Tales from the Cincinnati Bearcats Locker Room

by Michael Perry

  That would be Steve Logan, a chunky five-foot-11 guard from St. Edward High School in Lakewood, on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. Major colleges did not heavily recruit Logan, and he did not sign a national letter of intent in the fall of his senior year because he held out hope Huggins would offer a scholarship.

  Which is exactly what happened.

  “We had too many guys who couldn’t make shots,” Huggins once said.

  With Logan, Huggins knew, that would not be a problem.

  After leading his high school team to a state championship, Logan was named Ohio’s Division I Player of the Year. In four years at Cincinnati, he slimmed down, got stronger, worked relentlessly on his game and left as the Bearcats’ No. 2 all-time scorer behind only Oscar Robertson.

  Just think: What if that Louisiana prep star had a good first half?

  LOGAN 41, SOUTHERN MISS 37

  Logan accomplished a great many things at UC—including playing in the most victories—and had his name scattered all over the record books by the end of his senior season. But perhaps one of his most memorable nights came when he outscored an entire team all by himself.

  True.

  Southern Mississippi came into Shoemaker Center with a 7-15 record just one year after sharing the Conference USA regular-season championship with the Bearcats. Coach James Green’s teams had a reputation for playing good defense. But on February 15, 2002, it really didn’t matter what they did.

  Steve Logan was hot. He drove to the basket. He pulled up for mid-range jumpers. He fired long-range three-pointers. And at the end of the night, Logan had 41 points. Southern Miss had 37.

  “Oh man, he put on a show,” teammate Donald Little said that night.

  “We tried to double him,” Green said afterward. “We tried to keep the ball out of his hands.”

  Nothing worked.

  UC won 89-37. Logan left to a standing ovation with 4:25 left, also finishing with nine assists and six rebounds. He made 12 of his 18 field-goal attempts and was eight of 13 from three-point range and nine of 10 from the foul line.

  To make the night even more special, Logan’s mother and sister were in the stands, and the game was nationally televised on ESPN.

  “To do it in a game like there was nobody in the gym with me, it’s amazing,” Logan said the next day. “I was just in a zone, I guess.”

  IT’S BETTER TO GIVE

  Leonard Stokes didn’t think much about it the night it happened. UC had just defeated Southern Mississippi at Shoemaker Center. As usual, Stokes showered, dressed and went to sign autographs outside the Bearcats’ locker room.

  Jon Johanson, an 18-year-old UC fan with cerebral palsy, was in his red-and-black wheelchair waiting in line. As Stokes approached and signed an autograph for him, Johanson told Stokes: “You’re my favorite player.” Stokes soon disappeared back into the locker room.

  The junior forward grabbed the shoes he wore that night—size 13 Nike Air Jordans—and asked a student manager to give them to Johanson. “Leonard Stokes wants you to have these,” the manager told Johanson, who was stunned by the gift.

  Steve Logan left UC in 2002 owning school records for games played (135), career victories (111) and free throw percentage (.861). He was second in scoring (1,985 points), minutes played, three-point field goals attempted and assists. (Photo by Lisa Ventre/University of Cincinnati)

  “I remember it was about twelve o’clock at night,” Johanson said. “The first thing I wanted to do was wear them.”

  Nancy Johanson, Jon’s mother, wrote a letter to Stokes and sent a copy to Huggins and a reporter with The Cincinnati Enquirer. She wanted everyone to know how moved she was by Stokes’s gesture

  “You really don’t know how much you can impact a person’s life by some of the things you do,” Stokes said. “That day made me realize that.

  “I didn’t do it and expect anyone to tell the media and make a big deal out of it. I did it out of the kindness of my heart. That kid was sitting there and telling me how I was his favorite player. That touched me. To me, I was just doing something to make him feel happy.”

  Stokes’s mother, Candace Quarles, was awfully proud. She framed the picture of Johanson and the shoes that later ran in The Enquirer and hung it in the family’s living room in Buffalo, N.Y., alongside Leonard’s basketball trophies and awards.

  “That’s the way she raised me, to be courteous and kind to others,” Stokes said.

