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University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, March 4, 1986
Ed Manning, second from right, has been an assistant to KU head coach Larry Brown since August 1983. Manning had a nine-year career as a professional basketball player until 1977.
Jackl Kelly/KANSAN
The jobs of assistant basketball coaches who bring top recruits don't end once the players are gone. Many find they are . . .
Not excess baggage
By Bob Tinsley
Staff writer
For Ed Manning, hour after grueling hour behind the wheel of a truck was enough to plug even his seasoned athlete's *r*teries.
Manning had triple-bypass surgery in December 1982.
Eight months later, men's head basketball coach, Larry Brown, hired Manning as one of his assistants. Manning had played and coached college and professional basketball for 14 years, until 1978.
Ed Manning is one of two Mannings linked to Jayhawk basketball. Danny Manning, his much-touted, talented son, is wrapping up his second season of play at the University of Kansas.
The recruitment of Danny Manning was a coup for Brown. It was a controversy for others. They asserted that Brown had arranged a package deal — hiring a truck driver, not a coach — merely to spare his son
So, when Danny Manning's KU days are done, his father's half of the package will become so much excess baggage.
But, don't warm up that 18-wheeler just vet.
sleeps in his own bed in Lawrence where the Norwoods still live.
Years ago in Wichita, Norwood observed as young Valentine took part in the Biddy Basketball League. He coached Valentine at Wichita Heights High School. When the time came to choose a college, Valentine wanted his mentor and friend with him at KU, Norwood said.
"In fact without him, I don't think I'd have wanted to come to Kansas as a coach and probably wouldn't have been provided with that opportunity," Norwood said. "But he was one of the main reasons — the reason — I did come. He wanted me to come."
Norwood came armed with a 112-56 record for his eight years with the Wichita Heights Falcons. The 1976-77 team, Norwood's last at Wichita Heights, was undefeated and crowned with a 5A State Championship.
The grapevine buzzed when Norwood announced in May 1981 he would step down as assistant coach on July 1. People were saying he was elbowed out to make room for JoO White, KU basketball legend who played for the Boston Celtics. White was a KU assistant coach from 1981 to 1983.
'I made the choice to leave because I think I fulfilled that particular point in my life. I know that I can coach on a major college level if I want to or so desire.I fulfilled that.'
Brown will tell you he hired a coach, not a coach's son — a talented coach, who should lead his own program someday.
"A lot of people were critical about Ed's knowledge of the game, and Ed was really Danny's mentor," Brown said. "If you ever watched Danny play, he's probably one of the most fundamentally sound players there is."
Lafayette Norwood
Danny Manning may be headed for the pros, but what do coaches do when the players they came with depart?
Manning said he didn't think his fortunes would fade at KU with his son's departure.
Winning ways
Regardless of why they were hired, some such coaches carry winning records with them to college teams, leave and continue their winning ways elsewhere.
Duncan Reid came to KU as an assistant in 1973 after seven years as a high school coach in Lincoln, Ill. One of his Lincoln standouts, forward Norman Cook, signed with the Jav Hawks the same year.
Cook helped lead the 'Hawks to the Big Eight title in the 1973-74 season. In the 1975-76 season, his last at KU, he had an average of 14.8 points and 7.9 rebounds a game. Cook went to the draft as a hardship case in 1976 and spent a year with the Boston Celtics, who chose him in the first round.
"I was not a package deal," Reid said of his KU position.
Reid has a record any coach could envy. At Lincoln he was 173-54. He left KU in 1977 to be head coach at Dodge City Community College where he built an 80-17 record and took three conference titles. He has continued his winning streak at Rock Island (Ill.) High School, racking up a 134-21 record in six years.
When Reid resigned after four KU seasons, a high school coach from Wichita, Lafayette Norwood, stepped in for the next four years, along with All-America. Darnell Valentine.
Today, as head coach at Johnson County Community College, Norwood can spend more time with his family, and nearly always
"I made the choice to leave because I think I fulfilled that particular point in my life," Norwood said. "I know that I can coach on a major college level if I want to or so desire. I fulfilled that."
Norwood feels comfortable and competent as a coach.
