Players
The Golden Gophers have had many successful players come through the program throughout its history. In the early years of basketball, when the Gophers had success, they recruited some of the best players in the country. George Tuck was a dominant center, and the first All-America for the Gophers in 1905. Frank Lawler was another early star: he led the Big Ten in scoring in 1911 and was also named to the All-America team, and helped the Gophers to a contested conference title.
In 1950, Lawler was named the greatest player in Gopher basketball history, but the subsequent decades of Gopher basketball have largely forgotten his legacy. Hall of Fame coach John Kundla was also a Gophers star and helped lead the team to its 1937 Big Ten Championship.
With the decline of the stature of the Gophers program, fewer elite players have joined the team. The diminished reputation has not, however, prevented some superior athletes from coming to the Minneapolis campus. Lou Hudson played thirteen years in the NBA and had his number retired. Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield played for the Gophers in the early 1970s, and he played at the same time as star post player Jim Brewer. Mychal Thompson was a Gophers star and was the first overall pick in the 1979 NBA Draft. Among Thompson's teammates were former Minnesota Timberwolves, Detroit Pistons and Washington Wizards head coach Flip Saunders, as well as basketball hall of fame forward Kevin McHale. Trent Tucker led the 1982 squad to the Big Ten Championship. Voshon Lenard was a key player for the Gophers in the early 1990s and went on to play more than a decade in the NBA. Willie Burton once scored 53 points in an NBA game with the Philadelphia 76ers. Other former Gophers with long NBA careers include Randy Breuer, Mark Olberding, Archie Clark, and Ray Williams. Five players from the 1997 Final Four team played in the NBA: Bobby Jackson, Sam Jacobson, Quincy Lewis, John Thomas, and Trevor Winter. Currently several former Gophers play in the NBA, including Joel Przybilla and Kris Humphries. Jamal Abu-Shamala, a Jordanian-American, plays internationally for the Jordan national basketball team.
Read more about this topic: Jan Gangelhoff
Famous quotes containing the word players:
“Yeah, percentage players die broke too, don’t they, Bert?”
—Sydney Carroll, U.S. screenwriter, and Robert Rossen. Eddie Felson (Paul Newman)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“I do not like football, which I think of as a game in which two tractors approach each other from opposite directions and collide. Besides, I have contempt for a game in which players have to wear so much equipment. Men play basketball in their underwear, which seems just right to me.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)