Greene County Daily World

Nice Guys Don't Finish Last

Posted Thursday, December 6, 2007, at 6:25 PM
<< Previous | Read comments | Respond | Email link | Next >>

According to the late Leo Durocher, nice guys finish last. After giving this some thought, and looking back over my 20+ years in coaching, I can think of at least 5 nice guys that didn't finish last. Of course I know I've coached more than 5 nice guys, but these five have a special place in my memory.

In 1978, the first year I coached, I had the pleasure of coaching David Jobe. David was an all-purpose guard who helped us win the Greene County tournament by scoring 21 points, and having 7 rebounds and 7 assists in the final game. Beyond his playing ability, he was one of the best kids I ever coached. He went on to graduate from Rose Hulman and is doing well in his engineering career.

The next great kid I the pleasure of coaching was Tony Erdly. I got to coach Tony from the sixth grade until he graduated high school. He was always a gentleman on and off the court and is now the owner of Poolery Plus in Terre Haute.

Another outstanding young man would be David's brother Chriss. Chriss was a point guard on our '89 team. He was very unselfish and helped keep a team of characters in line. Once asked by an assistant coach why he didn't spend more time working on his shooting, he replied "I need to spend that time on the books - they'll do me more good when I graduate." I couldn't agree more with him. He also graduated from Rose Hulman and is an engineer for the state.

On the 1990 team, we had a player named Eric Walters who was just too nice. One time during a game, an opposing player was knocked to the floor. Instead of running to the other end as play continued, Eric stopped and helped him up. Eric is now the president of PCKA.com. In addition to his other roles, he had to serve as a buffer between me and Joey his senior year.

Davin Gambill is number 5 on my list of nice guys. He was a reserve on the 1997 team. Davin would do whatever he was asked to do in practice and played whatever role he needed to in games. He was always positive and was the type of player every coach dreams of working with. Davin is now managing a Walgreens pharmacy in Murray, Kentucky.

All of these nice guys had one common thread. They were very intelligent. I would guess that the average SAT score of that group was over 1200.

The Greene County Tourney draw came out this week. Right now I like North Central to win with WRV as a dark horse.

The Turkey Run Warriors girls team got a big win this week over the Attica Ramblers. The win was significant because Attica is led by Miss Basketball candidate Brittany Raburn who has signed to play at Purdue next year. I'm sure most Bloomfield fans are familiar with her. The Warriors won by 15 points. We'll see if this holds true in the sectional.

Comments
Showing comments in chronological order
[Show most recent comments first]

Ditto on Davey Jobe. They just don't make them like old Davey any more.

-- Posted by simmons on Fri, Dec 7, 2007, at 5:00 AM

What about Brody?

-- Posted by instigator474 on Mon, Dec 10, 2007, at 9:48 AM

Speaking of basketball, the team when Joey and the Walters boy I believe were seniors was as fun to watch play as any team I can remember. You said defense was not in your vocabulary, that team shut some teams down with the one, three, one zone with the big kid, Walters out front and it sometimes seemed you were taking advantage of other teams with that defense, many steals and turnovers for the opposition which gave Joey about fifteen more shots a game, and he hit about sixty per cent of them also which made for some great final scores, very good team. Oh, you could toss in an SAT score for Joey along with those you mentioned and pump that average up a little also.

-- Posted by B ball fan on Wed, Dec 12, 2007, at 12:55 AM

Well one of Joe's secrets to that teams defense would have to be coaching at nearby WRV right now. Joe had a good assistant coach that did most of the defense stuff during all those practices... Not taking anything away from big Joe on this cause he coached the team and it was his idea to have the drills in practice I am sure. 30 min of def a day wasn't a bad thing. That on top of the 30 min of running had that team in good shape. :) And I agree that one-three-one was a great defense for a long time. Teams knew it was coming and still couldn't do much about it.

-- Posted by Bigballer on Wed, Dec 12, 2007, at 11:35 AM

I always hate to talk about Dugger (Union) basketball. Long before Joe was around (back in the days of Max Price, I always liked that name, sounds like what we pay for gas nowadays), they humiliated us in the Clay City Sectional. We beat them by 20 points on their court during the regular season and then got beat by 10 on a neutral court. Seriously, we took a beating, but we played bad and we deserved it.

I was dating one of Max's daughters back then. I sure hope she didn't drug me our something and get me to reveal any of our secret game plans. (Just joking, she was a real nice girl.) However, now I'm scarred for life, I was just mentally destroyed and haven't gotten over it yet. ;>)

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." Sir Winston Churchill

I may be the most enthusiastic person from my era who's still living.

-- Posted by simmons on Wed, Dec 12, 2007, at 4:21 PM

What about George Mikan, didn't Joe coach George?

-- Posted by simmons on Wed, Dec 12, 2007, at 4:22 PM

It was McGinnis I am sure.

-- Posted by B ball fan on Thu, Dec 13, 2007, at 1:09 PM