“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.