The Man, The Mister, The SoCon Legend

Like most college basketball program’s, there’s one figure-- whether it be a coach or player--that defines a program more than any other figure or icon. For ETSU, that one defining icon is Keith “Mister” Jennings, who played for the Bucs in the late 1980s and early 90s. 

In what is the 100th year of Southern Conference basketball not many have been better than one people simply refer to as “Mister.” Instantly those who follow Southern Conference basketball over the years, and maybe even the hoops junkie in general recognizes the nickname.

That’s because the man known to some simply as "Mister"had such a profound effect not only on East Tennessee State basketball during his time as a player for the Bucs. Jennings, a native of Southwestern Virginia, was one of those diamonds in the rough. The 5-7 guard was looked over by plenty of major programs, as well as some solid mid-majors in the area. The diminutive point guard with quickness is most-often looked over by the bigger programs. Sure, you have the occasional Muggsey Bogues or Spud Webb story, who end up at power fives like Wake Forest and N.C. State, but more often than not, guys like Mister Jennings at ETSU, Earl Boykins at Eastern Michigan or K.J. Maura at UMBC. These kind of “fall through the cracks” stars—particularly the diminutive in size—are the ones that typically see their star shine the brightest at mid-majors.

 

Many times, those diminutive players get the opportunity to shine long after their collegiate careers, and some, like the aforementioned trio, in the NBA. For “Mister” Jennings, it was about bringing something to Johnson City that hadn’t been seen before in terms of a sustained basketball and culture in the Tri-cities area.

It didn’t phase Jennings, who only went on to become one of college basketball’s best-career assist men in his four seasons at ETSU, finishing with 983-career assists, which still ranks as the SoCon’s top mark all-time. 

At the time of his graduation at ETSU in 1991, his status was already solidified as both a Bucs legend, as well as being a Southern Conference legend. One of the important thing to remember about Jennings and his memorable career at East Tennessee State is that he was able to play with an outstanding core group of players, which is arguably the greatest collection of talent at one time in the history of East Tennessee State basketball. 

Guys like Calvin Talford, Greg Dennis, Marty Story, Rodney English, Major Geer, Michael Woods, and Alvin West were all part of a group that helped lay a foundation of tradition of ETSU basketball that will always be remembered not only in the annals of Buccaneer basketball, but also in the annals of mid-major hoops as a whole.

“It was an amazing experience and a lot of fun being able to play with guys like that, and how we learned to win like that was really in high school,” Jennings said.  “We all learned how to win at a high level in high school and that enabled us to have success early on at ETSU and we ended up being teammates for two, three or four years,” Jennings added.

“I started to understand and I think we started to understand what true brotherhood meant. Here were all these other new guys coming from different places and high level basketball backgrounds of their own and that loved for the game and had a will to win like I had. That started an immediate brotherhood and friendship for all of us on and off the court, and after that, it was just came natural.”

Unfortunately, both West and Geer--significant members of that memorable group to play with Jennings and help create the tradition-rich dynasty that ETSU basketball is known for--have since passed away. Geer died on July, 2020, following complications of emergency heart surgery. The Chapel Hill, N.C., native was just 51 years old.  Geer’s closest friend from that ETSU team was Alvin West, who died almost two years to the day earlier than Geer in August 2018.  Like Jennings, West was a part of that 1987 recruiting class that also included Michael Woods and Greg Dennis. West was just 49 years old when he passed away from complications related to cancer.

“I look back on it now and I am so grateful for those guys and the time I got to spend with them. They became great friends, and we kept in touch over the years long after ETSU basketball, so it hit us all hard when they passed away. I think it taught us all to cherish those moments we had on the court together and what he had in our friendships with them even more,” Jennings said as he reminisces on the lives of the two ETSU greats. 

Another Buc from that era--Calvin Talford, who won the 1992 NCAA College Basketball Dunk contest--survived a massive heart attack almost exactly a year ago. Even Jennings himself had to have an emergency appendectomy, which he admitted in our interview, was scary and painful. 

Mister Jennings and that talented Bucs recruiting class first made their presence known on the basketball hardwood for the Bucs during the 1987-88 season, and in his freshman season, the Bucs would finish off what was a respectable 14-15 season and 9-7 mark in the Southern Conference. 

