Memoirs of a Walsh High Basketball Junkie - A Putnam Brother & Hayseed from Iowa

Go Gaels

You know there is a time and a place for everything and now that it has been a lot of years since the emergence of the Walsh High basketball dynasty of the 1960's I guess I can comment on what I know of the first half of the decade that laid the foundation for the dynasty.

First to address some background.  When Mike, Bob and I lived in Iowa City we had a basketball court in the attic of our garage.  Our dad played for Iowa City High School and graduated from the University of Iowa so we were hard core Iowa fans from birth.

In fact even after we moved to Ottumwa we returned to Iowa City every weekend for football games and cheered the Hawkeyes on to two Rose Bowl championships in the late 1950's.  When possible we also came back for basketball games, especially when Iowa was playing Ohio State and other legendary teams of the time.

When we lived in Iowa City we were supposed to go to St. Mary's High School and even our high school to be was a basketball powerhouse, thus increasing our desire to excel in order to make the team when we got to high school.

In fact after we moved to Ottumwa the Iowa City St. Mary's team won the Iowa State Class B high school championship in 1956 and 1957 and finished second in 1958, such was the quality of the players and organizations in our hometown.

Once in Ottumwa a different set of issues was involved as the Walsh Gaels had no legacy, in fact they even had no home as they played in the old Ottumwa High School practice court with the track overhead.

We joined the YMCA leagues in 7th and 8th grades where we played with and against the future stars of Ottumwa High School and together we made the All Star teams.  In other words, long before the so called bitter rivalry between Walsh and OHS which supposedly culminated in the 1963 District championship we were competitors and we were friends.

I think people perceived something that was never there.  We were fierce competitors in Little League, Babe Ruth and basketball but were always able to leave the game behind after it was over.  That was the nature of competition and sportsmanship.  If we had to lose in the tournament it might just as well be to OHS.

Of course we didn't really lose to OHS in that 1963-64 war did we?

Since Walsh never had enough students to mount a football team, my first love as a sport, we were also big supporters of the OHS Bulldogs and went to every home football game on Friday nights.

So along comes high school and Mike spent his freshman year at the old Walsh in South Ottumwa.  By the next year when I was a freshman we moved to the Airbase 12 miles away from Ottumwa into an abandoned building while work began on a new high school.

For basketball practice the team would have to get back to town and go to the civic auditorium basement, crawling through the city road vehicles and snow plows to a court, concrete of course, dimly lit, with no heat, and a steel girder directly over the baskets.

Needless to say there was no hot water for showers and in addition to having your shots blocked by freezing defenders you might have your vision blocked by the smoke pouring out of your mouth from the extreme cold.  Did I mention that the baskets were mounted on the coliseum walls so if you were charging to the basket for a lay in a second after the ball left your hand you crashed into the concrete wall?

In truth the conditions and the environment were far more suited for a Dicken's novel than for the foundation of a basketball dynasty.

Official games were played in the OHS practice gym with the running track above and you often had to strain to hear the ref when track runners were pounding overhead.  On one side bleachers pulled out from the wall and seated about 100 people (slight under-exaggeration).  The overflow had to stand on the track high above the game.

My freshman and sophomore years were spent commuting between the airbase, auditorium basement and practice court with the track overhead but something went right because we were 21-2 the first year I got to play varsity, in '61-62.

That was when I made a decision that Walsh had the potential to become good, really good, but no one would ever know around the state.  It became my mission to be the secret source of all Walsh basketball statistics for every major news outlet in the state.

Every week under a pen name from my sophomore year on I submitted weekly background for stories to the top newspapers, radio and TV stations from Des Moines to Dubuque, Davenport to Iowa City about the achievements of the Walsh Gaels.  Sports writers and broadcasters were inundated with Walsh info and stats and a running update of the career statistics of my brother Mike.  These same people were the ones who voted for the top ten basketball teams in the state in each class.

Only two people really knew what I was doing those three years because I had to share the strategy in order to be successful.  One was my close friend and sports editor for the Ottumwa Courier Alan Hoskins because I knew the sports people from around the state would want follow up info from a local reporter.

The second was my principal once we moved into the new Walsh High School, Father Ryan, aka Mister Golden Gloves, famous writer, etc., etc.  Now Father understood the value of publicity and I needed to stay on his good side because I was constantly in trouble with teachers, coaches and priests.

