by Steve Beaven
For Ed, the two years that followed Mark’s death were steeped in anger and despair. It started in the first days after the crash, when he couldn’t get a straight answer about whether the university would pay for Mark’s funeral. The Siegels joined other families who hired an attorney to press for answers about UE’s burgeoning memorial fund. Ed sobbed during his testimony before the Indiana legislature, arguing that a state law limiting compensation in wrongful death suits was archaic and unfair. He recounted the anguish of cleaning out his son’s dorm room and finding Christmas presents Mark had bought for Ed and Carmen.
“My son at nineteen years old, with the tremendous potential that was ahead of him—you’re trying to tell me my son was only worth $4,500? Is that all his life was worth—$4,500? That’s hard for a father to swallow.”
In the months after the crash, Ed needed to know every detail of that night. He wanted to know what it looked like in that muddy field, what the rescuers discovered when they reached the smoldering remnants of the plane. Early in 1978, as the weather grew warmer and the days longer, Ed drove his family down to Evansville so he could get a good look at the crash site. He visited with Dr. Stephen Troyer and his wife, Lois, who had treated passengers at the scene soon after the plane went down. From the Troyers’ backyard, Ed and his younger son David climbed down to the edge of the airport property. Walking the soft soil and taking in the view of the ravine where the plane broke apart and burst into flames filled the gaps in Ed’s imagination and provided him a fleeting sense of peace.
But basketball is what saved him. It gave him such joy to see David Gadis and his teammates grow and improve. Ed had changed, too. Rather than let his assistants take care of the hands-on coaching, as he had done for years, Ed spent more time demonstrating what he wanted from his players, the proper stance on defense, a fluid release on a free throw. He didn’t scream at them as much and accepted mistakes more readily. After more than three decades as an educator, Ed Siegel returned to Pike High School as a better teacher. That season, David Gadis was a sophomore point guard, leading a green team with more potential than talent. Pike struggled. But Ed knew David could play Division I basketball and convinced him that by the time he was a senior, Pike would be one of the best teams in Indianapolis. Ed also knew that the obstacles David and his teammates would face went well beyond turnovers and missed free throws.
One day he warned his players that their upcoming game in Franklin, a small town south of Indianapolis, was likely to get ugly. Three-quarters of his players, including David and his younger brother Mack, were African American, and Ed told them to expect a hostile crowd shouting racial epithets.
“They will call you every name but the one your mama gave you.”
Ed instructed his kids to maintain their composure and represent their families and Pike High School with dignity and respect. Also: kick Franklin’s ass and point to the scoreboard on the way to the bus. Ed’s predictions were prescient. Fans brought signs and jeered at David and Mack and their teammates, screaming racial slurs.
“Go back to the ghetto!”
David heard it, but paid no heed. He led Pike with twenty-four points and hit two free throws with a minute left to seal the game. He and his teammates played just as Ed had instructed, ignoring the taunts, focusing on basketball, escaping Franklin with their pride intact and another notch in the win column.
By David’s senior year, Pike was a deep and experienced team. Three starters had returned, the top three reserves were veterans, and Mack was already making a name for himself as a sophomore. David was one of the top guards in the state, pursued by recruiters from Louisville, Oklahoma, Southern Methodist, and other big schools. David led the Red Devils that season, making the perfect pass, scoring the crucial basket. In the semifinal game of the Marion County tournament, as the first-half clock ticked toward zero, David heaved a shot from midcourt to give the Red Devils a lead they never relinquished. The following night, after Pike won the championship, David and his teammates celebrated on the bus during the half-hour ride home, dancing and singing in the aisles. When the bus stopped near the Pike campus, the players crowded into the front for an unobstructed view of the fire trucks and police cars that would escort them the rest of the way to the Pike gym, where their classmates and families waited.
The rally that night was Ed’s gift to his players, a grand gesture for fulfilling the promise he saw in them three years before when David Gadis was just a freshman, matched up in practice against the cherished point guard he would soon replace.
