I really wish I had exciting stories about the first year. If anyone has ever spent a year as a Red Shirt walk on, it can excruciating. I was a quiet kid that kind of kept to myself, especially then. I was pretty focused on just getting to year two as a player, and studying. I honesty loved it, and I was playing basketball every day. Most of all, I had a practice jersey! That alone made me happy. I had sweats, a travel bag, I got to practice every day, what could be bad? I was part of a team. While most of the time I was taking my lumps against some really talented players, I was getting better every day. Coach John Copeland at LCU told me straight up the first day if I ever wanted to see the next year as a guy on the team I needed to learn how to play guard. I’d never played guard before. I’d never really played wing before. My high school coach once benched me for most of a scrimmage because I dribbled between my legs a single time when no one was guarding me, and openly mocked me for it for the rest of the scrimmage. He benched me for an entire half for shooting a three pointer, and making it at the end of a quarter with 1.2 seconds left on the clock. I literally wasn’t allowed to shoot if I didn’t have a foot in the paint. So….moving to guard was a bit of a transition both from a skill and a mindset standpoint.
I loved LCU. Lubbock was much smaller than the area I was from, and a quiet and peaceful town with enough to do. And, for some reason, I always loved west Texas. My mom and dad were both from Cotton Country, and we used to visit my mom’s parents and dad’s family out that direction all the time. West Texas has always oddly felt like home for some reason. Lubbock sometimes smelled like cows (which my dad said smelled like money), it had it’s dust storms, but really……I was in a good place. LCU is a small Liberal Arts college with a student population of about 1,000 on the outskirts of Lubbock that played NAIA Division 1 basketball. They were in the Sooner Athletic Conference at the time, which contained Oklahoma Christian, Oklahoma Baptist, Wayland Baptist, John Brown University, Oklahoma City University, Southern Nazarene, Langston, and Phillips University. They played in an old WWII airplane hangar which was actually used to store the first atomic bombs in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The SAC was a great conference, and there were lots of good players to watch every single day.
I really liked the guys on the team, and I really liked Coach Copeland. My entire days were (1) wake up (2) breakfast (3) Class (4) Chappel (5) basketball practice (6) play more basketball (7) eat (8) play more basketball (9) class (10) see if anyone’s playing basketball (11) Study (12) sleep. The weekends were basketball, study, eat, sleep. I was really improving, I made the Dean’s list, and I was just really in a happy place. There was the weekly embarrassing myself as I challenged our best player, a guy named Rod Young. Routinely blew past me and muscled his way for dunks while I just tried to figure out how to get a shot off……and I still think he was taking it easy on me. There were a lot of pickup games too, especially after the season was over. I don’t remember anything about what our record was, I remember there was a lot of good basketball as I was sitting in the top of the stands filming the games. Occasionally I got to sit on the bench and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I got along well with the guys on the team, they were a really good group of guys. There were guys like Dave Seal and Benton Buckley that really kinda took me under their wing, put up with my nonsense, and made me feel like I had a place with them. I really liked the school and Lubbock, and I was making friends.
But, this was also the first time in my life I had to make a difficult business decision. I paid my own way through school. I was paying tuition through work I had done in the summer and student loans I was taking out. Being a Walk-on at a private school was expensive, and I was very aware that taking out a large amount of student loans and having the goal of being a high school teacher was a bad business decision. I was really hoping that at the end of the year, going into the next year, I could do enough to earn a scholarship. I hadn’t, and Coach Copeland was very honest with me about that. I wasn’t angry or hurt about it, it was what it was. But I was also aware that this was going to be a difficult road ahead.
I’m not as open about my religious beliefs as I should be, but what happened next was honestly a direct message from God. I had prayed every day, “God, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I trust you. However, if this isn’t where I’m supposed to be then please let me know where you want me.” I did this every day, for months. School ended, I went home, and was working for the summer getting ready for the next year.
I honestly had no plans to leave LCU, and wasn’t openly looking. One day, I was sitting at church when one of our Elders walked up to me and said “Brian, we got this letter in the mail and I thought of you.” I opened it, and read how York College was looking for players and had scholarships available. “You might want to give them a call….” he said. I remember sitting there after Sunday night service with chills running up and down my spine. I had been praying for months for something, and had never told a soul. Some say it might have been coincidence, or out of the blue, but here this was right in front of me while I sat at Smithfield Church of Christ on the front pew. There was a number for Coach Wes Moore, who was living in Grand Prairie which is right around the corner from where I grew up. I called, Coach Moore and we talked for a bit, and he wanted to meet up. Coach Moore had told me on the phone that they were looking to start a JV program and not really looking for scholarship guys, but they had two Varsity spots open and a little bit scholarship money still available. We met up at Chili’s, and began to talk about the program, about me, about what I wanted as a career and as a player. It felt weird, as I had never been recruited before, and I was really nervous. I was “first date with that girl” nervous, and also “first date try to be cool when you aren’t cool” nervous.
