OUInsider - Owen Field

what does this have to do with Oklahoma football?

Should I have checked with you first before posting?

shut up sky.....

i had no idea he was a former Sooner.. no where in the article did it mention that..

my apologies!

Terry also got his MBA from OU. He is one of the smartest guys I have ever met. If not an NBA coach, he would no doubt be a CEO somewhere.

I know people aren't happy with BT's blog that basically demands that Stoops talk about how he came into contact with PSU transfer Justin Brown. But this one on Stotts is pretty good (although he incorrectly lists Whitley as a 1976 recruit - he was from '77):

Oklahoma basketball: Terry Stotts gets Portland job
Posted by Berry Tramelon August 8, 2012M at 7:34 am

The Portland TrailBlazers on Tuesday named Terry Stotts their head coach, and let’s be honest. None of us saw this coming 32 years ago, when Stotts was an OU forward playing for Dave Bliss. Stotts has fashioned an excellent NBA career; a long-time assistant coach who was head coach of the Hawks for two seasons and the Bucks for two seasons. His record is not strong, 115-168, but Stotts’ reputation as a leader is such that the Blazers have handed him the reins.

My friend Seth Prince is sports editor of the Portland Oregonian. Seth grew up in Norman and went to OU, but he’s way younger than me. I don’t even know if he was alive when during Stotts’ days at OU. But Seth asked if I could write a little something about my memories of Stotts, who played at OU from 1976-80. So here’s what I wrote.

I turned 18 in the winter of 1978-79. Sooner basketball hadn’t made an NCAA Tournament in my lifetime. Or in the lifetime of people a dozen years older than me.

But OU had hired Dave Bliss as coach in 1975, and he recruited a bunch of Midwestern guys straight out of a Hoosiers casting call, even though the movie still was several years away.

First, John McCullough from Lima,Ohio, and Cary Carrabine from Merrillville, Ind. A year later, Bliss signed Raymond Whitley from Indianapolis, Aaron Curry from Buffalo and Terry Stotts from Bloomington,Ind. Along with center Al Beal, from Deerfield Beach,Fla., those recruits from the Great Lakes states staged an Oklahoma basketball revival. The Sooners won their first Big Eight title since 1949 and reached the Sweet 16, before Larry Bird and Indiana State ended the run.

Lloyd Noble Center became a hopping place for the first time ever. Wrestling often outdrew basketball in Norman during the 1970s. But that changed with the 1978-79 Sooners. No longer could I drop by Lloyd Noble on a whim, get a great seat right behind the basket and watch a ballgame with my legs draped over the seat in front of me.

Those guys – McCullough and Stotts and Beal and Curry and Carrabine and Whitley – brought championship hoops to a place that had even forgotten it was possible.

And on a supremely-steady team, Stotts was the steadiest. He did nothing outstanding but everything well. Good shooter, good rebounder, solid defender.

A 6-foot-8 combo forward with an Abbey Road haircut – I swear, Portland fans, you’ve got to get a copy of his Sooner mugshot – Stotts averaged 14.5 points a game on 49.9 percent shooting in that landmark season. He was OU’s second-leading scorer. Had the 3-point line existed, Stotts would have averaged more, since he was a nifty shooter for a big man.

A year later, Stotts averaged 16.9 points a game and shot 51.8 percent from the field. Bliss moved on, Billy Tubbs came in and Oklahoma basketball took off.

But that 1979 team planted the seed. Terry Stotts was on the ground floor of something special.

You are right it would have been easy to put former Sooner somewhere.

FWIW - OU signed Overton and Barnett in the Spring of '79, a little over a month after OU's season ended in the Sweet 16. David Little should have been on that '79 team, but he signed with Texas Tech over OU out of high school in Abilene. He wised up and transferred to OU in the off-season in 1980.