  “I think it was a magical moment that symbolized the goodness in people,” Nancy Johanson told The Enquirer. “That a perfect stranger would do something that was so generous and meaningful for a fan. I think that’s why it lives on. It was a very loving moment. Everyone I have shared this story with has been really touched; it restores people’s sense of goodness.”

  UNCLE CLARENCE

  Logan—a first-team All-American and Conference USA Player of the Year as a senior—almost wasn’t around to collect all his accolades.

  During his sophomore year, Huggins pulled Logan out of the starting lineup late in the season and used him as a sixth man. The Bearcats had one of the best teams in the country, led by National Player of the Year Kenyon Martin. UC was deep, versatile and appeared to be on the way to a Final Four berth—until Martin broke his leg during the Conference USA tournament.

  Logan’s disappointment after the season was more personal. He didn’t think he was being treated fairly. Huggins didn’t think Logan was working as hard as he could. Logan went home to Cleveland and was determined to transfer.

  Enter Clarence Newby. Or, as Logan calls him, “Uncle Clarence.”

  Talk to Logan about Newby long enough and Logan will choke up. “I get chill bumps when I hear his name,” Logan told The Cincinnati Enquirer. “He saved my life.”

  Newby owned a shoeshine parlor around the corner from where Logan grew up in Cleveland. Logan was 12 years old and the man of the house after his mother asked his father to leave. Newby hired Logan with the intent of keeping him from getting involved in drugs and gangs like other kids in the neighborhood.

  When Logan told Newby he planned to leave Cincinnati, Newby set him straight: “No, son, you’re going to stick it out. I don’t want to hear no more about transferring. It’s not even up for discussion.”

  Logan listened. He mended his strained relationship with Huggins, then went on to be named Conference USA Player of the Year in 2001 and 2002.

  “I grew up a little more and understood I wasn’t going to win with him,” Logan said of Huggins. “In order for me to be successful . . . I had to be a little bit more respectful and not talk back.”

  MEETING OF THE MINDS

  UC lost its first regular-season opener of the Huggins era on November 16, 2001, at Oklahoma State, a game set up by the TV network.

  The Bearcats looked horrible offensively (they shot 22.7 percent from the field in the first half), and the Cowboys won 69-62. Stokes, expected to be one of the team’s leading scorers, went scoreless in the first half and finished with just 12 points. The next day, senior forward Jamaal Davis (one point and one rebound in 20 minutes) would quit the team—temporarily.

  “I’m coming in from the outside, and I’m looking for the big, bad Bearcats that I’ve always thought about,” said assistant coach Andy Kennedy, who was then in his first year at UC. “And when I got here I looked around and said, ‘Where are they?’”

  That night, after the game, the UC coaching staff sat around in the lobby atrium of the Holiday Inn in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Artificial trees surrounded them. They could smell the chlorine from the nearby indoor swimming pool, and a manure plant next door was sending out an odor.

  “The biggest thing I remember about it was, we don’t have meetings,” former associate head coach Dan Peters said. “But Huggs called one.”

  Everyone assembled was trying to figure out how Cincinnati could even become a .500 team that season. It did not look good, they all agreed. They sat around for three or four hours, talking about the best
style of play for the team, how to maximize Logan, who had scored 31 against the Cowboys.

  Some grand conclusion must have been conceived.

  The Bearcats won their next 20 games, climbing as high as No. 4 in the Associated Press poll. Logan would be named first-team All-America and lead UC to a 31-4 record, setting a school record for most victories in a season.

  “I certainly did not envision going 31-4,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think anybody did. That was unfathomable at the time.”

  HELPING HAND

  In 1983, Derrick McMillan took advantage of one of the greatest assets the University of Cincinnati basketball program has: Oscar Robertson.

  The Hall of Famer has offered his help to Bearcat players for decades. McMillan seized the opportunity and turned into an all-conference player (see Chapter 9).

  It was another 18 years before a UC player turned to the Big O.

  Robertson sat courtside for many games during the 2001-02 season, saw some flaws in Leonard Stokes’s game and thought he could help.

