Popular Post ORU40 Posted March 7, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted March 7, 2022 My daughter asked me to dig this up today and send her a picture of it for her friends and I thought I would share. I have very few claims to fame, but the 2 things that any age group are still interested in are "did you play against Michael Jordan?", yes I did... and my experience with coach K. I was a pretty highly recruited kid a hundred years ago because I was the Los Angeles city high school scoring leader my senior year 1980, LA is of course a highly recruited area. I was an OK student and coach K recruited me to West Point, he was a great person and I really liked him, but let him know I wasn't interested in attending West Point, he was very gracious and then called me back a few months later and told me he had just gotten the job at Duke. He asked if I would I would at least take a campus visit as he was very interested in me, I still had one visit left and Duke had just played for the national championship game in 1978 with Gminski, & Banks and lost to Kentucky in 1978. Long story short, I was coach K's first on campus visit recruit at Duke, he was not coach K then and Duke was not yet Duke. I obviously did not accept his scholarship offer to attend Duke as the attached letter reveals, but I am glad he was able to bounce back from that set back and make something of a career for himself! LOL Letter from Coach K.pdf 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmg1984 Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 1 minute ago, ORU40 said: My daughter asked me to dig this up today and send her a picture of it for her friends and I thought I would share. I have very few claims to fame, but the 2 things that any age group are still interested in are "did you play against Michael Jordan?", yes I did... and my experience with coach K. I was a pretty highly recruited kid a hundred years ago because I was the Los Angeles city high school scoring leader my senior year 1980, LA is of course a highly recruited area. I was an OK student and coach K recruited me to West Point, he was a great person and I really liked him, but let him know I wasn't interested in attending West Point, he was very gracious and then called me back a few months later and told me he had just gotten the job at Duke. He asked if I would I would at least take a campus visit as he was very interested in me, I still had one visit left and Duke had just played for the national championship game in 1978 with Gminski, & Banks and lost to Kentucky in 1978. Long story short, I was coach K's first on campus visit recruit at Duke, he was not coach K then and Duke was not yet Duke. I obviously did not accept his scholarship offer to attend Duke as the attached letter reveals, but I am glad he was able to bounce back from that set back and make something of a career for himself! LOL Letter from Coach K.pdf And he recruited Mark Acres also if I remember right Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keenan Henderson Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 Nice share ORU 40, interesting story Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vcboy2000 Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 Am I the only one that would love to hear the Jordan story? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagle88 Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 Great story! Thanks for sharing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmg1984 Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 2 hours ago, ORU40 said: My daughter asked me to dig this up today and send her a picture of it for her friends and I thought I would share. I have very few claims to fame, but the 2 things that any age group are still interested in are "did you play against Michael Jordan?", yes I did... and my experience with coach K. I was a pretty highly recruited kid a hundred years ago because I was the Los Angeles city high school scoring leader my senior year 1980, LA is of course a highly recruited area. I was an OK student and coach K recruited me to West Point, he was a great person and I really liked him, but let him know I wasn't interested in attending West Point, he was very gracious and then called me back a few months later and told me he had just gotten the job at Duke. He asked if I would I would at least take a campus visit as he was very interested in me, I still had one visit left and Duke had just played for the national championship game in 1978 with Gminski, & Banks and lost to Kentucky in 1978. Long story short, I was coach K's first on campus visit recruit at Duke, he was not coach K then and Duke was not yet Duke. I obviously did not accept his scholarship offer to attend Duke as the attached letter reveals, but I am glad he was able to bounce back from that set back and make something of a career for himself! LOL Letter from Coach K.pdf Didn't you play against Jordan in a summer high school tournament? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORob1 Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 Great story-very cool! Thanks for sharing, 40...And please don't hold out any Jordan stories if you have them. : ) I have also heard that Jay Bilas had narrowed his college basketball options down to ORU and Duke before ultimately choosing the Blue Devils. Anyone know if that's true? Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORU40 Posted March 7, 2022 Author Share Posted March 7, 2022 18 hours ago, vcboy2000 said: Am I the only one that would love to hear the Jordan story? The Jordan story is going to be a let down! I played against Mike at the 1981 Olympic Sports festival in Syracuse NY. It was a great event that was kind of a mini Olympics designed for the US to develop potential 1984 Olympians. There were almost every Olympic sport there, Basketball obviously, track and field, gymnastics, boxing, swimming and diving, etc. There were a lot of really top male & female athletes there as the US had boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Renaldo Nehemiah won the 110m hurdles, Greg Louganis was upset and got a silver medal. The basketball teams were also loaded with talent, the age limit was no one over just completing their freshman year as they would be seniors for the 84'games, a lot of HS seniors that were McDonalds All Americans, 81 was a loaded class. The East team had Pat Ewing, Chris Mullin, Adrian Branch and several Georgetown guys as John Thompson was the east teams coach, the mid west team had a great back court of Doc Rivers and Derek Harper. The south team had a couple Kentucky recruits, Bret Bearup and Jimmy Masters, they also had a kid named Michael Jordan, to say he was an athlete would obviously be a monumental understatement- he could dunk from the parking lot!! Mark Acres and I were on the west team, with a couple UCLA guys Stuart Gray and Ralph Jackson, also Michael Cage now the color guy for the Thunder. I got to play a lot and shot well as we had several big guys and not a lot of shooters so my job was to keep the defenses from doubling on the bigs. We were there for 2 weeks, lots of practices and then we played each team once, we won the round robin without a loss and then won the metal round games and the Gold medal going undefeated, beating MJ and the South team in the finals. He was a very nice guy, not yet a superstar, it would about 8 or 9 months before he would hit the game winning jumper against Georgetown for the national title and become a star! That's my Michael Jordan story, not great, but I m 2-0 against Mike!!! Spoiler alert Mike made the 84' Olympic team and I didn't! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmg1984 Posted March 8, 2022 Share Posted March 8, 2022 4 hours ago, ORU40 said: The Jordan story is going to be a let down! I played against Mike at the 1981 Olympic Sports festival in Syracuse NY. It was a great event that was kind of a mini Olympics designed for the US to develop potential 1984 Olympians. There were almost every Olympic sport there, Basketball obviously, track and field, gymnastics, boxing, swimming and diving, etc. There were a lot of really top male & female athletes there as the US had boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Renaldo Nehemiah won the 110m hurdles, Greg Louganis was upset and got a silver medal. The basketball teams were also loaded with talent, the age limit was no one over just completing their freshman year as they would be seniors for the 84'games, a lot of HS seniors that were McDonalds All Americans, 81 was a loaded class. The East team had Pat Ewing, Chris Mullin, Adrian Branch and several Georgetown guys as John Thompson was the east teams coach, the mid west team had a great back court of Doc Rivers and Derek Harper. The south team had a couple Kentucky recruits, Bret Bearup and Jimmy Masters, they also had a kid named Michael Jordan, to say he was an athlete would obviously be a monumental understatement- he could dunk from the parking lot!! Mark Acres and I were on the west team, with a couple UCLA guys Stuart Gray and Ralph Jackson, also Michael Cage now the color guy for the Thunder. I got to play a lot and shot well as we had several big guys and not a lot of shooters so my job was to keep the defenses from doubling on the bigs. We were there for 2 weeks, lots of practices and then we played each team once, we won the round robin without a loss and then won the metal round games and the Gold medal going undefeated, beating MJ and the South team in the finals. He was a very nice guy, not yet a superstar, it would about 8 or 9 months before he would hit the game winning jumper against Georgetown for the national title and become a star! That's my Michael Jordan story, not great, but I m 2-0 against Mike!!! Spoiler alert Mike made the 84' Olympic team and I didn't! Nice knew it's was big time games you were playing in! I wish I had went I only lived 1 hr and a half away Cage was a great rebounder for SDSU was Sam Perkins there? I'm sure you saw Mike in the fall of 82 at ORU what a player Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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