Hawk Killer: Taste of the ICE Tales

At the University of Iowa Field House pick up games are played to 15, win by two. In a game one day at Field House noon ball I put up a one game stat line against a team that had Hawkeye basketball legend Chris Kingsbury on it that read something close to this: 15 assists, 20 rebounds, and 10 points. I was working for the U's parking department at the time and I was still taking classes at the U even though I had already earned my B.A. in History. I was playing over the lunch break with my co-worker and intermural teammate named Sleepy. Sleepy had his own streetballer background and legacy growing up in nearby Cedar Rapids. Sleepy scored 11 points in our victory that day over the King's team, all his shots coming off full court assists from me in transition. Kingsbury could have matched up against me in the game but he decided to guard someone else at the opening check. He didn't even look at me and seemed to be avoiding eye contact for most of the game, until on one of those special plays where I jumped about elbow rim high to snatch a board, then a dribble or two out to get some space, and then I threaded a wicked full court no look pass on the money to my boy Sleepy who was streaking down the wing for an easy lay up. Kingsbury stared at me for a moment or two after that play, like 'Who is this guy?' Besides his usual high arching super long range hang time three pointers that fell straight through the hoop without even moving the net, the King made some awesome moves on the base line. Jumping off of two feet from outside the lane he would hang with like three or more defenders jumping and fouling him and hanging on and then after the defenders came down the King still hung in the air on his way to the hoop and scored the bucket. I never saw this side of his game when he played in games for the Hawkeyes. I had a good view of his baseline drives and it seems strange that I wasn't involved but the man I was guarding had a sense of spacing so I always found myself really far away from the play. Kingsbury was instinctively driving away from me and using the base line and the back board as his friend to avoid and shield off would be defenders. The game went into duece to at least 25 points and lasted what seemed for ever and thus it was the only reason I was able to get the stat line I did (or what I calculated or estimated I had from memory after the game). Kingsbury and my team were trading baskets like it was the Final Four match of the Hawkeyes with Ronnie Lester going against Louisville and their star Daryl Griffith. And, like any streetballer proud of their assasin like work against an established big time baller, I'm happy to claim victory for my team that day. For all you big time ballers let it be a lesson, you better play hard and win the game or some no name has been former Div. III baller like myself will be talking junk about those games for the rest of their life. One former Iowa player that stands out in my mind as always playing hard and dominating against anyone he played was Indianola's Chris Street (may he rest in peace in the heaven that is a playground). I would see Streets dominating pick up games always with a crowd of people gathered around his court watching. He tried to block every shot any one on the opposing team put up. I remember seeing him block someone's shot into the bleachers one time and then walking to the sidelines and taking his mouth peace out and staring in my direction as I was just walking in the door. I never had the honor or priviledge of playing with or against Chris Streets. He was killed in a car accident during his playing time at Iowa during the period I was playing for the Spartans of UD. I was looking forward to following his future career in the NBA. Some Hawkeye players like a kid named JR Krotch from Morton Ill. did not impress me so much. I played against him once and hit at least three three pointers over the 6'11" flag pole thin Hawkeye hoopster including the game winner. Krotch played good in games coming off the bench as a freshman and sophemore for Iowa and again he played well coming off the bench as a senior, but he did not do so well when in the starting lineup when he was a junior. I had a chance to talk to Krotch once at a party (I lived in the same house and worked with one of Kotch's teammates who played on the grey squad). I told him I played college ball at UD with another kid from his home town, and that I thought Kotch had a chance to get drafted and even play in the NBA. He was like, "Yeh, yeh. I know." I was like, "Bull shit, you don't know!" and started going into stories about how BJ Armstrong used to work every day and night and in his free time at his game, often alone in Carver Hawkeye arena dribbling all around, shooting free throws, lifting weights, making grades etc... while his teammates, who were more athletically gifted and endowed, Ed Horton and Roy Marble, hit up the night life and everything that came with it and in my opinion never reached their full potential. After hearing my rant Krotch got up and walked away pissed off and I over heard him saying, "That guy is an a-hole and doesn't know what he's talking about." The kid he was talking to, another baller and another roommate of mine nick named "Crow" responded to Krotch by saying, "Oh, he knows what he is talking about." Kotch never got his shit together like I told him he needed to if he wanted to make it in the NBA. So one day while I was working (at the parking department job) and at the end of Krotch's senior season I saw the kid working out in the Field House with then assistant coach and current Tennessee head coach Bruce Pearl as I was walking through the gym. I stopped and watched Kotch for a minute or two and saw him see me, so I said aloud, "Its too late Kotch! Its too late." Kotch was drafted that year into the NBA, a first round pick by the New York knickerbockers. He never made the team. It was too late.
