BearcatNews.com presents our next interview.

 

LaZelle Durden

Steve Sanders

Alex Meacham

Hosted by Jon Breiner (JB), Denise Breiner (DB) and Mike Ryan (MR).

The following is an interview held at Christy’s in Clifton with LaZelle Durden, Steve Sanders and Alex Meacham.  We met for dinner and about two hours of conversation at Christy’s in Clifton before the Cincinnati at Louisville game.

 

BearcatNews.com wants to thank Christy for her gracious hospitality.  We told her we’d give her a plug, but the Bearcat faithful already know that Christy’s place on McMillan under Lenhardt’s is a great hangout before the game, after the game or for the game if you couldn’t get tickets ! 

 

 

Enjoy the interview:

 

PART ONE: Where Are They Now

 

Jon Breiner: I’m sure the folks are interested in what you guys are doing now.  Steve which YMCA do you work at?

Steve Sanders: The West End.

Mike Ryan: Down near Taft High School, isn’t it?

SS: Right down the street.  We’re doing a lot of different things.  We have partnerships with schools. Computer Programs. African Dance Programs.  Sports. I could talk for hours about it.  I’ve been there ten years this coming August (2002). You get a routine and you don’t realize all the things you do for them until you sit back. I love it.  You have to love it.

 

SS: You know I remember watching Alex Meacham running around our (Bearcat) practices back in the day.

MR: Causing trouble or was he a good kid?

Alex Meacham: When they were done with practice I’d shoot with them.

MR: How old are you at this time?

AM: Wow.  I don’t know.  Young.

SS: How old are you now?

AM:  25

SS: So you were about 12-13. It was in ’90.  

AM: When I was a little guy, I used to come over from school (Roger Bacon) to play.

SS:  I must be getting old.

JB: Steve, what year did you graduate from high school?

SS: 1985.

JB: …and I graduated from Walnut Hills in 1984. 

SS: Do you remember Rick Weigel?  He was on the (Bearcats) team for one year, wasn’t he?  

JB: Yeah.   (ed: Weigel was a 6-5 freshman in Huggs’ first year)

JB: He left the team I know to some team like…Coastal Carolina.  But we gotta be careful of making fun of some team like Coastal Carolina because that is a bad memory there.

AM: Who was on the team that year?

SS: that was the first year!  They hit a bank shot from the wing to beat us.

JB: that turn around 33 footer?

SS:  yep…off the glass !  Or was it Arkansas State? A guy who is 7 foot 5 hit a three pointer at the buzzer.  He tried to pass it but couldn’t pass it so he just threw it. It was awful.  I was like ‘man, let’s get out of here’.  He ran off the court and if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought it was Herman Munster. (laughter)

 

(Christy stops by and takes our order.  Great food, Christy! )

 

AM:  (after he finds out BearcatNews.com is buying, he says…)   I’ll take everything on this side of the menu.  (laughter)

SS: …and super size it !

MR: you shut up!

AM: I want everything except this thing called “Thank you, please come again”.

 

AM: I got UC by 12 tonight (over Louisville).

SS: seven.

LD: eight

JB: My preview guess of 20. Do I have to stick with that ?

MR: yes, twenty.  Denise ?

Denise Breiner: ten.

LD: This time of year I have to go with Huggs emotions.

MR:  I’ll go with six.

AM: You have the lowest number don’t ya?

(Of course, UC lost to Louisville, 86-80, so no one wins)

 

JB: My parents were good friends with asst coach Ken Cunningham who was assistant coach at UC in the early and mid-70’s. He actually went to coach Akron for a few years, pre-Huggins. Today it would be an NCAA violation, but Pat Cummings and Bobby Sherlock in the mid-70’s would come over to our house every Sunday night. You can’t do that now.  But back then, it was nice to have a local family that they could feel part of and feel comfortable. I grew up around UC Basketball.  I fell in love with it by default. It was osmosis. I had no choice.

AM: For me that was breakdancing. You had no choice. (laughter). When you grew up in my neighborhood, you had to breakdance.  And if you couldn’t break dance you couldn’t survive. (more laughter)

LaZelle Durden: I use to twist myself all up. Hurt myself.

AM: If you weren’t up on the newest moves, you were in bad shape!

DB: Could you spin on your head?