Like the time we borrowed a truck with a crane to move a 3000 pound bell out of the backyard of some unsuspecting people and mounted it as a victory bell at the airbase to generate school spirit.  I just knew we were going to have a great team and wanted to do something for the school.  Of course we had no driver's licenses nor permission to take the bell and we were all sworn to secrecy so no one knew from whence it came.

That is until photographer Michael Lemberger showed up one fateful day and took a school picture for the newspaper with the entire student body surrounding the bell out at the airbase.  The rightful owners had reported it missing and we did intend to return it after the last game of our first winning season but one day they found their missing bell on the front page of the Courier and eventually the cops forced a confession from us.  Still, we did get to keep it until after the last game since we would not be returning to the airbase the next year.

As for my secret journalism efforts, by the time we moved into the new school in 1963 Walsh was ranked number 1 in the state in class B where we stayed for two years.  My brother was all state his junior year and All American his senior year and Walsh, well we went 21-2, 22-2, 21-2 and 20-5 the four years I was there.

Mike broke the career scoring record in Iowa basketball and from 1960-64 Walsh had one of the best four year records in state history at 84-11, all while having to play schools up to 12 times as large during the tournaments.  At least I had something to write about those years.

The power of the press paid off as it helped us get the top ranking and kept me from getting expelled.  Of course Alan Hoskins and Father Ryan protected my secret.  It also might explain yet another mystery at Walsh.

Through no fault of my own (of course) I had been kicked out of journalism class from November until I graduated my senior year yet I somehow remained on the staff of the Unitas newspaper and was co-editor of the yearbook with Maureen Dessert.  Then I got the outstanding journalism award at commencement.  Perhaps the years of ghost writing were secretly recognized.

But there is more to the Walsh story and this part few know about.  I mentioned this to my friend Doug Potter who does an excellent job keeping the natives informed and now I will share it with you.

There is a class issue regarding Walsh basketball that often goes unnoticed like most class issues.  We all recognize that a team is made up of five or more key players but it was rather unusual that three of us were brothers and were starters for two years.

In the past 55 years Iowa boys high school basketball had 49 split state champions (two or more classes) and 6 single state champions.  The single champions were from 1960 - 1966.  My brothers and I played from 1959 - 1965.  In other words we played in 5 of the 6 single state champion years, and every year more than one of us played together there was only a single state champion.

Walsh was ranked #1 in class B both years the three of us started.  The highest state tourney finish by Walsh during the single champion years was 1964 when we reached the Sweet 16 before losing to eventual state runner up Cedar Rapids Jefferson.

Ottumwa High and Cedar Rapids Jefferson who knocked Walsh out of the state tourney in 1963 and 1964 both were in the top 15 largest high schools in the state for enrollment with over 1,500 students.  Walsh ranked about 360th in enrollment in Iowa with about 125 students.  Both times Walsh lost to schools 12 times larger.

By the way, that Sweet 16 finish in the 1964 season when I was a senior was the first time I got to play back in my home town, Iowa City, and finally I got to play in the University of Iowa field house before 14,000 fans, a far cry from the few hundred just three years earlier.

A few other notes from my ghost writing days.

In my three varsity years we never lost a home game.

Our worst record those years was 20-5.

Every year after winning sectionals we played Class A or AA teams from much larger schools.

During the time we played there were 3 All Americans from Iowa, Mike Putnam, Jerry Waugh from Mt. Ayr and Jim Cummins from Cedar Rapids Regis.

Regis won the single state championship in 1962 and finished 2nd in 1963 and Cummins went on to become a famous NBC News reporter.

Walsh in 1962-63 played against both other Iowa High School All Americans during the season, Cummins once and Waugh twice.

There were a whole lot of scoring and other records and Mike was inducted into the Iowa High School Basketball Hall of Fame for holding the career scoring record for some time.

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The Heart and Soul behind the Kentucky Widcats Drive to Perfection - Willie Cauley-Stein

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Perhaps the greatest achievement of Coach John Calipari of the Kentucky Wildcats was his ability to put one of the greatest teams in the history of college basketball on the court that is grounded in discipline, humility, and class.  There is no trash talking from these Wildcats, no show boating, no taunts of opponents, and no headlines from ridiculous claims of superiority.

They coolly and methodically go about the business of proving they are the greatest team in the nation, and perhaps for all time.  Standing seven foot tall in his third year at Kentucky is perhaps the heart and soul of that magic act by Calipari, one Willie Cauley-Stein.