That 9-7 record in Southern Conference play was good enough to see the Bucs finish the campaign with a fourth-place finish in the league standings, and the young Bucs headed to Asheville with visions of upsetting the apple cart and winning the tournament and the school’s first NCAA Tournament bid in two decades. 

Though the Bucs would eventually be knocked out of the tournament by upstart No. 6 seeded VMI, who had a dynamic guard tandem of their own, in twins Ramon and Damon Williams and would go on to defeat the Bucs, 79-60, it would ultimately be the beginning of a dynasty of dominance for Jennings and the Bucs over the next four years. 

While Jennings played in a different era in the Southern Conference, it’s important to point out that the SoCon when he played had its own version of talented players. Guys like Marshall’s John Taft, Furman’s Hal Henderson, Tyrone Enoch of Chattanooga,  and Ramon and Damon Williams of VMI were all as good and as competitive as any guards and scorers in mid-major basketball. 

“No disrespect to the East Tennessee State team of today because I am very proud of what these guys have been able to accomplish and what they have done because I am very proud of those young men, but the Southern Conference that I played in and going to Marshall and seeing John Taft and even at App State you had Kemp Phillips, and Whit Peeler, and at Furman Hal Henderson and then you got the twins at VMI Ramon and Damon [Williams] and then at Chattanooga you had Tyrone Enoch and Eric Spivey waiting on you. It was a competitive league and you had to be ready to play everytime out, or you would get beat. I know John Taft now and when we played them [Marshall] we knew that he was going to be the guy we had to stop.”

Marshall’s Taft was no joke. At the time, he was one of college basketball’s best pure scorers, and still holds the record for the most points in three games in the Southern Conference Tournament, having posted 109 points during the 1989 edition in Asheville.  Just a year earlier, Marshall’s Skip Henderson had set single-game SoCon Tournament record with 55 points in a 1988 tournament win over The Citadel. 

Prior to the 1988-89  season, the Bucs were tipped as the favorites to claim the Southern Conference title by the media and several different publications. Certainly, most knew the Bucs were the best collection of talent heading into that particular campaign, but games are never played on paper. 

The Bucs, though the most talented team in the SoCon, weren’t overly impressive during Southern Conference play, finishing just 8-8 overall. However, by the time the Bucs arrived in Asheville for the1989 Southern Conference Tournament, everyone kind of knew they were a team well capable of winning it if they played their best basketball. 

The Bucs went on to win their first of four-straight Southern Conference Tournaments, with Jennings leading the way during the weekend of basketball at the Asheville Civic Center, as the Bucs knocked off The Citadel (83-79), Chattanooga (76-73) and Marshall (96-73) en route to the Bucs’ first NCAA Tournament bid since the  1967-68 Bucs accomplished the feat under head coach Madison Brooks.

Naturally, being the fourth seed to win the Southern Conference Tournament meant the Bucs would be the No. 16 seed when the Bucs headed for the NCAA Tournament as a part of the Southeast Regional in Nashville, where they would meet up with top-seeded Oklahoma. The Bucs put more than a scare into the Sooners, losing 72-71. Had Mister Jennings not fouled out late in that contest, UMBC’s win over Virginia in the 2018 tournament probably would have seemed far less epic. The Bucs were very much an unknown outside of the Southern Conference coming into the 1989 season, however, the nation would quickly find out about one of mid-major basketball’s best-kept secrets in the very near future.  

Though the loss was heartbreaking to the Sooners, the Bucs had finished off what was a successful 20-11 season. It was the program’s first 20-win campaign since Barry Dowd was the head coach back during the 1982-83 season. 

The very next season in 1989-90 campaign would see the Bucs repeat the feat as Southern Conference champions, and led by Jennings, ETSU lived up to its preseason accolades once again. Under the direction of head coach Les Robinson, the Bucs would impress during the non-conference portion of the slate, as they went out and took on whoever would play them of the big boys of college basketball at the time. 

In the non-conference portion of the slate, the Bucs went to Knoxville early on in the regular-season, and posted an 83-70 win over the Tennessee Volunteers at Thompson-Boling Arena, raising more than a few eyebrows around college basketball. It was starting to become clear that Jennings’ Bucs were becoming the cream of the crop when it came to mid-major basketball programs. 