My main "home court" in all my days of playing basketball was at the Robert A. Lee Iowa City Community Rec. Center. I first started playing there as a kid in the mid 1970's. When I was still in high school my crew used to play against the likes of Roy Marble, Ed Horton, Kevin Gamble, Kent Hill, Michael Reaves, Michael Morgan etc... all x-Hawkeyes who were current Iowa players at the time. They often came in on Sunday afternoons with their own five and wanted to take on Shot and me and our crew with Rog and Lonnie and Al or who ever, so we always obliged and to tell you the truth we held our own. We never beat those guys but we put a few scares in them, even taking games into duece with them. We were running a cherry picking fast break outlet style of play that got us a lot of easy baskets. Rog and Shot had world class speed and with Shot's leadership we competed better than most would expect. I also played against other Hawkeye greats and future (now former) NBA players like Les Jepson, AC Earl, and Brad Lohaus. Also I played with and against the likes of slam dunk phenom and former Hawkeye Gerry Wright aka Sir Jam-a-lot. Also Kenyon Murry, James Moses, Brian Garner, Rodel Davis, Wade Lookingbill, and Troy Skinner. I used to throw half court no look pass ally-oops to Lookingbill and Davis and they would slam it home. Garner was the most creative pure passer I ever saw play for Iowa, and I copied, learned, practiced and used the passing skills Garner had perfected. I hit or tipped in game winning shots over NBA 7 footers Lohaus and Earl on more than one occasion. After playing at Dubuque I came back to the IC and schooled Iowa Grey Squad players in intermurals and in pick up games on a regular basis. The greatest player I ever saw play was Lewis Loyd at the rec center playing in a men's city league game. It was just after he had been kicked out of the League (NBA) for drug abuse. He made the usual best players in city league look like little kids. I remember Loyd's style and moves and there is no doubt watching him play in my home gym influenced my own style. Lewis even came up to me and said high a couple of times. One of my lifetime goals was to win that city league title, especially the toughest division against all the former college and sometimes pro players. I was able to accomplish that goal with Big B. and our new school crew on a team called Volven Concrete, which was one of the best teams I ever put together and played on. All these stories are written in my yet unpublished work called "Story of a Streetballer from the ICE - Personal Slam Dunk Life History". The blog stories are about where I honed my skills during "The Dubuque Years." More of those stories to come.