SIXTEEN
Rivals
WHEN LOYOLA UNIVERSITY TRAVELED from Chicago to Evansville to play the Aces in early 1982, eleven thousand UE fans booed Darius Clemons each time the public address announcer uttered his name and then cheered for each of the three fouls he committed. The boos didn’t rattle Clemons or his teammates. Brimming with confidence, Loyola boasted a lineup studded with elite talent. Clemons was a fearless, whippet-quick point guard who grew up on Chicago’s south side and forever played in the shadow of Mark Aguirre and Isiah Thomas, two of the greatest players in the city’s history. He’d made a name for himself in Evansville two years before when he stepped to the line late in a close game, encouraged booing Aces fans by waving his arms—Bring it on!—and then sank two free throws to seal the victory. Although he scored less as a senior, Clemons led the nation with ten assists per game. Wayne Sappleton, a 6'9" senior center, led the nation in rebounding with fifteen a game, to go along with twenty-one points. Alfredrick “the Great” Hughes was a well-regarded freshman. All three were considered NBA prospects. The Ramblers played a simple, free-flowing offense. The first guy with an open shot usually took it.
The Ramblers considered themselves tough city kids, raised on Chicago’s playgrounds. They considered Evansville a hick town. The Evansville newspapers played up the rivalry, dubbing Loyola a “glamour team” and labeling Clemons as Public Enemy No. 1. One reporter wrote about how much the sports information director from Loyola admired Clemons for overcoming the poverty of his childhood.
“For him to get where he has is a credit,” the SID said. “He’s a ghetto kid who didn’t get caught in the jungle by crime or drugs.”
Beneath the racially coded story lines, the rivalry was more complex than any in college basketball. The animosity between the Ramblers and the Aces was real, and it flared up on several occasions in 1982. But Clemons and his teammates also knew that when they came to Evansville, the Aces played with the weight of the city on their backs, with an intensity that Loyola didn’t see in other teams, an urgency absent from other arenas.
“Their mission was beyond basketball,” Alfredrick Hughes says. “We definitely knew they were playing for something bigger.”
Evansville had finished the 1981 season 19–9, having drawn 127,000 fans to Roberts Stadium, more than any team since 1966, the apex of the McCutchan years. Walters was deeply disappointed that they didn’t receive a bid to the National Invitation Tournament.
But UE entered the 1981–82 season awash in optimism, for good reason. Brad Leaf and Theren Bullock were seniors and cocaptains, poised for their best season yet. Richie Johnson, a 6'9" sophomore transfer from Missouri, seemed as if he could play any position on the floor. Rick McKinstry was a long and lean transfer from Clemson expected to contribute off the bench. And this year, for the first time, the winner of the Midwestern City Conference tournament would receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
But to get there, UE would have to beat the Ramblers three times in three gyms in six weeks, relying on the kid the old sportswriters called the Towering Turk.
The summer of 1981 had been long and lonely for Emir Turam, with late nights alone at Carson Center, shooting over and over, working out his frustrations on the rim. It was a steady routine, 350 shots each night, every night. He dunked, worked on his footwork in the paint, and practiced midrange jumpers. Emir had a key to the gym and let himself in at all hours. Walters stopped by his offic
e once at 10:30 on a Sunday night and found Turam shooting, consistent as a metronome. When Emir wasn’t shooting, he was running. When he wasn’t running, he was eating. He lived that summer a block or so from campus with Dale Campbell, a railroad engineer and old friend of Arad McCutchan’s who’d rented rooms to players over the years and fattened them up with pork chops, burgers, fried chicken, and banana milkshakes thickened with protein powder. If anyone needed fattening up, it was Emir. At 7'1" and 215 pounds, he was built like a Popsicle stick. His goals that summer were gaining weight and building muscle. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he headed downtown to lift weights at the Pit, a haven for muscleheads who began their workouts with primal screams and ended them by vomiting. Turam didn’t exactly fit in among the Pit’s typical clientele. But he didn’t miss a workout because he couldn’t bear to endure another season like the one that had ended in March.