During that same 1989-90 season, the Bucs would also travel into ACC country and pick up what was a 92-82 win over Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State Wolfpack. The Bucs had effectively cooled the first of Wolfpack star wing scorer Rodney Monroe, and burned star point guard Chris Corchiani. Fire-and-ice might has well have been null-and-void against Jennings, Talford and the rest of the Bucs. 

The Bucs won the regular-season Southern Conference outright, with a 12-2 overall Southern Conference record. The lone losses in regular-season Southern Conference play came on the road at both VMI (L, 77-78) and at Furman (L, 97-100). 

Clearly, when the eight Southern Conference members headed for Asheville for the Southern Conference Tournament in 1990, the Bucs were the prohibitive favorites this time around. Jennings and the Bucs came to the Civiv Center as the No. 1 overall seed, and an impressive 24-6 overall record. In the opening round, the Bucs would be tested for a while by Western Carolina before pulling away for a 75-60 win. Then came a battle with nemesis VMI and Ramon and Damon Williams, but the Bucs proved to be too much in the end after getting a 99-94 win. 

In the Southern Conference championship game, the Bucs would battle mountain rival Appalachian State. The Mountaineers had beaten an emotional Furman team, which saw its point guard Neal Garrison lose his father to a heart attack the night before in an overtime win over Marshall, 99-82. But Steve Spurlock, Billy Ross and Tim Powers were no match for the Bucs, who claimed a third win over the Mountaineers that season with a 96-75 tournament title game win.

In the win, Jennings posted 16 points, while Greg Dennis led the way with 24 points and both were named to the all-tournament team for the second-straight season, with Jennings taking home SoCon Tournament Most Outstanding Player accolades. 

The 27-win Bucs were back in the Big Dance, and this time around, would once again stay in the Volunteer State, and would face a team out of the Atlantic Coast Conference in the tournament, taking on Bobby Cremins’ Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at Thompson Boling Arena in Knoxville.

The Bucs came into the NCAA Tournament as the No. 13 seed that season, and would be facing off against Georgia Tech and “Lethal Weapon III” which featured, Kenny Anderson, Dennis Scott, and Derrick Coleman. It would be the only time the Bucs would truly be overmatched in an NCAA Tournament game in the four years they would advance to the Big Dance, as the Yellow Jackets claimed what was a 99-83 win over the Bucs. 

The Ramblin’ Wreck were simply unconcious from the field, and Dennis Scott’s 36 points led all scorers en route to the win. Georgia Tech was a scorching 14-of-22 from beyond the three-point arc. Keith Jennings and Calvin Talford led the Bucs in the losing effort with 17 points apiece.The Bucs would have a new coach leading the way in Jennings’ senior season, as Les Robinson left to become the successor to Jim Valvano at N.C. State, while top assistant Alan LeForce was tabbed to take over as the head coach of the Bucs. 

Jennings’ senior season of 1990-91 would turn out to be one of the most memorable seasons in the history of not only ETSU basketball, but for all program’s that have ever called themselves a “mid-major” program at one point or another. 

Back then, it was easier for good mid-majors to get games with high-profile opposition, which is certainly not the case these days. The Bucs would take down some pretty impressive competition during the non-conference portion of the schedule. 

It would be a memorable exit for Jennings, who in the 100 years of Southern Conference basketball, is certainly in the top 10 players to ever play in the league, and probably would be in the starting five all-time. Jennings shot an astounding 59.5% (84-of-142) from three-point range during his senior season, and would lead the Bucs to a memorable season, which would see the Bucs win a school-record 28 games in the process. In addition to being the SoCon’s all-time assist king, Mister Jennings also left his mark in other areas of his game, including scoring, as his 1,988-career points currently rank fourth all-time in Bucs scoring history. 

Under the direction of Alan LeForce, the Bucs flourished in the former assistant’s first season leading the Bucs basketball program, especiallt during the non-conference slate. The Bucs would knock off a Shawn Bradley-led BYU (W, 83-80) team to open the season. That would be followed by a win over North Carolina State (W, 94-91) later in the non-conference slate, as Les Robinson made his return to the Memorial Center on the opposing sidelines. The Bucs also got an impressive 90-79 win at Cincinnati. Giving the Bucs a chance to do even more chest thumping, at least within the Volunteer State, came as a result of an impressive 105-102 overtime win over Memphis at the Pyramid in January. Of special importance for Jennings were those games against Virginia schools that didn’t recruit him out of his home state. 

