“Going One-on-One”
Posted by Steve Bzomowski on February 7, 2007
NTL Photo Library
I can still hear my eighth grade coach, Bill Tweedy, yelling, “you’re going one-on-one”! That, the going one-on-one, used to be a bad thing. Basketball was, and is, first and foremost, a team game. So, the idea, back then, was if you weren’t completely relying on your teammates, then you weren’t playing the game right. In the late 60s and early 70s, the game made a big turn; the game went modern. Pete Maravich, Earl Monroe, Dean Meminger and a host of new breed basketball wizards brought a dazzling array of never-before-seen offensive skills and therein expanded what was possible. Behind the back, between the legs, inside-outs, spins and fallaways went from being “showing off” to part of the standard repertoire. Players copied what they saw the great ones doing and coaches saw that one-on-one, if it was the right “one”, was indeed an offensive advantage. Now coaches scheme to create those situations where players can be isolated with a solitary defender. Moral to the story: work on your one-on-one skills and hope that someday, somewhere, someone calls you “Pistol” or “Pearl” or “Dream”.
Technorati Tags: One-on-One-Basketball
February 7, 2007 at 8:45 pm
I’ve heard of “Pistol” and “Pearl”, but never “Dream” until your
recent “one-on-one” entry (the link to his story is interesting).
The tips provided on this site are great, very informative and
funny…now, if I can only find 10 minutes and a nearby hoop…
February 7, 2007 at 8:59 pm
When I was a freshmen playing at Fordham, there was a senior All-American named Charlie Yelverton, maybe the best player in the country that year. Outplayed Dr J, John Roche, Austin Carr; single-handedly beat Notre Dame (I can still remember the chants from the crowd at The Garden - to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar - “Austin Carr, Austin Carr, you’re not as good as they say you are. Notre Dame, Notre Dame, when you gonna quit trying to play this game?”
Charley and Dean “The Dream” Meminger played together at Rice HS. Charlie Y to me was the greatest human being who ever walked the earth.
February 9, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Great -
Now I’m all confused! I always thought one on one was ball hogging. How do you find the balance?
February 9, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Nat - - Good to hear that someone’s concerned about ball hogging. The U.S. might still be the pre-eminent world basketball power if more people had taken it seriously years ago. It, like, infected the culture. Next to wide-open shots, one-on-one is the best thing going. Not “dancing with the ball” (see the Feb 9, 2007 post) one-on-one while your teammates stand around and watch you, but one-on-one where after ball movement, there’s an opportunity to break defense down. Certainly, one-on-one in the post is desirable. Certainly after good ball movement, having made the defense work, with a quick, strong, aggressive move protecting the ball and going straight-at-the-hoop will result in a play that any coach would be happy with.
February 12, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Nat, you can go one-on-one anytime you please, especially after your PFL lefty game-winner.
February 23, 2007 at 10:09 pm
You mention some great old names, John Roche, Dean The Dream Meminger and the Digger Phelps coached Charles Yelverton…BUT didn’t Roche and Tom Owens as high school seniors at La Salle Academy knock off Rice High with The Dream and Yelverton in the NYC catholic school championship? Also you seem to be referring to Yelverton in the past tense…is he no longer alive?
February 23, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Hobie - - Thanks for responding. You sound like someone who was there and knows the NYC scene! I came down from Albany and caught Charlie Y only for my freshman year (his senior year and Digger’s only year) at Rose Hill, so can’t say that I know what happened at Rice High Y’s senior year (four years earlier). Roche and Owens would have been a formidable duo. (A teammate and I did travel down from Albany after our high school team, Shaker High, later home to Sam Perkins, lost in the sectionals our senior year to see Molloy [Brian Winters] and Power Memorial [Len Elmore, Jap Trimble, Ed Searcy] play for the Catholic Schools Championship in ‘70, some of whom we played with at Jack Donahue’s Summer Camp in The Catskills.) Also, I have no idea what Y is up to. I pray he is doing well. As I said in comment #2, he was my absolute hero. Not just a great, great player, but an interesting and compassionate and sweet and engaging, intelligent guy. Last I heard, and this was long ago, he played in Yugoslavia (do I have that right?) for many years after leaving Portland. The crowning glory of my playing days was Charlie Y nicknaming me, honoring me with the nickname, “Hambone”.
February 25, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Steve-I live in Georgia but in late 60s early 70s, as a kid, I was a big fan of the old University of South Carolina basketball program coached by the Irishman Frank McGuire and assisted by Donnie Walsh and the late Buck Freeman. I knew the school boy backgrounds (from reading game programs and summer camp gossip)of guys like Cremins, Roche, Owens, Riker, Joyce, Winters et. al. McGuire had an uncanny recruiting “underground railroad” bringing New Yorkers down south for very very formidable teams in the late 1960s and 1970s. Do you the whereabouts of any of the previously mentioned “names” in college basketball (and some with pro careers as well)? I am just a huge fan who has three favorite subjects…sports, history and sports history. Love your work.
