Bassett to “bloody noses” at OSU
By Ray Martin
rmartin@oklahoman.com
I was in Tuttle this morning, watching Cooper Bassett, a 6-foot-5, 235 pound tight end, sign with Oklahoma State.
The first thing Bassett told me was that he is the player who will “bloody noses” at practice next fall in Stillwater.
I believe him.
After seeing Bassett for the first time, I am convinced that OSU is getting a steal. He is shaped like a greek god, and from what I hear, he plays football like one too.
Tuttle didn’t throw much last season, so Bassett’s receiving numbers are nothing extravagant. On defense, though, he racked up 10 sacks at defensive end. He spent his time on offense throwing monster blocks, which opened up Tuttle’s running game.
Bassett was a four year starter for the Tigers, leading them to a state title in ’05, and a semi-finals appearance in ’07.
For more on Bassett check out the signing day coverage at NewsOk, or Mike Baldwin’s recent story featured in Saturday’s Oklahoman.
Knee injuries shelve some of state’s best girls basketball players
By Justin Harper
jharper@oklahoman.com
Washington’s Ashton Pittman, one of the better girls basketball players in the metro area, is the latest standout player to suffer a knee injury this season. Pittman injured her right knee on Monday and will have an MRI Wednesday to find out the extent of the damage. A doctor looked at it Monday and said it was likely a torn ACL.
The same day that Pittman was injured, Mustang star and ORU signee Jordan Pyle underwent surgery for a torn ACL in her left knee.
This has been a crazy season for knee injuries in girls prep hoops. Not only are there a lot of them occurring, but they seem to be happening to a lot of the state’s best players. Aside from Pittman and Pyle, Carl Albert’s Jourdan Clark is done for the year with a blown ACL. Southeast’s Elizabeth Lay, who has signed with the University of Washington, has been out for two weeks with a knee injury. Del City senior Porschea Jeffries, daughter of former OSU star Royce Jeffries, blew her knee out in August. Heritage Hall’s talented Krista Stevens has been playing, but she’s limited to what she can do because of a knee injury. The list goes on and on, but every player mentioned above is a Division-I prospect/signee and all made the Oklahoman’s All-City teams last year. Here’s hoping this trend will come to an immediate halt.
Alva linebacker commits to Marshall
Zach West
zwest@oklahoman.com
Tyson Gale, an honorable mention All-State linebacker from Alva, has committed to play football for Marshall next season.
Tyson made his decision Sunday night after a weekend visit to the school. He picked the Thundering Herd over New Mexico, his only other Division-I offer.
Tyson is the twin brother of Alva quarterback Mitchell Gale and son of Alva head coach Steve Gale. While Steve’s brother, Mark Gale, is the Marshall assistant athletic director for football operations and is the longest serving member of the Marshall coaching staff, the connection was initially just a helpful recruiting tool. Steve would send the videos to Mark, looking for his professional opinion.
“Then they started looking at the videos,” Steve said. “I was just sending it out just to get an idea, but they really liked what they saw. There was a need for them at middle linebacker, and (that connection) did nothing but help.”
Last season, Tyson had 157 tackles (16 for a loss) and five interceptions to go along with 448 yards receiving and six touchdowns. Tyson had 174 tackles and three picks his junior season.
Steve said Tyson was attracted to Marshall in part because of the impressive weight room and head coach Mark Snyder. Snyder, who visited Alva last week to watch Tyson play basketball, was a defensive coach at Ohio State from 2001-04, and coached future-NFL linebackers such as A.J. Hawk (Green Bay) and Bobby Carpenter (Dallas)
“That’s the type of player (Tyson)’d like to be,” Steve said.
Tyson will sign tomorrow at 10 a.m. at Alva, along with Mitchell (Abilene Christian,
Tex.) and free safety Derek Lohman (Emporia State, Kan.)
Stories abound at Boney Matthews Fieldhouse closing
By Zach West
zwest@oklahoman.com
I must admit, I got a little carried away at Friday night’s send-off to historic Boney Matthews Fieldhouse in Purcell. With so many old-timers, former players and coaching legends around, I ended up chatting with way more people than I needed to for the story I had to write. Because of this, I decided to put a couple of the good tales I heard here on the blog.