  “I think he has talent he hasn’t tapped yet,” Robertson told The Cincinnati Enquirer. “I don’t like to interfere. You can only say so much to a guy. They have to learn to play as it comes and learn to grow with it. I just don’t think he’s aggressive enough yet.”

  The two talked on the phone regularly, but Robertson came to practice one afternoon and stayed the whole day. He talked at length with Stokes, a six-foot-six junior, and showed him ways to improve some techniques.

  “It’s a blessing, definitely, when you’ve got a guy like Oscar noticing you,” Stokes told The Enquirer. “I just try to take in everything that he says. If he tells me to clap when I’m on the bench, I’m going to listen.”

  WEST VIRGINIA: A LONG WEEK

  The talk started before UC’s 2001-02 season even ended. From the moment Gale Catlett resigned as coach at West Virginia on February 14, 2002, reports surfaced that the Mountaineers would target Huggins to replace Catlett.

  It made sense for West Virginia. Huggins played there, was a two-time Academic All-American and the team’s most valuable player as a senior. He was a graduate assistant there in 1977. He had friends still in Morgantown. And then there was this: Huggins was interested.

  Bob Huggins is UC’s all-time winningest men’s basketball coach with a record of 399-127 (.759) in 16 years. (Photo by Lisa Ventre/University of Cincinnati)

  The Bearcats lost a heartbreaking double-overtime game to UCLA in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on a Sunday. Then . . .

  Monday: West Virginia officials called UC Athletic Director Bob Goin and asked for permission to speak to Huggins. “I told them to get his thing moving as quickly as they could,” Goin said. “Bobby and I had dialogue immediately.” Goin expected the phone call. “I wasn’t nervous,” he said. “I thought when he started putting all the pluses together, what he was seeking at West Virginia he already had here.”

  Tuesday: Huggins met with West Virginia officials in a Pittsburgh hotel. Some people close to Huggins believe that if West Virginia would have made him a good offer this night, he would have accepted. “If they were going to get him, it would’ve been when he was emotionally removed from the city,” Goin said. “Once they let him come back to Cincinnati, then the city started showing its affection. It was openly expressed to him better than I could do it. It reassured him that everything he had done in the past hadn’t gone unnoticed.”

  Wednesday: Huggins could not return to his Shoemaker Center office. Some members of the media were around all day long. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. He spent a lot of time driving around the city and at Goin’s home. It was where the two could have the most privacy. The Athletic Director’s wife Nancy was out of town for the week. “Most of the time, it was him weighing what he wanted to do, and not me saying, ‘Well, you’ve got to stay here,’” Goin said. “That was not my approach. Ultimately, I felt very confident.”

  Thursday: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Huggins was staying at UC. Huggins still couldn’t go near his office.

  Friday: CBS.Sportsline.com was the first to report that Huggins accepted the West Virginia job, but other reports soon followed, including one Cincinnati television station, which also reported Huggins was leaving UC. Huggins called another TV station that night to deny that any deal was done. Steve Farmer, a West Virginia-based lawyer representing Huggins, met with West Virginia officials Friday and Saturday.

  Saturday: This was the most frustrating night for Goin. He had a news release written that said Huggins was staying at UC, and Goin was eager to release it. Then Huggins called to say he was indeed meeting with the West Virginia president in Cincinnati on Sunday night. “I owe that to them,” he told Goin.

  Sunday: West Virginia president David Hardesty and Athletic Director Ed Pastilong flew to Cincinnati to make Huggins an offer. After that meeting, Huggins went to Goin’s house. “He was still torn on emotion versus reality,” Goin said. Meanwhile in Morgantown, TV trucks showed up over the weekend outside the WVU Coliseum for a potential press conference. The Charleston Daily Mail sent a reporter to Morgantown for a possible announcement.

  Monday: Huggins drove around Cincinnati and ended up at Goin’s house for the sixth straight day. Goin said: “Bobby, this has gone on long enough. I’ve got two releases here. One says you’re leaving and one says you’re staying. I want you to pick one of those.” The releases were lying on the sofa. Huggins said he had to make another phone call, and he retreated to Goin’s game room in the basement. Goin remained upstairs.