February 26, 2007 at 12:36 am
Hobie - - The answer to the question, “who won the 1967 CHSAA championship”? http://www.times-standard.com/sports/ci_5211038
Confirms you were right! The article brings up a name or two you might enjoy reading about, as well. I played against Kevin Joyce at Jack Donahue’s Friendship Farm camps in The Catskills when I was in 9th grade. He was two years ahead of me and a monster. Billy Schaefer, forward for St. John’s, Holy Cross High, introduced me to NYC basketball at that camp with a forearm to the head I can still feel.
I’m going to get in touch with some people I still know in the Fordham Athletic Dept and see if anyone knows what Charlie Y is up to.
Thanks for your comments AND your compliment. Much appreciated.
February 27, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Thanks for indulging my interest in the minutiae of high school sports…but “It’s Never Too Late” seems to be receptive to old hoop stories.
August 22, 2007 at 11:49 am
Charlie Yeleverton is living in Northern Italy. He is still involved in basketball and runs and manages camps
September 12, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I played against Charlie Y, Dean the Dream and Roche and Owens. Hobie Jones is right. In their senior year LaSalle did beat Rice in the NYC CHSAA final (at the Fordham Rose Hill Campus), but Charlie Y and Dean, plus a 6′11″ Bill Leinart (sp??) beat them all to win the City title in Charlie and Dean’s junior year. Great bball to be a part of back then. To think all those future NBA’ers came out of the same league in the same time was amazing.
September 12, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Gregory - - You played against Y! Excellent! If this blog had a membership that would automatically qualify you for lifetime status! Where, might I ask, did you play?
Interesting to read the previous comment “ErichthePred” that Y is living and still involved in hoops in Northern Italy. Man, I should go and look him up, say “hey, Charlie Y, remember me? Hambone from the freshmen team in ‘71?” He, of course, would have noooooo idea. But like I said earlier, he was just a cool guy and I would love to meet up with him again because I bet HE has some interesting stories to tell. Even at 22 years old, you could tell he was meeting life head-on.
January 14, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I was in the same year at Fordham as Charlie Y and lived through that exciting season in ‘71 when Fordham did so well and ended up as #7. The game at the Garden against Notre Dame is the most exciting I have ever seen. Charlie at 6′2″ throwing away Colis Jones’ (at 6′9″
layup is forever engraved in my mind.
I was recently told that Charlie is now teaching at a high school in New York.
February 6, 2008 at 12:52 am
I was at that Notre Dame game in 1971 with my Dad, a college classmate of Pete Carlisimo. Yelverton was incredible. I think he jumped center at 6′2″. Kenny Charles was on the team, too.
I think Fordham may have taken Marquette with Meminger and Chones into OT that year, as well.As far as the freshman team goes, Steve, I think there was a kid, Willis Reed’s nephew or something that may have played the next year, Phil something that was good.
I went to Fordham for a year but was not good enough to play D1 and transferred to a D3 school and played. PJ Carlisimo was coaching the JV team when i went there.
I grew up around Bridgeport and we had great teams with players lie Walt Luckett. Frank Oleynik, John Bagley and Charles Smith. Tom Penders was coaching Bridgeport Central and they were awesome.
February 6, 2008 at 9:34 am
Ron - - Good to hear from someone who was there, too. When I was on the freshman team that storied year, the only kid who could possibly (ethnically speaking) have been Willis Reed’s nephew was a kid named Wendell Holland. He did play the next year for Hal Wissel (after Digger left). Additionally, you are right, the Rams took Marquette who was #2 in the country at the time to OT. Fordham’s center, a kid named George Zambetti, missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with less than 20 secs to go. Zambetti went on to be the orthopedic surgeon for the NY Football Giants, so I guess he got over missing those FTs. I remember when we played Columbia, and all of us were on the bus because the frosh team traveled with the varsity that game, The Rams had trashed Columbia and Digger was in the front of the bus. Everyone was loose and happy but at one point Digger yelled back to Zambetti, “George, how did you ever wind-up with 15 rebounds?” And Zambetti yelled back, “perseverance!” It was pretty funny. Digger did an amazing job that year. I learned so much about how a head coach should/can relate to players from him. He was all about giving them confidence.
February 6, 2008 at 9:44 am
One other reply to your comment: you say you grew up around Bridgeport, so you must know or know of the Websters. Keith, all-state at Bridgeport High, I believe, played for me when I coached at Harvard. He and I have stayed pretty close. A great, great guy who was a tough player. Came very close to making the Jazz out of Harvard, all-Ivy. His dad, Bruce Webster, won 600+ games at U. of Bridgeport, famously coached Manute Bol. I bet you went to Bruce Webster’s camp!