AM: No, I couldn’t spin on my head.  There were two things we did in my neighborhood that we did. Breakdance and play basketball.  We would play basketball for awhile, then this guy named Mike Grace who had this big boom box would set it down next to some big piece of cardboard and we would… (Alex makes beat noises and does some moves…).  It was a great time.  You had to graduate to the breakdancing club. You had to get to certain age where the guys would let you get out there and break.

MR: I’m sure you listened to a lot of Run-DMC back then, right Alex?

AM: Now we aren’t going to talk about that….(laughter)

MR: Alex and I have been arguing for the last few weeks now.  I’m Old School, he’s New School….

AM: I don’t have a problem with Old School, it’s just when you dis my man Jay-Z there’s gonna be a problem.

JB: I’m way Old School. Run DMC.  I still have the SugarHill Gang LP….  Kurtis Blow… 

MR: Rappers Delight. These are The Breaks. . .

JB: That’s all the stuff I grew up with.

MR: Now I want to know your preference, LaZelle.

LD: Run DMC.  (Alex looks away.  Mike smiles)

MR: What about you Steve?

SS: Jay-Z, no doubt !  (Alex is happier now. Laughter.)   There was a difference though.  I was crazy about Run DMC.  I would have to say I like them both.  You’re giving me flashbacks !

AM: If there was no Run DMC, there is no Jay-Z.  I think that Jay-Z can take every great rapper that has been and he created his own style and has taken it to the next level. You can hear a little bit of everybody of him.

SS: You know what; I’m going to change to Run DMC. I remember when I was a senior in high school; I played in the North-South game which was an all state All-Star football game. I was rooming with this guy from Findlay. White guy. I was playing my Run DMC. I had a box. Playing it loud.  He took my tape and threw it out the window ! (laughter)  I told him if you don’t go down there and get my tape, I’m gonna kill you !  (more laughter)

 

MR: LaZelle, you recently had your jersey retired at your high school, right ?

LD: Yeah.   (ed: LaZelle had his jersey retired and was inducted to the Rossford High School Hall of Fame on January 15, 2002)

MR: What kind of memories did that bring back for you ?

LD: …..Wow ! 

MR: Was there a huge crowd there?

LD: Yeah, I stepped up to the podium and I had this long speech prepared, but I just cried.  (laughter)  I wanted to say thanks to all these folks, but I just… (makes crying sound).  I just stood there at a loss for words.

MR: was your old coach able to be there?

LD: yeah, he was there.

SS: I remember when I first met LaZelle and first seeing him play. He came to campus and would always play at the Fieldhouse. I could see he was going to keep getting his 38-40 points like he did in high school.  What did you average in high school ?

LD:  38 points.

SS: …you know ‘cause you’ll hear all this hype and then you’ll say ‘he aint no good’. But then I saw him play and I said “He’s for real !”

 

JB: LaZelle, I remember when you were recruited in. You played in the summer in intramurals before your freshman year and there was a friend of mine who played against you once. He told me you came down court five straight trips and from like 30 feet out, you were like whoosh, whoosh, whoosh . . . . .  So finally you came down, he told me, and all the guys rushed at you to block your shot and you faked around them for a layup. I said to myself after hearing that story: “I can’t wait to see this guy play”.

AM:  The thing I remember about LaZelle was that there had been a lot of players that could shoot the ball, but watching LaZelle….he wanted to make it so bad !   I’ll never forget what Huggins said my first year. Coach is giving us that beginning of the year lecture and he said “If there was one player that he could go to war with, it would be LaZelle Durden.”  I’ll never forget that.  You’ve got to talk about  the nickname “GunSlinger” though. . . .

MR: where did that come from ?

LD and AM: (in unison) Kevin Frazier.  (Frazier was the play by play announcer for the Bearcats at the time)

LD: (imitating Frazier’s raspy voice) He’s like a gunslinger out there !

AM: what did you think about that nickname ?

LD: I liked it.

SS: It fit !

LD: And he said it a lot too. He was a cool guy.

 

MR: Now what I have here is a videotape of a game, from a few years ago.  (I had brought along a videotape of a game against Chicago State from Jan 5th, 1994 in which LaZelle had scored about 30 points.  The Bearcats won 103-49)

SS: I can tell it’s from a few years ago.  Look at those shorts !  (laughter)

(LaZelle shoots a three on tape)

LD: This was out of my memory till now.