“The only school that showed interest in me in my home state was VMI, and I wasn’t interested in going to a military school. The only other program that showed any interest in me was ETSU, and so when we played teams like George Mason, Liberty, James Madison or other teams from my home state, I made it especially personal in those games when I went out on the floor,” Jennings said. 

In Jennings’ senior season, the Bucs just happened to face George Mason twice in the non-conference portion of the slate, defeating the Patriots on both occasions, as the Bucs took a 105-92 in Johnson City before going on the road later in non-conference play and taking a 96-86 win. The Bucs also took an 86-55 win over Liberty and won a 68-65 game at James Madison. ETSU would also meet with some adversity during the 1990-91 season, as star center Greg Dennis went down with a season-ending knee injury, changing the dynamics of the Bucs basketball team. Dennis had been a reliable force in the paint and as a rim-protecting shot-blocker. Darrell Jones would be asked to step in and fill the role for the Bucs. 

Despite the loss of Dennis, the Bucs perservered. In fact, ETSU entered the national rankings for the first time in school history at No. 24 on Dec. 11. The Bucs entered the rankings at No. 24 in the nation. It was the first ranked team in the Southern Conference since the 1983 campaign, when Chattanooga found its way into the national rankings.

The Bucs would rise as high as No. 10 when they headed for Greenville, S.C., to take on the Furman Paladins at the Memorial Auditorium. It offered me the rare chance to see Jennings play, as well as the No. 10 ranked team in the country. That didn’t happen all that much in the Southern Conference then, or even now. In fact, the Bucs were one of just a few ranked teams that have ever played at Furman. Though a very good Furman team ended up handing the Bucs a 103-94 setback in Memorial Auditorium on a night when the Paladins shot over 50% from the field for the game, and were led by its own version of Keith “Mister” Jennings, in Hal Henderson, who posted one of his best-career performances with 29 points. Not to be outdone, Jennings kept the Bucs in it, as he finished with a game-high 31 points.

It was an epic battle before a packed crowd in Furman’s downtown home. Though Furman won the game, all I could think about how good of a basketball team I saw, in East Tennessee State, and how good of a player I had just witnessed, in Keith “Mister” Jennings. Though years have passed by, I have never forgotten just how good of a point guard Jennings was and how much he meant to this league in terms of gaining its notoreity in a crucial time for the league and college basketball. 

It was a time when the SoCon was trying to make the leap from being what was considered probably a low-major league prior to Jennings’ arrival to one that is now looked at as more of an elite mid-major--it least it has been that in recent seasons. Having players like ETSU’s Jennings or Davidson’s Stephen Curry certainly doesn’t hinder the cause either. The Bucs would finish the regular-season with a 25-4 record, which included an 11-3 record in Southern Conference play, which was good enough for a three-way tie for the Southern Conference regular-season crown along with Chattanooga and Furman, as the eight teams headed to Asheville for the annual Southern Conference Tournament. 

Other than the loss to Furman, the only other conference losses the Bucs suffered during the regular-season came against Chattanooga (L, 74-76) and Marshall (L, 103-107), which both came on the road. The Bucs were still the favorites to take it all in Asheville for a third-straight year, however.  

Jennings and the Bucs would open his final Southern Conference Tournament against Western Carolina, and though the Catamounts battled for a while, Jennings and the Bucs were too much for Terry Boyd and the Catamounts, as ETSU picked up a 75-60 opening round win. 

In the semifinal round of the tournament, the Bucs would take a commanding 104-71 win over Chattanooga, setting up a championship game appearance against Appalachian State. The Bucs would continue their dominance of the Southern Conference in Jennings’ senior season in the tournament title game, as Appalachian State was no match for Jennings and the Bucs in the championship game.

ETSU went on to get a 101-82 championship game win over its mountain rivals once again. A 31-point performance by Jennings naturally stole the show. It was back to the Big Dance for Jennings and the Bucs. In his final appearance in the NCAA Tournament, Jennings’ Bucs would face off against the Iowa Hawkeyes in the NCAA Tournament. The one matchup the Bucs figured to have a big problem with was Acie Earl off the bench for the Hawkeyes. The Bucs would enter the tournament as the No. 10 seed, while the Hawkeyes were the No. 7. Most had that classic No. 10 over No. 7 upset in their bracket in this very game. 