Big B. decided to come back to the University of Dubuque my sophomore year for the primary reason that the team was planning a trip to Mexico over winter break. The coach traveled abroad with the team as much as NCAA regulations would allow, which was once every other year. Coach had us do all sorts of fund raisers like selling pizzas door to door, book binding for a local publisher, and working the football games. Working on the "chain gang" (yard and first down markers crew) during the football games was pretty cool. I liked being right up close, as close as possible to the action and to the battles in the trenches. At the start of the school year there was a change over in roommates at the Wilson Street Crib. Big B., White B., and Morris "Dragon Breath" Vankiscoff were new roommates while Spike and Stace moved back into the dorms. D Rog also eventually moved in some time after Mick Glajoe moved out and after he got back from playing pro ball in Czechoslovakia. Ike moved into the Loras college on campus apartment style dorms and joined a fraternity. On one of the first weekends before or right after classes started that fall the Zeta bitches (thats what we called the female sorority that had all the best looking gals in the school) threw a house party. A few of the Zeta's lived in a nice downtown old brick home they rented. There was a keg and some football and baseball players at the party. Big B. and I were smashed as usual, and the beginning of the school year was always something to celebrate and get crazy, so what did we decide to do but throw the keg out the window in an attempt to play a risky prank. I admit I came up with the idea on my own and talked Big. B. into going through with it. We got the keg out the window alright, but we were busted right before we could carry it away. The botched attempt almost provoked a fight between the basketball players and the football players. White B. almost got choked to death from a tough little football player named Crazy Jake. Rue came into the party just as we were skidaddling and I warned him to watch out but he was like, "Oh Matt, I ain't worried about none of these guys." White B. was punked by the little tough Jake character and afterwards he was carrying on about how he should of unloaded on the kid. We went and got some more beer somewhere else and went to the dorms to see Johny Duke. White B. and Duke were injured the previous year so they acted as equipment managers the previous season, but this year they were playing on the team. I don't know what I was thinking but I got Johny and Big B. to go over to the dorms where all the football players lived and standing outside the dorm I yelled and provoked a line up of football players to come out and hear my rampage about the treatment White B. had received at the hands of Crazy Jake. Jake was out there and he was the main spokesman on the team. It was three (actually Johny Duke was just watching), so two against twenty. I decided to lighten up my approach and went into a speal about how we worked the football games (on the chain gang and so forth) and how we cheered on and supported the football team when they were playing, and that I only hoped that they would give us the same respect, support and treatment. At some point in the conversation Crazy Jake casually made a move and all of a sudden put me in the same death grip choke hold with one hand around my neck as he had done to White B. Fortunately he was just demonstrating what had occurred between him and White B. and not really trying to harm or punk me (OK, maybe he was trying to punk me a little bit, but with 19 other guys backing him up it wasn't hard). I kind of liked that little toughy Crazy Jake after that, and it is somewhat amazing that Big B. and I walked out of the situation unscathed. That whole night was a hell of a way to start off the new school year and it most definitely set the trend for crazy drinking binges and mad parties to come. I always remembered that story as the time that Big B. threw the keg out the window.

White B. was a white kid from Bloomington Ill. who grew up in the projects. He was the most authentic black acting and talking white kid I ever met. He was also a self proclaimed gang member of the Vice Lords, and that was where his true loyalty always lay. He blew his knee out his senior year in high school and that no doubt set his basketball game back so far he probably never fully recovered. He was a computer science major of all things. His first year he lived in the dorms and roomed with a black kid from East Chicago named Black B. (they had the same first name). Black B. played varsity as a freshman his first semester but became ineligible the second. They got into a lot of trouble together that first semester. White B. had a fine ass girl friend he met that first year in the dorms. She was a local gal and I liked it when she came over to the Wilson Street Crib to hang out and sometimes she even brought a friend or two with her. White B. developed a few nick names during my two and a half year long tenure at the school. Sneaky Sig was his most other well known nick name which he got from blowing the cover on his boys and their female playing ways. After White B. moved into the Wilson St. pad I came under the illusion that he was fairly responsible because I always saw him bagging up the trash in the kitchen and taking the garbage out. He claimed he was just trying to get rid of the smell for when his gal