"Going back, looking at my record, I really feel that I accomplished, or that I deserved that type of role," he said. "So I'll let that be as it is."
Winning records — or even packaged players — aren't the distinguishing marks of a candidate for a college coaching staff. Loyalty is important to Dale Brown, Louisiana State men's head coach.
Brown said he found loyalty and coaching excellence in assistants Ron Abernathy and Rick Huekabay
Huckabay spent three years at Louisiana State. Today he is head coach at Marshall University, Huntington, W.Va. Abernathy, far from being dumped after Macklin's senior year, has an unusual title — associate coach — for Dale Brown.
Both men were high school coaches when Dale Brown added them and one of each man's star high school players, Rudy Macklin and Howard Carter. to his Wildcats.
And neither man's coaching career ended with Macklin and Carter's eligibility.
It wasn't long before Brown returned to Louisville for the coach. Abernathy, in his third season at Shawnee High School, had racked up a 97-11 record, three district and two regional championships. He was 24 years old.
Brown visited Louisville in 1976 when Abernathy was a high school coach. He recruited Macklin, who today is a Baton Rouge banker.
During Abernathy's 10 seasons at Louisiana State, the team has clinched the Southeast Conference championship four times and a 1981 berth in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Final Four.
Southern drawl still flavors his speech. People don't always recognize the name Marshall, but his small program is trying to become big again, he said. Marquette, Clemson and Fresno State are among the teams that have fallen before his Thundering Herd.
Huckabay has been at Marshall University since he left Louisiana State in 1983, but a soft
When Brown hired Huckabay in 1900, Huckabay was working toward his third state championship in three years at Baton Rouge's Redemptorist High School. The team lost the championship game — the only game Huckabay lost in three years at Redemptorist.
Brown also signed Howard "Hi-C" Carter, one of Huckabay's outstanding high school players.
"I take pride in saying he took Howard to get me," Huckabay said. "I'd proven myself for years and years. I felt like I paid my dues just as much as Howard deserved a scholarship. I had chances to go to LSU, but had head (coaching) jobs and tried to work my way up."
Dale Brown made his first overture when Huckabay coached at Rapides High School, LaCompte, La., offering a graduate assistant's post. Acceptance would have meant a cut in pay for the newly married Huckabay. He declined.
Brown said, "The next time I had a position open, Howard happened to be a senior at the same time."
Carter had been ready to trade the bayous of Louisiana for Kentucky bluegrass. But he went to Louisiana State because his high school coach was going to be there, Huckabay said.
"I don't know whether it sounds right to you, but kids and coaches are close sometimes," he said, "and Howard Carter went to LSU to stay with me."
Sticking together
And when Larry Brown hired Ed Manning as his assistant, son Danny came to stay with him, too.
After all, Danny Manning was only a high school senior.
During his junior year, young Manning led Page High School, Greensboro, N.C., to a 26-0 basketball season and a state championship. When the KU offer came, North Carolina basketball fans, certain their rising young star was fading before their eyes, and college coaches who coveted Danny protested.
Brown remembers the day, soon after Manning senior arrived, when a crew of reporters from a national television network
After all, Ed Manning was just a truck driver who had raised a superstar athlete.
'A lot of people were critical about Ed's knowledge of the game, and Ed was really Danny's mentor. If you ever watched Danny play, he's probably one of the most fundamentally sound players there is.'
Ed Manning's basketball career began in Summit, Miss., in his hometown high school. From 1964 to 1968, he played basketball for Jackson State. He spent the next four years in the National Basketball Association, moving from Baltimore to Chicago to Portland, Ore.
— Larry Brown
Later, in the now-defunct American Basketball Association, he spent two years playing for the Carolina Cougars. Larry Brown was his coach.
A stint with the New York Nets and a year of play in Belgium round out the story of Manning's nine-year pro career. He accepted the position of assistant coach at North Carolina A&T in 1977, so the Mannings settled in Greenbore.
The appointment was short-lived. Manning's boss, head coach Gennie Littles, went west to coach the NBA Utah Jazz. New coaches bring new staffs.
