good coach and a very nice man....sincere condolences to his family..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Titan Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Jerry was a really nice guy. He came out on short notice for the Hall Of Fame dinner when Arnold Dugger was inducted several years ago, and he and wife Jackie seemed genuinely surprised and appreciative to have been invited. Sadly, Arnold is no longer with us, either. There have been ten head coaches in ORU's 50 years of playing basketball, and we've lost four of them in the last couple of years: Jerry Hale, Ken Trickey, Lake Kelly, and Dick Acres. ORU's first coach, Bill White, passed away several years ago. The five surviving ORU men's basketball coaches? Scott Sutton, Barry Hinson, Bill Self, Ted Owens, and Ken Hayes. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORUalum Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 for those like me that were not that familiar with the Hale era of basketball at ORU, Barry Lewis has a good tribute. he walked away from basketball at the height of his career because of the pressure of following Trickey at ORU. it sounds like unrealistic expectations abounded around the basketball program at the time. LINK 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theeagleman5 Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Yes...it had to be really hard for Coach Hale following Ken Trickey....Coach Trickey was forever the showman with the "run and gun" offense....Hale was more of a traditional offense guy with a slower tempo....ORU fans were not used to that but Hale was still successful during his first couple of years thanks to All American Anthony Roberts who was in the opinon of TheEagleman the best ORU basketball player of all time......also as mentioned above, Arnold Dugger came from Southern Idaho with Coach Hale and was a stellar PG for ORU...he also had 6-9 forward Alvin Scott (Phoenix Suns) for a year or two....perhaps one of the most exciting wins for Coach Hale was that opening round NIT win at Madison Square Garden in 1975 when Dugger hit a 15 foot jumper at the buzzer to beat favored Memphis..... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theeagleman5 Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 After I graduated TheEagleman and his dad drove to Blacksburg, VA in January of 1977 to watch ORU take on Virginia Tech....I had a few friends on the team from my Oracle days and was told that we could get into the arena in the afternoon for the pre-game shootaround....we were also hoping to get some tickets for the game.....while sitting courtside as Anthony Roberts and his teammates warmed up, Coach Hale recognized me and came over to say hello....I introduced him to my father and Jerry said how impressed he was that we had driven the appoximately 400 miles from Philadelphia to watch the Titans play on the road on a weekend when the temperatures were sub zero in the Virginia mountains....he asked my dad if we had tickets and dad said that we were waiting for the box office to open....Coach Hale said not to bother and told us that he would leave a pair of passes at the window and that we could sit behind the team bench....so that night we enjoyed from courtside a big ORU come from behind victory over the Hokies in front of a near sellout crowd...Anthony Roberts had a very good game as I recall.....later that season he would score 65 in an NIT loss vs. Oregon.... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theeagleman5 Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 So Coach Hale won 20 or more games in each of his three ORU seasons and has the best winning percentage of any coach in ORU basketball history......what was the story behind his leaving after just three seasons???....TheEagleman would love to know..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 So Coach Hale won 20 or more games in each of his three ORU seasons and has the best winning percentage of any coach in ORU basketball history......what was the story behind his leaving after just three seasons???....TheEagleman would love to know..... At the time, he is quoted as saying, "to spend more time with his family." My gut says that after Trickey, it was hard to live up to some unrealistic expectations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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