Stein said he went to Kentucky to compete at the highest level of competition.  In his three years he had done just that with a Final Four appearance every year, one national championship, and a chance to get two during his career in college.

On court he simply over-powers opponents.  He is first team All American.  Off court, this imposing force is one of the most beloved of all Wildcats in the eyes of, believe it or not, the news  media.  Now college jocks have never been particularly astute at handling the media but Willie is one of their favorite interviews and he has no problem doing them.

He respects his opponents, can joke and bring sportsmanship to the table, and never makes stupid statements.  In fact, he is so far removed from the stereotype of a money hungry college superstar he is a breath of fresh air in the world of big bucks and high pressure.

Most of all, he just keeps winning, helping the coach teach the young freshman like a senior statesman, sharing his experiences with them, using humor to keep the pressure down, and doing things that blow his image as the Monster Mash of Kentucky basketball, a title once held by legendary UK star Jamal Mashburn.

Just this last Monday of the most important week of his life, Final Four week, Willie took time to ask out a fan for lunch and what resulted is vintage Willie Cauley-Stein.

Kentucky's Willie Cauley-Stein takes young fan on lunch date

Even during what must be one of the biggest weeks of his life, Kentucky forward Willie Cauley-Stein took time out for a special fan.

The Final Four-bound Wildcats are awaiting Saturday night's game against Wisconsin, but Cauley-Stein met with four-year-old Olivia, a young girl with cerebral palsy, at the Child Development Center of the Bluegrass in Lexington, Ky., on Monday.

Child Development Center of the Bluegrass .

Education · 968 Likes

· April 1 at 7:43am ·

Our hearts are full today!  We are so proud and excited to let you all know why the UK Wildcat visited CDCB on Monday! He came to deliver an invitation to our Olivia.... Willie Cauley-Stein requested her presence for a lunch date!

Yesterday Olivia got to have spaghetti with Willie at the Wildcat Lodge. She was SO charming and he made her feel SO special. Very happy for our little girl, and very proud to be a part of ‪#‎BBN

.... that a player of Willie's caliber would take time out of his day on perhaps the most pressure-filled and anticipatory week of his college career speaks volumes about the outstanding character of Kentucky's Basketball team.

Now if that does not soften your impression of the mighty Kentucky basketball machine, the following article will.  How often does a member of the news media bemoan the fact a jock will no longer be so accessible to the press.  Well a reporter for the prestigious Washington Post did just that in this most unusual tribute to Willie.

Washington Post

By Chuck Culpepper April1

He’s Kentucky’s Willie Cauley-Stein, and he’s certainly worth a listen

A brief mourning period will follow this soaring Kentucky basketball season. It will have nothing to do with Kentucky fans or any Kentucky outcome, although a finicky tournament that banishes people for one mere defeat can always wind up in mourning. No, this odd bereavement will come to a smallish group of Kentucky residents.

They’re the writers and broadcasters who cover Kentucky basketball, and they will face a unique void come springtime. The 7-foot human Willie Cauley-Stein will make off for the NBA after three seasons at Kentucky, and no longer may they stand at his locker and listen to him routinely. They tend to sigh about that.

“I’ll miss covering him tremendously, and this is the rare instance when I think I can speak for everybody on the beat,” said Brett Dawson of rivals.com. “I’ve never covered anyone quite like him anywhere, and I doubt anyone’s ever covered anyone like him at Kentucky,” after which Dawson referred to Cauley-Stein as “a true individual,” “genuinely funny,” “thoughtful” with “no place” for cliches, a player who “rarely, if ever, fails to consider a question carefully before he answers it.”

Kentucky’s passage to the Final Four at 38-0 has brought a bale of regular sights, not least the usual blob of souls and cameras around Cauley-Stein as he sits at his locker (or a table in a side room). He speaks in tones mostly calm. Everyone leans in. Inevitably there comes some burst of laughter.

He begins almost every answer with, “Ommm,” and flows from there.

As a third-year wise man in a sport of starry freshmen, he manages to be blunt without being abrasive, helpful without being fawning, candid without being derisive. Mostly, he’s respectful of seemingly every type of question, often with long answers. He’ll describe the sport seriously, describe Kentucky’s noted fans semi-seriously, or go off the script unseriously.