Former Lindsay coach Charlie Heatly provided the first laughs of the night as he presented the game ball before the girls game. Heatly is a legend in his own right in girls basketball, with around 640 wins, 14 state tournaments, and 2 titles in 28 years at Linsday. Between 1964 and 1971, however, Heatly also coached the Lindsay boys team – meaning he matched up directly with Boney Matthews’ Purcell squad around 15 times.
As Heatly tells it, it’s around ’68 or ’69, and his Lindsay squad is soundly beating Purcell late in one game. All of the sudden, Boney appears directly behind him.
“Scoot over,” Boney says. “I’m not doing no good down there on my bench.”
So Boney – the Purcell head coach, mind you – plops down on the Lindsay bench and stays there for the last couple of minutes.
“He just sat there,” Heatly recalls, laughing. “The Purcell players didn’t know where to go for the rest of the game. During time-outs, they couldn’t figure out if they should come to our bench or stay at theirs.”
I was lucky enough to stumble across 74-year-old Grant Frankenberg, a 1951 Purcell graduate, as the evening progressed. Frankenberg played on Boney’s first state championship team, and he also played alongside and graduated with Purcell’s most renowned basketball player, Lester Lane.
(For a quick history lesson, after winning the state title at Purcell, Lane went on to become an All-American at OU, and was a starting guard on the 1960 U.S. Olympic gold medalist basketball team. Some of his teammates? Just a couple guys named Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and Jerry West)
Anyways, Frankenberg had an interesting take on Boney’s legendary playing days. Although he was only 5-7 or 5-8, Boney was one heck of an athlete. While it has never been completely verified, Boney supposedly scored 98 points for Roff in a 142-0 win over Leigh in 1927 - an Oklahoma state record (I mentioned this in the regular story). As the story goes, Boney had 14 touchdowns and 13 or 14 extra points, although no statistics have ever been found of the game.
Frankenberg, however, said Boney may have nearly equaled that amazing feat while playing basketball.
“He told us he scored 99 points in a basketball game,” Frankenberg recalled of his playing days under Boney.
While I first thought Frankenberg was joking – or he was insinuating that Boney was joking – I quickly found out he was completely serious.
“I believed him,” Frankenberg said. “He was a great basketball player when we played against him. He was so small, but so quick and athletic.”
My last story comes not from an older person, but from one of the current Purcell basketball players. While most of the young people I talked to at the event had little idea of the history involved in the evening’s proceeding, not all of Boney Matthews legacy is forgotten in the younger generation. Hunter Marcum, a freshman on the team, said current boys basketball head coach Lee Reimer makes sure of that. Reimer has been at Purcell for 24 years.
“Coach talks about (Boney) a lot,” Marcum said. “A bunch of the younger guys don’t really know much about him, but we’ve learned from his stories.”
“Guys have sacrificed to make this a program,” Reimer said of his history lessons. “It’s up to us to carry on that program.”
Pirates will themselves to victory
By Robert Przybylo
BPrzybylo@Oklahoman.com
To me, there is no other way to describe what happened Friday night between Putnam City and Edmond Santa Fe than to simply say PC willed itself to victory. An impressive defensive performance led to the Pirates’ 65-47 win at ESF.
Early on, both teams had way too much energy. It was high-octane, for sure, but sloppy. Nic Combs eventually found a grove and scored 8 of the Wolves’ 13 points in the first quarter as ESF was up 13-12 through one.
Limited to only two points in the first quarter, PC star Xavier Henry stopped relying on a jumper that wouldn’t fall and started driving hard to the hole. He notched six points in the next stanza with all six being free throws.
It didn’t seem like much, but Garen Wright’s three to tie the game at halftime was crucial.
ESF’s Ryan Spinner had just drained a trey to make it 28-25 with less than five seconds left. It appeared Brandon Jackson was going to take an ill-advised desperation heave when he found Wright, who got the ball off with about .5 seconds left. It was clearly out of his hands from my vantage point.
Combs came back to life in the third for the Wolves, scoring the first seven for his team as the Wolves were up 35-32. Then, Henry took over. Well, that and the defense. PC went an unbelievable run in the final 13 minutes of the game. You could punch it in at 17-1, 21-4 or 27-6 for the run count. All the sudden, 35-32 became a 59-41 deficit midway through the fourth.
Henry started driving to the hoop and kissing it off the glass, tallying the final six points of the third quarter. More importantly, the Pirate defense caused numerous turnovers.
