High School and Colleges
The eldest of nine children, Frazier attended Atlanta's David Tobias Howard High School. He quarterbacked the football team and played catcher on the baseball team. He learned basketball on a rutted and dirt playground, the only facility available at his all-black school in the racially segregated South of the 1950s. After having a great career at Howard, Frazier attended Southern Illinois University. Although he was offered other scholarships for his football skills, Frazier accepted a basketball offer from Southern Illinois University.
Frazier wasted no time in becoming one of the premier collegiate basketball players in the country. He was named a Division II All-American in 1964 and 1965. In 1965, Frazier led SIU to the NCAA Division II Tournament only to lose in the finals to Evansville 85-82 in overtime. In 1966, he was academically ineligible for basketball.
In 1967, with Frazier playing at point guard, SIU won the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), beating Marquette University 71-56 in the final at Madison Square Garden in New York. Frazier was named MVP of the 1967 tournament.
There was also controversy about SIU's "small school" status which kept them out of the more prestigious NCAA tournament.
Read more about this topic: Walt Frazier
Famous quotes containing the words high, school and/or colleges:
“As I walked on the glacis I heard the sound of a bagpipe from the soldiers’ dwellings in the rock, and was further soothed and affected by the sight of a soldier’s cat walking up a cleated plank in a high loophole designed for mus-catry, as serene as Wisdom herself, and with a gracefully waving motion of her tail, as if her ways were ways of pleasantness and all her paths were peace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The problem for the King is just how strict
The lack of liberty, the squeeze of the law
And discipline should be in school and state....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)