(Coach Huggins is wearing a bold tie with large polka dots.)

AM: Is that one of those ties Huggs used to auction off ?

MR: There are the Shoemaker Shakers in the crowd.    ‘Zelle it looks like your running point early on here.  Did you run point in high school ?

LD: Sometimes.  I mostly just shot it.  (laughter. . . .LaZelle and Steve both recognize Mike Harris on the video. )

SS:  How’d he get away with that?  Isn’t this a travel ?  (laughter)

AM: I think he traveled twice.  There’s Marko Wright.   Curtis (Bostic) looks like he is made out of rubber.

JB: What’s he doing now ?

MR: He and Terry (Nelson) are coaching at West Hi.

 

JB: LaZelle I know people talk to you about the Wyoming game, that’s probably the first game that most people think of, but there’s another game, I think it was in your sophomore year, at Millet Hall in Miami. (Feb1st, 1993. UC came in at 15-1 on the year) I think UC was fourth or fifth in the country at the time and nobody on UC’s team could make a basket, except for you in the second half. There’s no reason UC should have won that game other than you. You sent it in to overtime and I think we handled them ok in overtime.   I just remember that your game in the second half.

LD: That was a good year, my sophomore year.

 

MR: Have you guys seen a progression of Huggins coaching style over the years ?

SS: I’ll tell you what I’ve seen.  I came in the first year here.  It was rough. Very demanding. No room to talk back. I had him first. Three and a half hour practices every day. Lot of yelling and screaming. Hard work. So what I see is he has mellowed. But now, and even just two years after I left, I could walk in and I can’t believe….these guys get to talk back !    Now with this group here this year, I‘ve been to a couple practices and I’ve seen the old Huggins.  And I think he’s like that because he sees the potential and he thinks these guys can accept it and take it better. Because if you look at this team this year, it is the first year in a long time that you don’t have this blue chip guy, prima-donna that’s up on a pedestal and he doesn’t have to worry or cater to any egos. Steve Logan doesn’t walk around with an ego.

MR: So the set of personalities this year makes it different?

SS: Yeah.  Overall he has mellowed. But this year he’s got that fire back.

 

MR: How does a football player get on the basketball team ? 

SS: They were looking for players.

MR: Remind me who was on the team that year.

SS:, Lou Banks, Andre Tate, Keith Starks, Levertis Robinson. Now Brady Hughes was coming back, but they only had the four main guys.  What Coach Harrison did was…you know they have intramural basketball tournaments in the spring and Coach Harrison actually played in some tournaments for the purpose of looking for players. So I always loved basketball….

(Steve gets distracted by the old video). . .  you see LaZelle shoot that ball !    He was so far away he wasn’t even on the TV screen.  (laughter)  All you see is the ball come from off camera !   (Steve continues)  

So we were playing against Coach Harrison’s team and I didn’t know who he was, but I saw he was a weak link. So he was checking me and I was attacking him. After the game there was a guy there named Branson Wright who said that is Coach Harrison and he wants you to play for the team next year. I’m looking around for somebody else, you know. That’s how it all started.  Also, off-season from football, I would always play with the guys on the basketball team so I had an idea in my mind that I could play with them. But I thought well I could play with them in Open Gym, but I never thought in an organized situation. I had never thought about playing.

JB: But you started ! 

AM: Did you start the whole year ?

SS: Yeah.

 

JB: People like Mike and I know you because of your basketball past. How do you identify yourself?  When you look back, are you a basketball player or a football player?

SS: When I think of my time at UC, I definitely think basketball. I think that’s because of everything that happened with the success of the basketball team and the obvious attention to basketball. I think basketball first. Another thing to it is that the coach I played for is still there I can still go up and visit and I still have a relationship with him.

JB: Who was your football coach?

SS: Dave Curry.

JB: Did you play with Danny McCoin?

SS: Yeah. My junior year. That was a magical year.

JB: I’ve been a UC fan for a long time, but mostly basketball.  But you know what, you had a good running back…

SS: Reggie Taylor.  And there was Jason Stargell…

JB: I remember Jason because he graduated a year ahead of me from Walnut Hills.

SS: Jason Stargell probably had the most talent that I have ever seen in a wide receiver. He was two years older than me.  I used to just sit back at practice and watch him. He was always something else. I would watch him and he was amazing.