Just last week in Cleveland, imagining West Virginia’s vaunted press, he went on a long description of the importance of how a cornered animal might react.

Reporter: “What animal are you guys?”

Cauley-Stein (pausing to think): “Have you seen a raccoon?”

With laughter all around at the unexpected nature of it, reporter: “I was thinking lion.”

Cauley-Stein: “Lions don’t get cornered.”

Then: “Raccoons are feisty. They’re not gonna just roll over.”

On other occasions, he said it would thrill him if his team ever got a mention from anchorman Tom Tucker on “Family Guy;” spoke of Kentucky as “not the villains” and said the black hat he once wore was only “my John Wayne;” professed to prefer Batman over other superheroes because he accomplishes his feats without superpowers. He once drew laughs by saying he could tweet about “hot dogs” and get deluged with responses about how he wasn’t working on his game. Speaking of a Cincinnati player over whom Cauley-Stein dunked ferociously in the round of 32, he said, “I was already on the way down dunking it and the dude slid over . . . I mean, I just remember seeing his head, like that [underneath], ‘What is this guy doing?’ It was more confusing. Normally I know what I’m doing. I didn’t really know what he was doing for real.

I’m looking down at his hair, like, ‘Dude, you really jumped on this.’ ”

Cauley-Stein scholars speak of him as a basketball player who wants very much to participate in the general college experience. With Jerry Tipton of the Lexington Herald-Leader, he discussed his wish to open his own “shoe and clothing store, designing my own stuff and putting it in there,” and said, “One of the best ways to express yourself is the way you dress.” So in the inverted world of college sports, he has fielded questions about his basketball seriousness. “I mean, that’s been the question since I got here: If I love the game,” he said at tournament’s outset. “If I didn’t love the game, why would I play at the University of Kentucky? Why would I ever come here? It’s a serious program. All the success they had, all that. That bugs me when people ask me that. ‘You don’t love the game.’ This is the most serious place to play. (Laughs.) I’m dumbfounded when people ask that. Like I really get upset.

“‘What? How is that a question, just because I’m interested in other things?’ You got to be interested in other things. If you focus on one thing, you’re going to eventually like – you’re going to get bored with it or you’re going to get burned out on it. My grandparents have taught me that since I was younger, just to be involved in a whole bunch of different things so you don’t get burnt out and you know what you like to do and what you don’t like to do. I couldn’t imagine not playing this game.”

He spoke as the chatter builds on where he might go in the NBA draft come June — the consensus tilts toward early — and on his rarefied, manifold defensive skills, last seen in the frantic final seconds of the Midwest Region final. That’s when Notre Dame’s 6-foot-5 guard Jerian Grant took his court-length dribble in the nagging company of Cauley-Stein’s evolutionary, revolutionary speed and quickness and length, and the whole chase wound up in the hopeless corner. Cauley-Stein didn’t come to Kentucky as a McDonald’s all-American, and he did experience Kentucky at a nadir, the (shudder) NIT season of 2012-13. Of that, he said, “If you accept [the criticism], if you indulge the weight, it’s only gonna make you stronger.” From that, Kentucky ascended from a No. 8 seeding to the 2014 national championship game, but sans Cauley-Stein, who broke his ankle in the Sweet 16. Since the trip back to the hotel that night, he has said repeatedly, he has looked forward to all of this — even to all of these questions.

He’s established enough to point out, gently, that when the coaches took him out after a missed left-handed hook, the ensuing discussion never would have occurred had the shot merely gone in as it nearly did. During a thick, physical match with Cincinnati, he saw also “probably one of the better refereeing groups we’ve had.” Of the various ploys teams have tried, he said he understands: “You can’t just let us catch it and let us do whatever we want.” And having learned some of life through sports fans, he said, “Like last year, I dyed my hair blonde. A quarter of them were like, ‘What are you doing?’ Then there’s another whatever percent like, ‘Yo, that’s awesome. Like, keep up with that.’ It’s anything you do. There’s going to be a side that doesn’t mess with it, there’s going to be a side that likes it.”

In that same mass conversation, he made the point that with all its nine-deep talent and its 38-0, Kentucky still isn’t particularly showy. “I feel like if we were out there after every dunk beating your chest or every three doing something or every play you was doing something crazy, people are just gonna hate you more,” he said. “We’re already hated doing classy things. If we was doing rude things to people, the whole world would hate us.”