Spinner and Combs, who had great looks through the first two and a half quarters, had no room to breathe down the stretch.
Eventually, Henry punctuated the night with a left-handed windmill-ish jam. It was the first time I’ve seen Henry live. He struggled but still managed to scrap out 22 points and take the game over when his team needed to.
Combs paced ESF with 20.
Observations: Give credit to Wright and Jackson of Putnam City for their defense. In the second half, they shut down Combs’ open space and caused several turnovers that led to easy buckets.
It was a great second half adjustment because in the first half, the Wolves had many people open down the floor in transition but never fully took advantage of it.
Foul trouble really hurt ESF in the second half. Early in the third, Combs, Ross Morrisett, Vick and Brandon Willis all had three fouls. They had to back off just a tad and that led to PC stepping up its aggressiveness on both ends of the floor.
Putnam City looked poised the whole way through. The Wolves came out howling and everyone was jacked up. When it was over, ESF looked mentally drained as well as physically.
Combs and Wright impressed me the most tonight. There’s so much to Combs’ game right now, he’s an all-around talent. He can drive, dish, fights for the boards and his 3-point balls are things of beauty. Wright, meanwhile, seemed like a bulldog that wouldn’t be denied.
Two trips to ESF and two Wolves’ losses. I don’t know if they’ll let me back in. Off to Midwest City-Del City on Saturday.
“Tuley pulls double duty” and other Capitol Hill extras
Zach West
zwest@oklahoman.com
As is my norm, here are some excerpts of material that didn’t make it into Thursday’s feature on Capitol Hill head coach Donny Tuley and his efforts to reach players over the years.
The first interesting tidbit is this background info on Tuley’s early years.
In 1977, Tuley’s collegiate basketball career ended after two years at East Central. The 5-9 point guard knew he didn’t have the talent to play at the next level, but he definitely wasn’t going back to work in the oil fields or farming in his tiny hometown of Elmore City. The fiery, passionate young man with a wealth of basketball IQ was determined to make it big as a coach.
“My goal was to go as high up the ladder as I could,” Tuley recalls. “I wanted to coach in college or get even further on than that.”
That ties into this next sidebar, which was hardest part to leave out – by far - and was one of the more amazing facts about Tuley. In the story, I mention that, over the years, Tuley turned down several opportunites to fulfill his college coaching goal so he could stay at Capitol Hill.
Donny Tuley never completely gave up on coaching college hoops. While he passed up several opportunities in the mid-90s so he could stay close to and take care of his ailing parents, another door soon opened that allowed him the best of both worlds. For the past 10 years, Tuley has been an assistant coach at Redlands Community College while continuing his work at Capitol Hill.
You read that right. Not only is Tuley the head coach of a high school basketball team, he also is an assistant coach in college. Talk about a balancing act. Tuley often will leave his high school practice, take a car-load of players home, and then head directly to Redlands to help coach a game that night.
“It’s difficult (balancing the two), but the guys I work for at Redlands have given me a schedule, and I can work around their schedule,” Tuley said. “And it’s worked out quite well for us.”
At Redlands, Tuley has been a part of several successful teams, including a national champion in 2002, and has coached players like former OU standout Taj Gray.
Of course, another tough choice was picking and choosing which stories to tell. And my goodness were there stories. It seems like every person I talked to had a favorite memory of Tuley, or a touching moment to share, or a sob story to tell. Possibly one of the saddest was the following told to me by Tuley’s wife, Sherry.
Several years ago, a former player of Tuley’s named Fasha Norman was killed. The point guard was attending Langston, but his body was found in a Dallas park. At the funeral, Norman’s parents asked Donny to speak.
“Now Donny’s a very non-emotional kind of person,” Sherry said. “But at this kid’s funeral, he just broke down. He had to stop several times during this speech to compose himself.”
Unfortunately, this blog probably couldn’t hold all of the Tuley stories I heard, but I’ll close it off on a positive note. In the main story, I started off talking about the life struggles of senior forward Remy Boswell and his mother. What I wasn’t able to get to, however, was how much things have improved for the Boswell family.
Remy’s mom now has a job teaching in the Oklahoma City Public Schools system. Because of that – for the first time ever – Remy has a washer and dryer where he lives. He also believes his family’s story is a testimony, and he has a new motto for life: “The struggles are over.”