The Bucs also had entered the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 17, and were three years removed from being a virtual college basketball unknown until nearly upsetting No. 1 seed Oklahoma. By the time Jennings had gotten to his senior season, the Bucs were a program that all the big boys feared, and no one wanted to draw Jennings and the Bucs on Selection Sunday in March.

Earl was one of college basketball’s top big men, as well as being one of the top sixth men in the country. It would be another closely contested basketball game, but in the end, the Bucs ended up dropping what was a heartbreaking 76-73 decision to the Hawkeyes. It was a game in which the Bucs actually held a 37-33 lead at the break. 

Backcourt mates Mister Jennings along with Rodney English both added double-doubles in their final games in Blue and Gold uniforms, as English led all Bucs scorers with 25 points to go with 10 boards, while Mister Jennings added 11 points and 13 helpers. For the Mister, it would be his final game in the Bucs Blue and Gold. Though the Bucs ultimately ended up losing the game in heartbreaking fashion and went 0-3 during Jennings’ career in the NCAA Tournament as the ETSU point guard, the Bucs weren’t all that far away.  They had established themselves as elite in the minds of many of those who watch and cover mid-major basketball on a regular basis.

Without Greg Dennis in the paint, it was tough for the Bucs to find a way to stop Earl and the Hawkeyes, who were more physical in the paint. Earl scored 10 of his 18 points from the charity stripe, going 10-of-14 from the stripe. The Bucs would lead by as many as five points (61-56) in the second half, with just over seven minutes remaining, however, the Hawkeyes took the lead for good when James Winters scored a basket with 4:22 remaining, giving Iowa the 63-61 lead. 

“I didn’t shoot the ball well against Iowa, and I think if I had shot the ball better, we would have won the game,”  Jennings said. Jennings’ impact on the Johnson City and the culture of ETSU basketball at-large have been profound. He gets back there as often as he can to see games, and you could hear the love in his voice that he still has for the school and the people of Johnson City. 

A native of from Culpepper, VA, had left a giant footprint on the history of ETSU basketball, leading the Bucs to a school-record 28 wins as a senior. That record wouldn’t be broken until the 2019-20 season saw Steve Forbes’ Bucs win 30 games. During his four seasons with the Bucs, ETSU posted an 89-38 mark, while finishing with a 39-19 record against Southern Conference foes, including an impressive 23-5 mark in Jennings’ final two season. 

Jennings was at the forefront of so many big wins. Victories over Memphis, Cincinnati, Tennessee, BYU, NC State and Mississippi State were just a sample size of the effect that Jennings had on the Bucs basketball program. In many ways, he was a trailblazer for the Bucs basketball program.

The year after Jennings graduated, the Bucs broke through and were able to win their first NCAA Tournament game in more than two decades, as No. 12 ETSU upended mighty No. 5 seeded Arizona, 87-80, in the Southeast Regional Atlanta. In a five-year span from 1987-92, the Bucs won 113 games and lost just 45. The Bucs finished that five-year span with a 51-21 record against Southern Conference foes, winning four regular-season and tournament titles.

Dennis, who had gotten a medical redshirt during Jennings’ senior season due to a season-ending injury, got to be a part of that win over Arizona. Dennis had been a wide-eyed freshman along with Jennings back in the 1987-88 season, and the two were trying to help a program that was not all that far removed from probation a couple of years earlier. 

In the win over the Wildcats, Dennis posted eight points, three rebounds, three assists, and two blocks. His college career along with several others would end in the following round, as Michigan’s Fab Five handed ETSU a season-ending 102-90 setback. As far as comparing that golden generation of Bucs basketball to now and elite mid-majors of today, as to where it stands on the all-time pantheon of great mid-major programs. 

“We had a team that...we were fast enough, we were strong enough, and we were talented enough that if you weren’t ready to play, it was going to be a problem for your team no matter what team you were.”  

“How many teams had or have four 1,000-point scorers at the same time? How many teams can get ranked and stay ranked nowadays...That’s something we did. I am not talking about mid-majors like Gonzaga, but rather real mid-majors from like the SoCon and other leagues like ours. I can probably guarantee you will find few programs to accomplish what we did in a tough league for a period of time like that.”