Then again, it seems the only people who could hate Cauley-Stein are those who haven’t listened, and that’s according to those who have.

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Memoirs of a Walsh High Basketball Junkie - A Putnam Brother & Hayseed from Iowa

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Go Gaels

You know there is a time and a place for everything and now that it has been a lot of years since the emergence of the Walsh High basketball dynasty of the 1960's I guess I can comment on what I know of the first half of the decade that laid the foundation for the dynasty.

First to address some background.  When Mike, Bob and I lived in Iowa City we had a basketball court in the attic of our garage.  Our dad played for Iowa City High School and graduated from the University of Iowa so we were hard core Iowa fans from birth.

In fact even after we moved to Ottumwa we returned to Iowa City every weekend for football games and cheered the Hawkeyes on to two Rose Bowl championships in the late 1950's.  When possible we also came back for basketball games, especially when Iowa was playing Ohio State and other legendary teams of the time.

When we lived in Iowa City we were supposed to go to St. Mary's High School and even our high school to be was a basketball powerhouse, thus increasing our desire to excel in order to make the team when we got to high school.

In fact after we moved to Ottumwa the Iowa City St. Mary's team won the Iowa State Class B high school championship in 1956 and 1957 and finished second in 1958, such was the quality of the players and organizations in our hometown.

Once in Ottumwa a different set of issues was involved as the Walsh Gaels had no legacy, in fact they even had no home as they played in the old Ottumwa High School practice court with the track overhead.

We joined the YMCA leagues in 7th and 8th grades where we played with and against the future stars of Ottumwa High School and together we made the All Star teams.  In other words, long before the so called bitter rivalry between Walsh and OHS which supposedly culminated in the 1963 District championship we were competitors and we were friends.

I think people perceived something that was never there.  We were fierce competitors in Little League, Babe Ruth and basketball but were always able to leave the game behind after it was over.  That was the nature of competition and sportsmanship.  If we had to lose in the tournament it might just as well be to OHS.

Of course we didn't really lose to OHS in that 1963-64 war did we?

Since Walsh never had enough students to mount a football team, my first love as a sport, we were also big supporters of the OHS Bulldogs and went to every home football game on Friday nights.

So along comes high school and Mike spent his freshman year at the old Walsh in South Ottumwa.  By the next year when I was a freshman we moved to the Airbase 12 miles away from Ottumwa into an abandoned building while work began on a new high school.

For basketball practice the team would have to get back to town and go to the civic auditorium basement, crawling through the city road vehicles and snow plows to a court, concrete of course, dimly lit, with no heat, and a steel girder directly over the baskets.

Needless to say there was no hot water for showers and in addition to having your shots blocked by freezing defenders you might have your vision blocked by the smoke pouring out of your mouth from the extreme cold.  Did I mention that the baskets were mounted on the coliseum walls so if you were charging to the basket for a lay in a second after the ball left your hand you crashed into the concrete wall?

In truth the conditions and the environment were far more suited for a Dicken's novel than for the foundation of a basketball dynasty.

Official games were played in the OHS practice gym with the running track above and you often had to strain to hear the ref when track runners were pounding overhead.  On one side bleachers pulled out from the wall and seated about 100 people (slight under-exaggeration).  The overflow had to stand on the track high above the game.

My freshman and sophomore years were spent commuting between the airbase, auditorium basement and practice court with the track overhead but something went right because we were 21-2 the first year I got to play varsity, in '61-62.

That was when I made a decision that Walsh had the potential to become good, really good, but no one would ever know around the state.  It became my mission to be the secret source of all Walsh basketball statistics for every major news outlet in the state.

Every week under a pen name from my sophomore year on I submitted weekly background for stories to the top newspapers, radio and TV stations from Des Moines to Dubuque, Davenport to Iowa City about the achievements of the Walsh Gaels.  Sports writers and broadcasters were inundated with Walsh info and stats and a running update of the career statistics of my brother Mike.  These same people were the ones who voted for the top ten basketball teams in the state in each class.

Only two people really knew what I was doing those three years because I had to share the strategy in order to be successful.  One was my close friend and sports editor for the Ottumwa Courier Alan Hoskins because I knew the sports people from around the state would want follow up info from a local reporter.

The second was my principal once we moved into the new Walsh High School, Father Ryan, aka Mister Golden Gloves, famous writer, etc., etc.  Now Father understood the value of publicity and I needed to stay on his good side because I was constantly in trouble with teachers, coaches and priests.