Coach Moore was young, like 25 years old, energetic, and loved to talk basketball. He was a big guy, excited, and really funny. We talked about the town of York, the college of York, and about the guy I hadn’t met yet: Head Coach Brett McDaniel. I didn’t know anything York College (even though we had played them when I was at LCU, and friends and family had been going there since the 60’s) and Coach Moore was began telling me all I needed to know. Rebuilding program, young motivated coaches, and the perfect opportunity because there was nothing to do but work on my game. We ended the meeting and he said I’d hear back from him.
A few days later, Coach McDaniel called and we set up a time for me to go up there and tryout. Coach Moore was nice enough to let me follow him up for the tryout. He was moving up there as this was taking place, and York, NE was a long haul from North Richland Hills, Tx. It was a long (9.5 hour drive) trip in my tiny 1986 Dodge Ram 50, with no tape deck (yes, tape deck) and only an AM radio to keep me company on the drive up.
I don’t remember all that much about the weekend. I remember falling in love with a beautiful campus in a pretty little town in the middle of nowhere, and coach getting guys together for my tryout. Scott Abraham and Mike Wood were there in town, and came by for it. I walked around town quite a bit, just trying to get a feel for it. Even in July, you could tell the weather was far different from what I was accustomed to in Dallas/Ft. Worth. I remember first walking into the Freeman Center, with its unique smell and yellow Tartan Court. I remember words Rod Young had told me during my LCU tryout: “If you don’t start shooting, coach will never look at you.” I remember never being nervous, and I definitely remember the first time I shook hands with Brett McDaniel. Coach McDaniel was intense, gregarious, and had a huge personality. He was young (28), and you could tell the guy had immense passion for the game of basketball. He had played college basketball, and just from talking to him you knew he had huge knowledge of the game. We met for a bit that first night, and he began talking about all the guys he had coming in. I remember hearing “We’ve Tim Neal coming in from Tennessee. He’s a pass first point guard who is the type of guy who knows where you want the ball and how to get it to you. We’ve got Derek Hose, he’s a really good player from around here, and we are lucky to get him. We’ve got Tyrone Grady from Arkansas. He’s a really good guard that Oklahoma Christian was trying to get. We are after some other guys too, but we’ve got a really good class coming in.”
Coach and I talked after the tryout. I was staying in the dorm that weekend, and I think I was the only person staying in the dorm. We talked about what he saw me as from a player/personnel standpoint, and how he thought I could fit in on the team. He said, “We definitely weren’t looking for you, but I’m glad we found you. I’d like you to come play here, and I have some scholarship money I can give you. It’s not a full ride, but I’ll give what I can”. It was literally what I’d been praying for. I knew God was showing me a door. I didn’t need any convincing. Coach McDaniel seemed exactly like the guy I wanted to play for. You could tell from first meeting him he was intense and wanted to win. I signed my letter at Wendy’s (after coach treated me to the all you can eat salad bar) on my way out of town, and I don’t think I stopped smiling all the way back home. I registered and enrolled in classes (after Coach got the OK from Coach Copeland for me to transfer), and that was it.
While this is the story of how I got there, the stories that happened after I got there is really why I’m writing this. I had awesome teammates and experiences that I think one can only get in playing in situations like this. I don’t think my story in unique, especially in this time frame. Those two guys (Coach Copeland and Coach McDaniel), I literally owe my education to. I can’t express how thankful I am to either of them for the opportunity. Coach McDaniel influenced my life in so many ways, and I think everyone else who played for him would agree with me. That trip was the first sign of a man (not just a coach) who believed in me. It was a time when I felt no one who wasn’t related to me did, in a realm (basketball) when no one did. While I owe any opportunity I ended up having to the tryout and belief that Coach Copeland gave me that first year, I don’t know that I could have ever completed my journey without Coach McDaniel’s backing. He backed me through good times and bad times, he challenged me to be a better player, student, and man. He was the perfect person to guide me through that stage of my life, next to my dad. That day is one I will always cherish.
Up Next: Tuff Losses, Midnight Rides, and an unfortunate deer.
Thanks for Reading,
Brian.
2022: A sports Odyssey 