came over. There was one particular hustle I had created (I'm sure it was done a million times else where) that White B. found to be absolutely hilarious. I received a ton of junk mail about joining record clubs and so forth. My little trick involved creating various aliases so as to receive a whole bunch of free tapes in the mail. White B. thought that my main alias "James T. Eastwood" was about the funniest thing ever. Whenever he brought the mail upstairs into the crib he would come in the living room or the kitchen and say, "Looks like their is a letter for James T. here," and then he would laugh out loud or to himself. The UD baseball coach once called White B. nothing but a "clown in a circus." B wasn't impressed and probably thought about how to get even. I got to play with Sneaky Sig in JV his first year of playing, which was my second. I played JV and Varsity my sophomore year because coach wanted to play me as much as possible due to all the practice time I was missing because of all the afternoon science labs I had to attend. There were several new faces on the team that second year. Moe and D Rog were in Europe playing pro ball and Spock took over the JV coaching duties and the assistant varsity coaching position for the team as he attended grad school. He also began dating Ike Lambert's sister. New faces on the team included Jerry Putzman from Bellevue, Cryan Ryan Pickle La Te, Mick Cousins, Chubby Rundy aka Spanky and Bad Samrun, all from small town Iowa, Chuckie Amsterdam from New Orleans, and Kale Barron from Indiana. Li'l Lamb, from Gary Indiana, was coaches new favorite little project. Li'l Lamb ran the point. Chuck was a 6'6" Junior, a transfer that was a force to be more than reckoned with on the inside. Big B. took a liking to old Chuck, and the two of them along with Brute Mahone and the freshman Putzman battled for playing time for the big man spot on the team. I also competed for playing time with those guys even though I was more of an outside wing player than any of them were. The biggest thing that affected my playing time was the fact that I missed a lot of practice, due to, as I've stated several times, the fact that I had afternoon science lab classes. I liked the fact that I was the only one to play on both varsity and JV every game. I got to play with my main homie from the ICE Big B and with my other roomies from the Wilson Street Crib who were all on the JV team. This was an overall, JV and Varsity, more talented team with a lot more depth then last years team. Mark Black and Period Baby had transferred to Iowa (to my hometown) but Zeke, Brute Mahone, and Darby Allen (when eligible) were upperclassmen now and gave our team needed experience. The kid from Morton Ill. on last years team transferred out as well, along with Ike Lambert of course who was now at Loras. Havatake and the mad Russian Cray Murphy were still on the team. A newspaper article appeared in the local paper previewing the teams upcoming season. It read:
"UD Focuses on Defense. But their coach still reluctant to slow down offense.
The University of Dubuque men's basketball team won't be confused with Loyola-Marymount this season. Not if the UD coach can help it. The Spartans (11-14, 8-8) were the Iowa Conference's best offensive team last season with 82.7 points per game. But they also gave up a league-leading 85.1 points. "Defense is usually the determining factor for the conference positioning, " said the coach. "How we fare will be determined by our defensive play, rebounding skills and taking care of the basketball better than we did last year. I've seen some very good things offensively that I've been pleased with." The UD coach would like to see improvement on the defensive end of the court. However, he has no intention of slowing down the Spartan attack. Four starters return among six letterwinners, including point guard Cray Murphy (Bellevue, Iowa), 3-point threat Chubby Rundy aka Spanky, Darby Allen, and the league's leading free-throw shooter Zeke Waunson. UD's coach must replace center Shad Spock, an all-league second teamer and the conference's top rebounder. But the Spartan's look to be solid up front. Six-foot six Chucky Amsterdam, 6-7 junior Brute Mahone and a pair of freshman, 6-8 Jerry Putzman and 6-5 Big B Growley, will all play. Mahone is a big, strong, inside player. Amsterdam and Zeke are a blend of both strength and finesse. Putzman earned all-state honors at Bellevue, Iowa. "I'm excited about our new kids," said the UD coach. They're energetic, quick and have the skills we looked for. Putzman runs the floor well and can hit the outside shot. We can use him inside and outside. Zeke and Chuck came into practice in great shape," said the coach. "Zeke is one of those tireless guys who go and go." Former Iowa City High standout, 6-3 Matt Clearsky, and Brag Havatake (Dubuque Hempstead) are slotted for duty at small forward. "We've filled in some holes that will make us a better basketball team," said UD's coach. The Spartans open their season Saturday at Cornell and host Mt. Mercy on Tuesday. The annual Dan Donovan tournament (UD, Clarke, St. Ambrose, and Marycrest) tips off next Friday. 'I've been impressed with our attitude," said the coach. "We're young and we will be up and down - to start." If the Spartans find their rhythm, they could be in the thick of the Iowa Conference race that tips off in January rather than in December. By then the Spartans will have already played 10 games."

