Not a Demon, but NSU has a soft spot for Joe Dumars

Joe Dumars is being enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame tonight and we all should be proud.

Joe grew up in Natchitoches. He was raised less than a mile from our campus, right across the street from a business owned by the Maggio family, and little Joe and little Chris Maggio spent days and nights playing together. Chris, of course, is now NSU’s Alumni Director. They’re still dear friends.

Joe’s charming mother, Ophelia, worked on campus, I’m told. When he was in high school, Joe spent a lot of time in Prather Coliseum playing pickup games against the Demon players of the day, really good players including Wayne Waggoner and Kenny Hale.

Joe was recruited by NSU, but chose to leave home and play at McNeese. He had a great career there and brought a lot of attention to the Southland Conference. What he did in 14 great NBA seasons is astounding – six All-Star Games, a 1989 Championship Series MVP award, and a 16-point career scoring average. For anybody who knows him or his family, it’s not surprising that he won the first NBA Sportsmanship Award and since then, the annual honor has been named the Joe Dumars Trophy.

Although I saw him play at Natchitoches Central High School for coach J.D. Garrett, I first met Joe and his parents when I was working at the Alexandria Town Talk, and had the opportunity to visit his home for a story I wrote. At times during his NBA career, on his very low-key visits home, I’d get a call from his mom asking if I could get the lights on in Prather because Joe needed to come work out. Excellence doesn’t happen by accident.

Since his playing days ended, Joe has become one of the NBA’s most respected executives in his role as the president of basketball operations for the Pistons. One thing that hasn’t changed, he deflects the attention, never seeking the spotlight. In February, he came home to visit when his brother David was in town as an assistant coach at McNeese and the Cowboys were playing the Demons at Prather Coliseum.

We didn’t know he was coming to the game – nothing unusual. Joe likes to, understandably, fly under the radar when he’s home. Otherwise there are just so many people, most of whom are well intentioned, wanting to visit him while he’s in to share time wit h his mom and family. Well, he sat up there in a white warmup suit, and it took just a few minutes before we noticed – seeing a commotion and a flow of well-wishers heading his way kinda tipped us off on press row.

Joe greeted friends and autograph seekers alike, graciously, in typical Dumars style. He did an interview with Brian Vernellis of the Shreveport Times and pointed out he’s a “Southland Conference guy” who still keeps track of the SLC scene regularly. He expressed his admiration for the Demons and coach Mike McConathy.

A month later, he showed it.

When NSU headed to Auburn Hills, Mich., for the NCAA Tournament, after a phone conversation early in the week with his old friend and then-NSU assistant coach Dave Simmons, Dumars rolled out the Pistons’ red (and blue) carpet. He made their practice facility (on a hill overlooking the Palace at Auburn Hills) available to the Demons even though he was out of town himself on Wednesday. He got back into town Thursday morning and attended practice – his office has a window looking out on the court. (His desk, by the way, is immaculate and lit by a small lamp. There’s a round table nearby that obviously is for small meetings, and there’s a bookcase and some family photos. I didn’t sneak in – there are curtains, left open, on the glass window looking out on the practice floor.)

Joe spoke to the team, at coach Mike’s request, at the end of the workout. He told them not to worry about the team names on the front of the jersey, that he’d played against the best players in the world, and nobody was any tougher than guys from back home in Louisiana. He told them he’d seen them play and he was sure they could win if they believed they could.

That evening, Joe and his son, Jordan (named for, yes, Michael Jordan, who said Joe was the toughest defender he ever faced) went to dinner with the Demons. The next day they were in Joe’s box at the Palace. At halftime, Joe had to leave for the Pistons’ game at New York that night, but Jordan and friends remained. At the end of the game, Jordan excitedly called his dad and told him the great news – the Demons won. That night, Joe talked to the New York Times about the Demons, and that story took up three quarters of the front page of the NYT’s Sunday sports section. What an incredible coup for NSU, courtesy of Joe Dumars!

Two days later, Joe was again in his box at the Palace, having flown in from Charlotte the night before. On that Sunday, he greeted a number of NSU fans in his box as they watched West Virginia end the season for the Demons of Destiny.