After a single year, Ed Manning was out of a job.
Priorities
Manning is first a coach, but families must be fed and clothed. He mounted the cab of an 18-wheeler to support his family.
"I'm not one of those guys who, when he's not doing what he wants to do, he's not doing anything." Manning said.
Manning drove on into the summer of '83. Meanwhile in Kansas, recently hired coach Brown was perplexed. He had six qualified candidates to fill former assistant JoJo White's shoes and couldn't make a decision.
Manning first emerged as a possibility during a telephone conversation with Littles, who had moved from Utah to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Brown made the offer. But Lonny Rose, KU assistant athletic director, told Brown that Manning didn't meet KU's affirmative action
- Larry Brown
'I'm not one of those guys who, when he's not doing what he wants to do, he's not doing anything.'
Ed Manning
came to wag accusing fingers and tongues at him for hiring that trucker.
"They didn't know that Ed had coached, or played, or played for me," Brown said. "They just thought he was a truck driver, and the basis of their story was the evils of college athletics — that you would hire a truck driver to be a coach just to get his son."
The reporters, it seemed, didn't know Ed Manning had a formidable basketball record of his own.
"The guy that came to do the piece was shocked when he found out that Ed was a player and played for me," Brown said. "I've known Danny since he was five."
Brown gave Manning the bad news, and the two parted as friends.
Rose had pointed out the problem with Manning. Rose also supplied the solution. He suggested Brown rewrite the job qualifications, reopen the search and hire Manning.
qualifications for hiring, which demand the applicant have a college degree. A math course stood between Manning and his Jackson State diploma.
"I if I was so smart, I would've planned this whole thing out, but I wasn't so smart." Brown said. "I would've made guidelines to suit Ed and I would've hired him immediately."
Brown acted. Manning was hired. The coach and his former player were a team again in Kansas.
Danny Manning, who played his senior year at Lawrence High School, announced his decision Sept. 22, 1983, to sign with KU. It was a successful end to Brown's efforts to recruit him — efforts that began in April before Brown ever had considered hiring Manning senior.
"I don't think there were ever any demands put on Ed in terms of the recruitment of Danny, nor will there ever be." Brown said.
The possible recruiting of Danny Manning crossed Brown's mind in the decision to hire Ed Manning, Brown said, but he never held that back from the family.
Package deals occur at schools everywhere, said Brown. The University of Missouri, where Manning's hiring was criticized, hired Steve Stipanovich's high school coach and made Jon Sundvold's brother an assistant, he said. The University of Oklahoma's coach, Billy Tubbs, hired Wayman 'Tisdale's junior college coach, Robert Mims.
"It happens throughout the country," said Brown, "but I'm probably the only coach who had a personal relationship with the guy I hired."
Wayman Tisdale is gone, but Mims remains a member of the Oklahoma basketball staff. The Sooners took on another assistant, Jim Kerwin, in 1984. The hiring marked the end of six years of junior college coaching for Kerwin, who had been head coach at Seminole Junior College, just 40 miles from Norman, Okla.
One of Kerrin's stars, Anthony Bowie,
signed with Oklahoma at the same time.
Kerwin said he had several offers to go to Division I schools as an assistant. Despite the offers, he remained a junior college coach for a simple reason. He enjoyed his job.
He wanted to be a head coach.
"That's a goal of most coaches," he said.
"You pay your dues and try to do the best job you can, and this is what I think I've done."
The "head coach" title was one of Rick
kuckabay's goals when he left Louisiana
"I wanted to be a head coach again," Huckabay said. "When you talk about Larry hiring Mr. Manning and those guys, you have to look at their aspirations."
Naturally, they want to move ahead, he said.
Dale Brown would like to see Ron Abernathy fill his shoes someday.
Larry Brown would like Ed Manning to have a program to call his own.
Today, Manning, the trucker's transient life behind him, enjoys his role as one of Brown's assistants. Again he is part of the sport he loves — the highway miles but a memory. And a heart problem — no problem
"From talking to different doctors that I've been to, they say if you're going to have one you'd have had one from the beginning," Manning said.
"I don't look forward to having any kind of problem."