This article appeared in the Telegraph Herald and was written by some cat named Craig Reber. I changed the names of the players in the article and put in "coach" where ever our coaches name was used. A couple things about the article. I wrote my summary of the team and listed the cast of characters on the team and so forth from memory, then I copied the article down without reading it beforehand, and I hadn't forgotten anybody. They are alike in many ways and I find coaches descriptions and his predictions about the team to be strikingly accurate to my own assesment of the team and to how we performed through out the season. It is funny how so little is written about Havatake and I, but to be honest I found great comfort in the fact that my name came first in order of who was "slotted" to start at the three spot. Ironically I ended up playing at the four spot and Havatake played at the two. Black B was not mentioned at all because of his inelgibility status. The article at the end states how the team will have played 10 games before conference play starts in January. It did not say anything about our planned trip to Mexico where we were scheduled to play about five games each for JV and Varsity (I would be the only player to play equal time on both teams on the trip). It was good to see my boy Big B Growley get a little run and a promise in print from the coach that he would see some playing time. We had a game early that season at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, a school I had attended right after high school and against the first college coach that I almost played for. At the game I saw a few cats from the IC that I knew well. They were ball players I had grown up watching and playing against. One was and would be years later (after the Dubuque years) a prominent on the court personal rival in my hometown. His last real name is so cool I have to mention it: McCool. It is real and I hope he doesn't mind me revealing it. There are several stories already written about him in my IC collection of street ball tales. I was put in the game against Cornell early on and soon when on offense about my second series I picked, pivoted and flashed into the paint just as I had been coached, received a good post feed on the left side from 6-8 freshman center Jerry Putzman. I caught the ball, drop stepped, slapped glass as I shot it, posed for a brief moment in the air like I was His Airness himself or something, and then watched my shot attempt roll around the rim and spin out. Out of the game I came. I was embarrassed with my lack of concentration to make that possibly all so crucial shot. I pulled that trick all too many times in my short career as a basketball player for the UD Spartans. I have always wondered if I would have just made that damn shot if coach would have left me in the game and if it would have allowed me to get in the flow and score like I could and then who knows what would have happened with my basketball career and my life. Instead, I missed it and back to the bench I went. Big B's mom was at that game also and afterwards she told Big B that she thought she understood what college athletics was all about after seeing the game. I'm still not sure what she exactly meant by that. Big B didn't get a chance to play in the game. I'll point out some irony right now so it won't be lost by the reader who only reads this story and not the entire "The Dubuque years" episode. Both of my two full years of playing I shot 50 percent from the field, which in both years led the team. Coach never acknowledged that fact when giving out the end of the year awards, apparently due to my lack of playing time and shot attempts. I did miss some gimmies, too many, but 50 percent from the field for the season? Thats pretty good! Coach never gave me the chance to perform at the end of the game when I was loose and into the flow of the game and when the game was on the line. I'll say it now, I have always had philosophical differences on coaching with every coach I ever played for, and I always thought that I would be a better coach than all of them some day, if that's what I ended up doing for a career. My opinion of "better" coach I supposes means a fairer coach. Not wiser, smarter, more clever, more knowledgeable, just fairer. I always despised hypocrites and it seemed and seems that I am good at finding and pointing out the hypocritical nature of everything under the sun, including in regards to my own behavior. These thoughts may seam like tangents or insignificant moments in some poor fools life (mine), but I have been mulling over these memories for about 17 or 18 years now, and things like the missed shot against Cornell, coaches hypocritical tendencies (spoken philosophies vs. actual actions), and all the little but important moments that possibly could have changed my life so much, still affect me to this day. Its hard to say what possibly could have happened if some of the little things had happened differently, but I have imagined some of the possibilities. Maybe missing that shot at Cornell for ever made me hungrier to prove myself and help put a fire inside of me to try and prove to myself that I could be worthy of shouts out from all the fellas that I ever played with or against and them saying, "Old Matt was a hell of a ball player. " A Streetballer from the ICE.