Like the time we borrowed a truck with a crane to move a 3000 pound bell out of the backyard of some unsuspecting people and mounted it as a victory bell at the airbase to generate school spirit.  I just knew we were going to have a great team and wanted to do something for the school.  Of course we had no driver's licenses nor permission to take the bell and we were all sworn to secrecy so no one knew from whence it came.

That is until photographer Michael Lemberger showed up one fateful day and took a school picture for the newspaper with the entire student body surrounding the bell out at the airbase.  The rightful owners had reported it missing and we did intend to return it after the last game of our first winning season but one day they found their missing bell on the front page of the Courier and eventually the cops forced a confession from us.  Still, we did get to keep it until after the last game since we would not be returning to the airbase the next year.

As for my secret journalism efforts, by the time we moved into the new school in 1963 Walsh was ranked number 1 in the state in class B where we stayed for two years.  My brother was all state his junior year and All American his senior year and Walsh, well we went 21-2, 22-2, 21-2 and 20-5 the four years I was there.

Mike broke the career scoring record in Iowa basketball and from 1960-64 Walsh had one of the best four year records in state history at 84-11, all while having to play schools up to 12 times as large during the tournaments.  At least I had something to write about those years.

The power of the press paid off as it helped us get the top ranking and kept me from getting expelled.  Of course Alan Hoskins and Father Ryan protected my secret.  It also might explain yet another mystery at Walsh.

Through no fault of my own (of course) I had been kicked out of journalism class from November until I graduated my senior year yet I somehow remained on the staff of the Unitas newspaper and was co-editor of the yearbook with Maureen Dessert.  Then I got the outstanding journalism award at commencement.  Perhaps the years of ghost writing were secretly recognized.

But there is more to the Walsh story and this part few know about.  I mentioned this to my friend Doug Potter who does an excellent job keeping the natives informed and now I will share it with you.

There is a class issue regarding Walsh basketball that often goes unnoticed like most class issues.  We all recognize that a team is made up of five or more key players but it was rather unusual that three of us were brothers and were starters for two years.

In the past 55 years Iowa boys high school basketball had 49 split state champions (two or more classes) and 6 single state champions.  The single champions were from 1960 - 1966.  My brothers and I played from 1959 - 1965.  In other words we played in 5 of the 6 single state champion years, and every year more than one of us played together there was only a single state champion.

Walsh was ranked #1 in class B both years the three of us started.  The highest state tourney finish by Walsh during the single champion years was 1964 when we reached the Sweet 16 before losing to eventual state runner up Cedar Rapids Jefferson.

Ottumwa High and Cedar Rapids Jefferson who knocked Walsh out of the state tourney in 1963 and 1964 both were in the top 15 largest high schools in the state for enrollment with over 1,500 students.  Walsh ranked about 360th in enrollment in Iowa with about 125 students.  Both times Walsh lost to schools 12 times larger.

By the way, that Sweet 16 finish in the 1964 season when I was a senior was the first time I got to play back in my home town, Iowa City, and finally I got to play in the University of Iowa field house before 14,000 fans, a far cry from the few hundred just three years earlier.

A few other notes from my ghost writing days.

In my three varsity years we never lost a home game.

Our worst record those years was 20-5.

Every year after winning sectionals we played Class A or AA teams from much larger schools.

During the time we played there were 3 All Americans from Iowa, Mike Putnam, Jerry Waugh from Mt. Ayr and Jim Cummins from Cedar Rapids Regis.

Regis won the single state championship in 1962 and finished 2nd in 1963 and Cummins went on to become a famous NBC News reporter.

Walsh in 1962-63 played against both other Iowa High School All Americans during the season, Cummins once and Waugh twice.

There were a whole lot of scoring and other records and Mike was inducted into the Iowa High School Basketball Hall of Fame for holding the career scoring record for some time.

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Doug McDermott NCAA player of the year

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Doug McDermott, the basketball machine from the Creighton Bluejays swept all the top national awards for player of the year.  During they past season he averaged 26.7 points, tops in the nation, and 7 rebounds while leading Creighton to a 27-8 record and NCAA tournament invitation.

With 3,150 points and 1,088 rebounds McDermott is one of only three men in history with over 3,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in a career.  He also is one of only three in NCAA history to be named All American three years.

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