Jennings seems like he would be a natural candidate for a head coach or assistant coach in Johnson City one day, as he’s one of ETSU’s own. However, ETSU has never been a program to hire from within except if you go back to LeForce.  

“I am not sure why that has been the case over the years, Jennings said of ETSU hiring from outside its family. “I know it would be a dream of mine to coach there one day,” Jennings added.

We just saw ETSU complete what was an amazing run in the Southern Conference this past season, winning 30 games and the Southern Conference Tournament title, but unfortunately didn’t get to see how that would pan out in the NCAA Tournament. The Bucs were looking to become the second team in as many years to claim an opening round win in the NCAA Tournament.

Jennings finished off his senior season in spectacular fashion, averaging 20.1 PPG, shooting 59.5% (84-of-142) from three-point range, 89.5% (136-of-152) from the line, and dished out 9.1 APG, leading the Bucs in each of those categories. His single-season mark of nearly 60% shooting from beyond the arc still stands as a single-season Southern Conference record. 

In four years running the point for the Bucs, as you might imagine the Bucs led the SoCon in points-per-game in all four of those seasons, averaging 94.0 PPG in 1990-91. He went on to play two memorable seasons in the NBA for the Golden State Warriors. 

“Even though I only spent two years in the NBA, those years I spent with the Warriors I will cherish forever. Playing with guys like Tim Hardaway and Chris Mullins--guys you had grown up watching and trying to emulate on the playground--and then you realize all of it is real. Man, there’s nothing quite like that.”

Just last year, Jennings put together a feature documentary chronicling ETSU’s dominance of the Southern Conference from 1989-92 in a film called “4Ever.” The trailer for that documentary is linked below if you care to look into purchasing it. It will give you much better of an idea of just how dominant the Bucs were during that era than even I can in this article with my words.  There are also a couple of links to some own personal archive from his standout career. 

Today, Jennings has not been too far removed from the game he loved as a player at ETSU and as a boy growing up in southwest Virginia, serving as the head women’s basketball coach at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, N.C., where he has already started preparations for the 2020-21 season.  

What I found out about Jennings when I interviewed him was the fact that he was the same type of jovial, good-spirited human-being off the floor, as I remember him being on the floor when I saw him and the 10th-ranked ETSU Bucs play some 30 years ago.  I look forward to catching up with some more former SoCon greats, as the league celebrates its centennial year as a basketball league.  Just as much as Jennings was an ambassador for ETSU basketball, he was an ambassador for the Southern Conference as a whole. People would go on in later years to discover the high level of hoops played in this league, including me, as I started to appreciate the basketball more and more in the SoCon as the years past.

When guys like Steph Curry (Davidson) or Andrew Goudelock (College of Charleston) came along to play in the league years later, Jennings would also serve as that reference point. That’s how good he was. When comparing the great teams of recent years like Davidson of 2007-08 or Wofford 2018-19, my reference point is always those ranked Bucs teams. 

In 2016, Jennings was inducted into the Southern Conference athletics Hall-of-Fame, as well as being a member of the inducted into the ETSU Basketball Hall-of-Fame in 2013. His 983-career assists still rank fifth in NCAA history for helpers, and he also holds the single-game (19 assists vs Appalachian State/Feb. 2, 1991) and single-season (301 assists in 1990-91) assist records in the SoCon record book.

Jennings was not only great on the offensive end of the floor, however, as he shined on the defensive end as well. Jennings holds the SoCon career record for steals (334), as well as holding the SoCon single-season steals mark (109).

The Mister finished his career as a two-time SoCon Player of the Year (1990 & ‘91), as well as being the Francis Pomeroy Naismith Award winner in 1991, as he was voted the best player under six-feet tall. Jennings finished his career with 1,988-career points, and ranked as the program’s all-time leading points scorer after he graduated in 1991. 

No, Jennings and the Bucs weren’t the first SoCon team to be ranked in the modern era of SoCon hoops, but in my lifetime, it was a team that I was blessed to see play and left an indeliable mark on not only me as a SoCon hoops fan, but also as a mid-major hoops fan. In my opinion, the man they called “The Mister” was more than a man and more than a nickname, he was a SoCon hoops legend.

Check midmajormainess.com as well for a more condensed version of this story. It certainly was a joy to interview him and to hear about his experiences playing for ETSU as a part of what was a memorable generation of basketball inside the Southern Conference.