  Huggins came back up and tapped one of the releases. “Go ahead and send it out,” he said.

  “But the one he tapped said he was leaving,” Goin said. “Then he looked at it and said, ‘No, no, no, not that one. This is the one I want to go out.’ And it was the one saying he was staying.”

  During the previous three days, Huggins received phone calls and visits from former players, who told him they just wanted him to be happy. Brian Goldberg, Ken Griffey Jr.’s agent, called Bret Adams, Huggins’s Columbus-based agent, to basically say it isn’t always so easy “going home again.” Junior wanted Huggins to understand that; his return to his hometown to play for the Cincinnati Reds had not worked out so well.

  “It was hard,” Huggins said. “I really love the people at West Virginia, but I love the people in Cincinnati, too. I love being here. I love being around my former guys. I really love this town. It would’ve been kind of neat to go back and kind of right the ship there because they had fallen on hard times.

  “What caught me by surprise was the number of people who are Bearcat fans here, from elderly people to guys that you would never think follow sports. The people who follow us in TV and newspapers. I had more people say to me, ‘I’ve never been to Shoemaker Center but I love to watch you guys play.’ At the gas station, anywhere I was, they would walk up and talk to me.”

  Make no mistake—without Goin’s presence, Huggins would not have stayed. Goin was the assistant Athletic Director at West Virginia when Huggins played there.

  “If he’s not the AD, I wouldn’t be here,” Huggins said a few years later. “But I’d have probably left long before that.”

  This story is even more interesting in hindsight. After parting with UC in August 2005, Huggins sat out a year, then coached Kansas State for one season. On April 5, 2007, he agreed to become the head coach at West Virginia. The Mountaineers got their man after all.

  SEPTEMBER 28, 2002: THE HEART ATTACK

  PITTSBURGH

  Huggins was in Pittsburgh on Friday, September 27, to watch a few potential recruits play pick-up games at Baldwin High School. He spent time Friday night with longtime friend J.O. Stright, who was legal guardian to former Bearcat Danny Fortson when UC was recruiting him.

  Huggins had a late Saturday morning flight out of Pittsburgh. He was scheduled to be at a Nike coaching clinic in Wisconsin that night.

  The UC coach returned his National rental car at Pittsb
urgh International Airport at about 8:30 a.m. Then Huggins started having chest pains. He called Stright on his cell phone and said, “I’m sweating. I feel like I’ve got an elephant on my chest. I’m having a heart attack.” Huggins’s cell phone then lost power. Stright left his home immediately and headed for the airport.

  Huggins, 49 years old at the time, ended up lying on the sidewalk near the parking garage. A police officer was with him, waiting for paramedics to arrive. An ambulance transported Huggins to Sewickley Valley Hospital, about five miles west of the airport. He was then transferred to the Medical Center, Beaver (Pennsylvania), 19 miles north of the airport and 35 miles north of downtown Pittsburgh.

  Doctors found blockage in three main coronary arteries and had to operate immediately. A stent, a tiny metal mesh device designed to keep Huggins’s once-clogged artery open, was implanted. Huggins was in serious but stable condition overnight.

  “I don’t know if he realizes how close he came to not being here,” Goin told The Cincinnati Enquirer the next day.

  At Conference USA Media Day five weeks later, Huggins said: “They tell me 10 or 15 more minutes, I probably would’ve been dead.”

  CINCINNATI

  June Huggins was preparing to meet her husband at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport where he was catching a connection to Wisconsin. She was going to join him on the trip to the Nike clinic.

  Stright called June to tell her what happened. “Bob just had a heart attack,” he said.

  “Is it very serious?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I think it is,” Stright said.

  June Huggins and her oldest daughter, Jenna, then a sophomore at UC, headed for the airport to catch a flight to Pittsburgh, where Stright picked them up. They arrived at the Medical Center shortly after Huggins’s surgery. Jacqueline, the Huggins’s younger daughter, remained in Cincinnati with friends.