AM: What year did you end up walking on, your senior year?

SS: My fifth year actually. 1989.   Four years of football. One year of basketball. My best friend also made the (basketball) team, Roosevelt Meeks. Because I remember after we made the team, we go and talk to Coach Mo (Steve Moeller) and Coach Mo said “OK now, I want you guys to know, we just need practice players.

AM: He told you this ?!

SS: He told us that !    He said we need you to come in, work hard and maybe you’ll make the team. But I told Rosie (Meeks) after I analyzed everything, I told him ‘we’re gonna have to play’. Cause who else gonna play !  There are four guys you know are going to play, but after that. . . . you know Tarrance Gibson came in, and he was a very good player when he left, but he came he was raw. So he wasn’t ready. BJ Ward was coming in a similar type situation. Michael Joiner too.

 

MR:  LaZelle you came in with in incredible class. (Nick Van Exel, Anthony Buford, Corie Blount, Terry Nelson, Erik Martin, John Jacobs)  There was some big talent. Did you feel like the low man coming in or did you feel you could carry your own pretty well ?

LD: Well I felt I could carry my own. You had the high school kids with reputations and the other guys I mean it . . . . like Steve said earlier you had guys coming in with that many egos, it was sometimes hard to control guys’ behavior when you are trying to coach and get information to them. It can sometimes slow team unity. It took a while to get the team chemistry going. We all know the Dontonio story years later. . .   But it was a fun group and it was an experience, just speaking for myself, that I’ll never forget.  

 

LD: Also, you had an earlier question about Huggins coaching style. I don’t think he really changed too much, he did change the little things that he did because of the group of guys he had because they changed and our society was changing. I mean you have these guys; I played with them (points to Alex and Steve) . ..you had these guys and we respected the coach. I mean you argued at him or whatever but it was done in a special way. But the guys today, they didn’t really take it the same way. But the kids changed and the times changed.

AM: One thing about your group (Van Exel, Blount, Durden, etc) they wanted to be in college. Nowadays, these kids have to be in college in order to go to the NBA and now its changing …year by year…where kids can just make that jump (from high school). You had to come for one year like DerMarr and Kenny, but back in the day it was like ‘I have to’ or ‘I want my dream ….’   Remember back in the day when your dream was to play college basketball and do that in hopes that the next level would come...the NBA?  That whole mentality has changed.

LD: . . . because to a high school kid the NBA was a long shot, but today this happens. So some of the guy’s mindsets go.  They get false ideas of what college is and these false ideas makes things complicated for them. Like up to the time you were there Alex, and trying to get the guys to do what they’re supposed to do.  Some guys want to do it and some guys don’t. They sometimes don’t have the motivation.

But I think . . . now Huggs has that control and they got a group of guys that want it and they all work off the same page and they work with each other.  But not just with each other but the coach as well. They have an understanding of what they want to do.

JB: Do you think Huggins has changed his philosophy at all?  We had Satterfield and DerMarr who were the McDonald’s All Americans, but I think he got them to try to plug into roles. We had them just one year or two years in Satterfield’s case, but since then it appears from the outside looking in, that he’s recruiting top players from just outside the McDonald’s All American. That he wants to get he guys that will come in and be there for three, four years.

LD: I think that’s just the way Huggs looks at recruiting guys. That (recruit) could easily be the next guy behind you or the third guy, the fourth guy, etc. There are a million guys just outside of the All Americans and those are the people they put their attention too.  And if every school goes for the All Americans, what’s your chances of getting them?

MR: Now the NBA is competing for them as well. . . .   

LD: He’s looking at the guys who could come in and really be focused on college. Hopefully they have some parents who want to emphasize that too. In the Huggs system, I just believe in the way his system can take five guys who want to work hard, any five, even guys who don’t know how to play basketball, but want to learn and put in some work in running the system. The thing is getting five guys who feel this way and have hopes that it goes down thru the whole team. That’s just a gift that Coach has, I mean the way he plays us it makes guys aggressive, maybe a little more aggressive than normal.  But you got to be a player and he gives you the energy and he has the personality and he does a great job.

MR: Would you describe Huggins’ style as ‘tough love’?  When we see him on TV he’s fired up, yelling and screaming and he’s the stereotype that the country’s sees. Of course, we know that perception is not as true locally, but from what I’ve heard and what I’ve read, one-on-one when he sits down and chats with you, he’s even a father-like figure.