It was a thrill for our players (and coaches and staff) to have Joe be so kind and supportive, not to his college, but to the team in his hometown. Time and again that week, he demonstrated and expressed his admiration for a coach, a team and a program that carry the same “work hard” approach that helped Joe become, truly, one of the greats of the game.

The Basketball Hall of Fame is on a more grand scale; even, than the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, NY, or the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In Springfield, MA, they honor a select few inductees from all around the world, not just the NBA or college basketball. It’s a truly incredible accomplishment to be enshrined – and nobody is more worthy than Joe. I’ll be watching tonight at 6:30 on ESPN Classic to see his shining moment in Springfield. I hope you do, too.

Baylor president has Natchitoches roots, Demon tie

First: that’s a “Demon tie” as in a connection to NSU football, not a tie that Dr. John M. Lilley would wear.

The 1961 Baylor graduate officially took office as Baylor’s 13th president on Jan. 1, 2006, after serving four years as president at Nevada.

While a youngster, Dr. Lilley lived in Natchitoches, as his father served as pastor of Westside Baptist Church.

He’s also related to former Demon linebacker James Lilley, one of the hardest hitting folks ever to wear the purple and white during his days playing for coach A.L. Williams, lettering from 1976-78.

Getting a history lesson from a history maker

Did you know the goalpost at the north end of Turpin Stadium is the original one that went up when the stadium was completed in 1976?

Robert Weeks knows.

The Demons’ sophomore kicker got that nugget from Chuck Bourg, whose job it is to know all about NSU’s athletic facilities. Bourg is the director of special facilities for athletics, and is also back in the equipment business handling football and other sports. So that brings him to each day’s Demon practice.

Kickers being kickers, they have a lot of down time during a two-hour practice. You can only kick so much before your leg gets tired – a lot like pitchers in baseball or quarterbacks in football.

So at some point, Weeks and the other kickers engaged Bourg in a discussion of the goalposts, wondering why the north end goalpost and uprights is sturdier. The uprights on that end tend not to lean to one side or the other, but on the south end, a windy day might create a little lean to one side on the south goal.

Bourg had the quick answer – it’s the 30th birthday for the north goal post. The south goalpost – at least the uprights and crossbar – came tumbling down for the first time at the end of the final regular-season game of 1997, the Thursday night, Nov. 20 showdown for the Southland Conference championship won by the Demons 38-24 over Stephen F. Austin. I get goose bumps remembering it, watching from the press box, wishing I was down on the field in the sea of Demons celebrating.

The south end zone uprights and cross bar came down again the next season, also on a Thursday night, this time when No. 8-ranked NSU beat then No. 1-ranked McNeese State 14-10.

Another attempt came in 2000 when the Demons knocked off highly-ranked Troy State 24-17 with a stirring goalline stand (four downs from the 2 yard line or closer) in the final two minutes clinching the outcome. That happened at the north goalline; students rushed both goalposts, but the combination of security and the sturdy north goalpost stopped the attempts.

Weeks, by the way, noted that one of the two sets of uprights at Kansas last week seemed to bow inward slightly, narrowing the angle at the north end zone. Interesting that all of his record four field goals came at the south end, kicking into the scoreboard and the open end of the horseshoe-shaped Memorial Stadium.

The Pineville product found out he’d been voted SLC Special Teams player of the week when his grandmother called Tuesday night to congratulate him. He quickly visited www.nsudemons.com to get the whole story and by Wednesday, was well versed in the history of his achievement, having erased a nine-way tie for the school record.

UPDATE – Sophomore receiver Dudley Guice had another surgery on his broken jaw on Tuesday in Lawrence, Kansas, and is due to return home this weekend.

Tough break, class move

Demon receiver Dudley Guice suffered a broken jaw in Saturday night’s game at Kansas. He remained in Lawrence and had surgery Sunday. He could miss the rest of the season.

Sunday afternoon, Kansas head coach Mark Mangino took time to visit Guice at the hospital.