Some of you may know that I played a little basketball in my day. Well, my brothers-in-law were stars. Ron Norman, the oldest, played at Iowa with Sammy Williams and Freddy Brown, and his coach was the legendary Ralph Miller. Then Tom played with Ronnie Lester at Iowa, and he played against Magic Johnson, and his coach was Lute Olsen (now at Arizona). And Pete played at Eastern Illinois, and is now the best JUCO coach in the USA. His Highland Cougars (Freeport, IL) are in the Final Four, and we listened to the game last evening on the internet. The radio announcer, Donnie Werntz, was a friend of both Kris\u2019s and mine, and I used to \u201cunicycle\u201d with his brother. Highland has a bus load of fans at the game (Cougar Nation) and they play Friday night in the semis. Go Cougars! Way to go Pete.
\nSome of you also may know that a legendary coach in the Chicago area, a devout Roman Catholic, Ray Meyer, died. I learned alot about basketball from Ray Meyer. No kidding.
\nMy high school basketball coach, Farrell Benefiel, a unique character, urged each of us when we were in junior high and high school to go to \u201cRay Meyer\u2019s Boys Camp\u201d in Three Lakes, Wisconsin. So, a bundle of us went. Joey Meyer, Ray\u2019s son and eulogizer at the funeral mass yesterday, was my cabin captain. Tom Meyer, Ray\u2019s older son, was one of my coaches; and Bobby (we called him \u201cBinky\u201d) was a player with us. On top of that, one of my cabin captains was Doug Bruno, now a legendary coach of the DePaul\u2019s women basketball team.
\nWell, Ray taught us many things but what I remember the most was that we had to learn how to \u201cpick and roll\u201d right and we practiced it until we got it right. The secret key I remember, and which stood me in good stead whenever I was picking or rolling or teaching kids to pick and roll \u2014 if you are picking, \u201ckeep your eyes on the ball\u201d and you\u2019ll never turn away from the ball.
\nRay was big on passing and moving away from the ball; he was big on getting the ball to the big man; he was big on playing hard; and he was very big on playing the game the way it was meant to be played. In other words, competitively but honorably.
\nTwo other thoughts: Ray was always saying the rosary, and you could see him fingering his beads in his pockets whenever he was coaching and teaching. And Ray had a mass said every morning before breakfast \u2014 which he always attended.
\nOnce he gave a few of us Protestants a ride into the local community to attend a church on Sunday morning; what he didn\u2019t know was that we just wanted to get away from the grind of playing.
\nRay Meyer was a good man who taught us to play the game right. All of us from that era will miss Ray Meyer.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of you may know that I played a little basketball in my day. Well, my brothers-in-law were stars. Ron Norman, the oldest, played at Iowa with Sammy Williams and Freddy Brown, and his coach was the legendary Ralph Miller. Then Tom played with Ronnie Lester at Iowa, and he played against Magic Johnson, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n