SS: He’s a very competitive person and so that’s where that comes from. You have to understand that he wants to make the best out of his players. But if you go to sit and talk to him in his office or if he was sitting here . . . . .  I mean I’ve met people that think, if he was sitting here, he’d be yelling his order to the waitress, but he’s not like that.  He’s laid back, he’s calm, and sometimes you can barely hear him. I think its tough love. People make the mistake of thinking what they see on TV and on the court is how that person really is but that’s not the case with Huggins at all. He’s just trying to get the most out of his players. I can still walk in there, right now, and get any kind of benefit of any other player even though he didn’t recruit me and I wasn’t a scholarship basketball player. He could have easily said you were just a walk-on football player and told me ‘thank you, goodbye’…

AM: once you’re part of the family, you’re always part of the family. 

SS: To this day, tomorrow, if I needed something, I feel like I could go to Coach Huggins and say “I need this…can you help me ?” and he would help me.

AM: Let’s say you got an actor in a sitcom. The sitcom is on every single day and he portrays a character on that TV.  Then you see this actor on the street and he’s a totally different person because when he’s on that set, he’s doing that particular role. I think Huggins is very much like that. When I talk about my time (with the team), I compare him to an actor because when he’s in that gym and he steps into the Shoemaker he puts on his coaching face, his whole coaching persona, because that’s what he has to do to get it done. When he steps away from the court, he’s the Bob Huggins, the country boy from West Virginia, the laid back, regular guy.

Recently, I was at dinner at Martino’s about a month and a half ago and he’s sitting there with a bunch of his buddies. There must’ve been 40-50 people walked up to him thru the night and by the end of the night, 20 of them ended up sitting around him. He was just joking around talking to everybody, he didn’t care. He’s pretty much like that. But when he’s on that court, its business and it is tough love.  I know he gets a lot of that from his dad too.

JB: Yeah, I read his book, the one he did years ago with Mike Bass.

AM: You read Huggins book?

JB: Yeah . . . well…and your book.

(laughter)

SS: The thing I think in what Huggs has changed is that . . . when I played, you could not talk back.  Could not !   It wasn’t sometime you could. . . you could not! And when I see it now, I say “Man, I can’t believe it”!   I think when he saw how society has changed . . .  he had to adapt to this tough love, I think that’s what it is.

AM:  I still think that Cincinnati is a second tier program. You got your Duke’s, your North Carolina’s, your Kentucky’s that year in and year out they are the best teams, granted North Carolina’s got a bad year, but they’re considered the best programs, they get the best players.  UC is right at that notch below. They don’t get as much media attention all the time and I think Huggins has adapted and changed up his style in how he does things in order to let some of these guys that want to go to the NBA, like DerMarr, use UC as a step ladder to the next level. He’s made it an easy transition.

Take for instance DerMarr. Dontonio came. Kenny came. There are other guys that are like that in high school that say “I can go to Cincinnati. I like their style...” They can come in, get out, and they see success from other players that have come thru and he sort of adapted the style to that. I’ll tell you what…I don’t care what anybody says.  If there are five McDonalds All Americans out there that Huggs can get I guarantee you, he’ll take them. They may not fit the role, but it’s very hard to pass up five McDonalds All Americans.  I really thought that when UC went to the Final Four. Then Elite Eight. I said ‘this is it’. You had Dick Vitale at Midnight Madness. UC is number one. I think the losses in getting knocked out of the tournament with the Danny Fortson years took that Final Four down a little bit.

 

SS: I remember watching the West Virginia game at my girlfriend’s apartment, well she’s not my girlfriend now but. . . .and I’m watching the game and we go up one and I’m like ‘Yes’ !  I was screaming, but then when the guy came down and hit the shot, I was…(stares blankly). I just sat there, I just couldn't believe it. Then she was teasing me !

MR: She was teasing you ? !

SS: yeah, and I said ‘I’m gonna break up with you’ (laughter)  She was teasing me!  She was saying ‘Ha, your boys lost !’  West Virginia was just . . .

AM: . . . and Ruben tipped that shot !  I was saying ‘It’s short ! It’s short !’  and we were going to go to California if we won that game. I was looking forward to going to California.

Tomorrow, Part Two

Steve Sanders talks about making The Shot !