I don't know how many teams have the H-3 any more. But under him it was hustle, hustle, hustle. It was also about that time when the saying 'Be a Pioneer, be a champion' came out. And the community started getting involved more too.

I really enjoyed that. It had been so long. It was 27 years. There were some players from Leavenworth that played football there but not basketball.

I looked around and there were about 2,000,000 other guys there it seemed. So I said yes.

The few years leading up to that season hadn't been that good. It was a turn-around year. We had good team chemistry. There was a whole new attitude with the new coach.

Against Notre Dame, we had just gotten through playing our league and had gotten used to that clock. They went to a four-corner offense. Four guys would spread out to about the out-of-bounds line and one guy would get the ball in the middle and dribble around and pass or drive to the basket or shoot.

That's something very special to me. I remember one game they announced the player ahead of me and the crowd just exploded. I swear I moved a foot on the bench.

It reminded me of my senior year at Leavenworth. I was the go-to-guy there too.

The year before I got there, KU was in the final four. At that time there were only 32 teams in the tournament. So you had to be one of the best to get in. It wasn't like today where the no. 1 seed plays a 16 seed that barely had a .500 season.

After my junior year coach Zacher came to me and said 'I was talking to the coaches at KU and they said they were interested in you.

The word was that I was going to be drafted by Golden State. But that just didn't happen. So I tried out for a free agent team which I made.