Turam realized, a few weeks after his arrival in Evansville, that he’d have to adapt to the American style of play. It was nothing like what he’d grown up with in Turkey. In pickup games at Carson Center, Emir got knocked around under the basket. His new teammates were faster and more physical than players he’d faced in Europe. He couldn’t simply rely on his height to dominate other players.
Once the 1980–81 season started and he tried to play more aggressively, he found himself in foul trouble. The officiating frustrated him. He’d get confused in practice and question coaches when they gave him instructions: “Why?” Walters thought at first that Turam was a smart-ass, but realized after a while that Emir wasn’t joking around. He was an inquisitive kid, trying to learn the game from a new perspective. Once, on the day after Christmas, Walters lost his patience with Turam during a listless practice and kicked him out of the gym. Emir said later that Walters had misunderstood. He didn’t have a bad attitude. He’d been sick. Once he’d recovered, Turam returned to practice with renewed vigor and played his best games of the season in the UE holiday tournament, with fifteen points and five rebounds against Akron. Turam walked off the court to a standing ovation that night. But the celebration was brief. Kenny Perry usually started at center, and Emir played less and less as the season wore on. Gary Marriott recalls a sensitive kid, easily discouraged by his coach’s criticism. When Walters yelled at him—“You’re 7'1" and you’re jumping like you’re 5'1"!”—Emir would shut down, giving minimal effort, which angered Walters even more. The upbeat, confident teen who found the media waiting for him on his first day in town was gone, replaced by an uncertain kid who couldn’t understand what had happened to his game.
“I’m playing nowhere like I’m capable of playing,” he said one day after practice. “I’m three of thirteen from the free-throw line. Why should that be? There’s no difference in the baskets.”
Marriott tried to help. He knew Turam responded to praise and worked with him one-on-one during practice. Turam was a lefty, so Marriott helped him develop his right-hand moves: layups, jump hooks, baby hooks. Nearly every day, just the two of them. He boosted Emir’s confidence, praising his progress and encouraging good work habits. He told him that if he wanted to get a big contract in Europe or the NBA, he’d have to work harder. Marriott also invited Turam to his house, out by the airport, for dinner with his family. As Gary fired up the grill, his kids and their friends from the neighborhood crowded around their enormous guest, asking Emir about Turkey and his accent. Turam also made friends with a half dozen Turkish students at UE and with Ali Akin, the Turkish physician who had visited him in Istanbul before he arrived at Evansville. Emir desperately missed his parents and siblings. The cost of international travel was prohibitive and a three-minute phone call was ten dollars. So Turam cut out articles from the Evansville newspapers and mailed them home. His family sent him huge packets of Turkish newspapers. They were usually a few weeks old by the time they arrived. But Turam read every one of them, front to back. Academically, his transition to the US was a breeze. He’d grown up in a family that prized education, and he loaded his schedule with economics, math, algebra, and physics classes. It took him fifteen minutes to do his homework most days. So when he showed up at the team’s mandatory study table at night, he read books and wrote letters home.
At the end of his freshman season, after averaging three points a game, Turam met with Walters to talk about his future. He was heading back to Turkey in April and wanted to know whether he should return to UE or give up on his college career. Walters was blunt. “I told him that if he went to Turkey and didn’t come back for the summer,” he said, “he should just stay there.”
Turam came back to Evansville in June 1981, giving up a summer on the beach at home and giving Evansville basketball one more chance.
Eric Harris had also given Evansville basketball one more chance. And now, as his senior season approached, he had little idea what role he’d play for Dick Walters. Would he start? Would he be the sixth man? Or would he spend the year watching from the bench, wondering how his college basketball career had skidded off the rails? Of the four freshmen that Walters brought to UE for his first season—Harris, Leaf, Bullock, and Sherwood—Harris had gotten off to the fastest start and endured the most painful fall from grace, a confusing stumble from starter to sub.
