College Basketball Career
After signing a national letter of intent with Notre Dame, Gottlieb was their starting point guard during the 1995-1996 college basketball season, starting all but the first four games and leading the team with 154 assists (against only 70 turnovers) as well as steals and minutes played. However, Gottlieb's stint at Notre Dame would be short. During Gottlieb's freshman year, he was charged with stealing credit cards from a roommate and two others and fraudulently charging over $900 to those cards; Gottlieb has since stated that, after paying back the $900, he was allowed to say he was leaving Notre Dame, when in fact he was expelled. He then transferred to Golden West College where he concentrated on academics and received an Associate of Arts in business. Despite offers from Cincinnati, Alabama and others to transfer and sit out a season on their campus, Gottlieb chose to sit out his transfer year at Golden West College. GWC was coached by his former Tustin Coach Tom McCluskey, and Gottlieb took on the role of redshirt player/coach. He practiced with the team and traveled to road games as the assistant coach. In addition, Gottlieb was a volunteer assistant at his high school under Andy Ground. In one game at Santa Ana Valley, Ground was ejected and Gottlieb coached the team to an overtime loss. Gottlieb was perceived to be waiting on Baron Davis to choose a school, as UCLA and Georgia Tech both expressed that Gottlieb was their second choice to Davis. After Davis chose UCLA, a school in which Gottlieb's family had season tickets to for 20 years and his brother and sister were alums (sister was captain of the cheer squad), Gottlieb looked elsewhere to play college ball. His final schools were Marquette, Georgia Tech, Alabama, Oklahoma State, Utah, Oregon and Tennessee.
In 1998, Gottlieb accepted an offer from Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton (under whom Gottlieb's father had once been assistant coach) to attend the university. He immediately took over as point guard for an Oklahoma State team that had gone 17-15 in consecutive years and led the Cowboys to the NCAA tournament. After the season, Gottlieb was an All-Big 12 Honorable Mention and was named the 1998-99 Big 12 Newcomer of the Year. During his second year in Stillwater, Gottlieb was again named All-Big 12 honorable mention and led the nation in assists (8.8 per game), only the second Cowboy to lead the nation in a statistical category. He also started setting Oklahoma State assist records, breaking the school career mark with 500 (after only two seasons) and broke the school record of 22 career double-figure assist games. In a game against Florida Atlantic, Gottlieb set a school record and tied the Big 12 mark with 18 assists, and in the Big 12 tournament, he set the record for assists in a game (14) as well as in tournament play (38). The 1999-2000 season would culminate with another trip to the NCAA tournament. As senior, Gottlieb finished second in the nation in assists with 8.5 per game. Gottlieb's senior season would end with a third consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament and the team would make it all the way to the Elite Eight.
He currently holds all of Oklahoma State's assist records and ranks tenth all-time in NCAA career assists with 947. Gottlieb graduated from Oklahoma State in 2000 with a bachelor's degree in marketing. In addition to being named All Big 12 Team (Honorable Mention or 3rd Team) every year at Oklahoma State, Gottlieb was named the 1999 Big 12 Scholar Athlete Community Service Athlete of the Year. Gottlieb was spent time with a local elementary school every week of his time in Stillwater and used his tickets for underprivileged children.
Read more about this topic: Doug Gottlieb
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