Harris started at point guard for most of his freshman season, leading a team of strangers built on the fly with the quiet self-assurance of a veteran. He averaged eight points and passed out 103 assists, a single-season record at UE. Once Leaf and Bullock became starters midway through the season, it seemed as if Walters could pencil all three of them into the lineup for the next three years. As sophomores, Leaf and Bullock made giant strides, but Harris regressed. Surgery to remove calcium deposits from an ankle slowed him during his second year in Evansville, as did an elbow injury late in the season. He was no longer a full-time starter as a sophomore and averaged less than five points. There were three games when he never left the bench. As his playing time diminished, his relationship with Walters suffered. Complicating matters was the fact that he’d become discouraged about academics. Harris majored in biology and hoped to enroll in medical school after graduating from UE. But because the Aces traveled so much, he found it difficult to keep up with his studies. Harris had begun to doubt the cornerstones of his college experience: basketball and academics. He didn’t talk to any of his teammates or coaches about his ambivalence. That wasn’t his style. But he talked to his parents, who encouraged him to make his own decision about his future and promised they would support him no matter what he chose. So, after his sophomore season, Harris decided to transfer to Georgia and play with his high school teammate, a high-scoring forward named Dominique Wilkins.
“I thought a change would help me,” he said. “I was constantly battling with myself. It was hard to come to a decision.”
But announcing his decision to leave Evansville didn’t ease his mind. He had friends at UE. He’d been one of Walters’s original recruits. He felt obligations to his teammates and the UE fans who’d been so supportive after he lost the starting job. The pressure he’d felt in the days after the season ended began to fade, giving him the clarity he’d lacked. Three weeks after declaring his intention to transfer, Harris met with Walters to say he’d changed his mind.
Walters welcomed him back but warned Harris to temper his expectations. UE had already recruited a junior college point guard to be the top backup, so Harris would be a third-stringer. Eric accepted the demotion with characteristically quiet disappointment. And then he endured an absolutely dreadful season. The low point, perhaps, had been the UCLA game at Pauley Pavilion. Harris entered late in the first half and heaved up an off-balance jumper from seventeen feet that clanged off of the front of the rim. On another possession, he was stripped of the ball, a steal that led to an easy UCLA layup. Walters pulled him out immediately and left him on the bench for the rest of the game. For the season, he played in only eighteen of UE’s twenty-eight games and scored fourteen points, less than one per game. The quiet b
ut confident kid who had directed traffic so nimbly as a freshman seemed a distant memory. He tried to use his time on the bench wisely, studying the game from a new perspective, figuring out how he would play opposing guards. He also changed his major to computer science and accounting. It wasn’t exactly easy. But at least he could keep up with the homework more easily when the Aces were on the road.
Despite the heartache of the previous two seasons, Harris approached his senior year intent on preparing himself for whatever the future held. During the day that summer, he worked as a full-time intern at a window manufacturer, learning about computers and programming. At night, he lifted weights and played one-on-one with a former teammate. He also jumped rope, worked on offensive and defensive drills, and took up martial arts to improve his balance. He had not given up on his college basketball career. When practice started in October, Eric played with a sense of freedom that he hadn’t felt since he was a freshman. He was on the second team during the preseason, but poured in twenty-three points during a scrimmage. That performance, combined with his understanding of the Aces’ offense, convinced Walters to put him in the starting lineup for the season opener against Baltimore. It was his first starting assignment in thirty-nine games and he didn’t waste it, hitting all four of his shots and both of his free throws, for ten points. He added four assists and three steals in an Aces blowout. He scored sixteen the following week against Southern Illinois and held the Valparaiso point guard scoreless on December 14, blocking three of his shots. By early February 1982, Harris was averaging eleven points a game and leading UE in assists. He ran the offense like a maestro, scanning the floor, seeing plays as they developed, watching his teammates as they moved into position, and getting them the ball where they wanted it, where they could do the most damage.
